#a trapper complex will do that to you

[ninjafuuzz]

the evil stache bj propaganda

[youngpettyqueen]

BJ and Trapper would have the most insufferable but lovable frat bro energy as a duo and nothing will ever convince me otherwise

[variousqueerthings]

skip black sails season 1 this and skip mash seasons 1-3 that, it simply seems odd to not watch the establishing parts of a story the first time you watch said story because they aren’t as polished as later on (as they’re busy doing the establishing part), under the guise of considering them “less progressive”

[remyfire]

The true endgame ship of the Some Things Are Evergreen series is BJ/Hawk/Peg/Trapper purely because as a sadist, it is delightfully satisfying to me to think about BJ finally getting home after a brief last-minute reassignment, and his wife is there, and his boyfriend is there, and they're getting along so fucking well, and his daughter calls Beej Daddy this time, thank you very much, not anybody else, and they can all get appointments with psychiatrists and start healing and making their way through life, and the happily ever after is right there in their grasp.

And BJ is sitting down for coffee with Hawk while Peg and Erin are bringing the mail in. The sun is shining. The curtain's about to close on the stage. BJ is opening up a medical journal, Hawk is opening a thick envelope from Daniel, and that's when the forwarded letter from one J. McIntyre falls into Hawk's lap, and BJ rips his journal in half—

[beej-honnecticutt]

Further explanations in the tags! ��🏼

[cedarin]

Heyyy i really like your tf2 caveman au, I also really like the engineer from tf2 so I was thinking about how he would go about it and I think he would be like a trapper, I don’t think you can make one to one copy’s of his machines but like traps and maybe he could have an little thing rigged up so when you step on a little thing it fires a mountain of arrows at y’a. Idk trapper engie

( also I really like the pyro design, especially thinking of pyro doing the fire breathing thing and it coming outta the mask so they look more like a dragon then a man )

HIhi thank you so much I'm really glad you like my au and my designs!

Actually im keeping engineer for last cause hes gonna be the hardest one to create. I already got so many suggestions reddit and tiktok so here are my very rough ideas.

Dispenser- i feel the dispenser would be some kind of totem. i like they idea "horn of plenty" like imagine a skull that gives the mercs bones, rocks to repair their weapons and also meat to heal them. Or just simply shaman magic healing them.

Sentry- now sentry is a bit tricky. People on reddit suggested he would tame animals , but I want to keep his craftiness in my au so yes the traps seem like the best way.

One of my huge inspirations for this au is Far Cry Primal and there is one character "Wogah" that creates traps and is also really crafty like engi so i might base engi on him.

I think making a trap that shoots arrows is far too complex, but the part with rigged thing i like that.

Teleporter- straight up shaman powers, just a totem that teleports you when you step inside it.

[regular-gnome]

I love the new comic so much! Not only is it breathtaking on its own, but it adds delicious moral complexity to the collection incomplete verse. The Archivists eliminating all the titans is still very much not a good thing, but now we can see that the titans were far from paragons of virtue. Subjugating and extracting tribute from the populace. The titans may have considered themselves benevolent overlords, but overlords all the same.

Just this one comic gives a window into why the locals might have been down with joining the Archivists hunting the titans down. Conflict is so much more interesting when neither side is fully right or wrong and I'm thrilled to see this will be so much more complicated than "Archivists bad, Titans good,".

super happy you enjoyed it:P it took aaaa while to finish

But yeah, something I found interesting is that with creatures like Titans living among witches, there is a clear power imbalance between them, something that has many ways to go about. Especially considering how differently they are perceived by two groups of witches. On the Boiling Isles, they were seen as a source of all that's good amazing kind creatures of immense power, while Titan Trappers talked about them more like monsters. I like the idea there were societies or cults built around differnt titans, and the differences between how everyone interacted were more based on the personalities of those involved - leading to diffrent views on titans by the groups. And I know a cult focused on killing titans isn't going to be a source of reliable information on the titans. This is more about how they might have been perceived to make space for a third party to convince a group that murder isn't such a bad idea (it is, please don't)

Another thing is that all characters are people, not in the "humans" sense but there arent really levels of sentience. All characters have their own minds, whether they are titans, archivists, witches, etc. It's just different circumstances and abilities, and if the stakes were smaller and everyone was forced to sit down and reflect on what they were doing, it might have ended up much less deadly

The screens are from King's tales of his past that were very much kids imagination, but I like the idea that somewhere in Kings nursery those depitons were drawn showing a diffrent titan and it fueled his story. Debatable if it was an accurate and not a demonised depition though

[trueshredguitar]

I saw your post tags about transitioning would save Hawkeye pierce and I’m very curious, say more (if you’d like)

hawkeye has a lot of scenes that convey gender nonconformity under a humorous lens. sometimes it’s scenes implying that he’s sexually or romantically attracted to men; these scenes aren’t just “haha he’s expressing attraction to men,” they’re often based around the premise of hawkeye being a wife, being a woman, being pursued/“claimed,” and a shocking amount of references to pregnancy? see: “i know you’re a general and i’m just a captain but i wanna have your baby! i’ll kiss all your stars!”

i.e. the joke being made is about hawkeye liking men but it’s RARELY phrased as him being a homosexual man, it’s OFTEN phrased as him being a heterosexual woman

and sometimes it’s simply scenes calling him a girl or making references to him being soft/feminine/emasculated. often times he will make these jokes HIMSELF and call himself an aunt, a mother, a girl, demure or other adjectives that women were socialized to aspire to in the era. his friends will often refer to him like this without any hint of mocking, just lightheartedness (trapper referring to him as “miz hawkeye”)

i apologize that i don’t have the links right now but if you go into my archive and look in my “mash” tag there are video compliations of a lot of these moments, and the compliations don’t even include all of them

also imo these moments hawkeye has a) contrast with klinger’s relationship to his femininity/gender nonconformity, as he is all about playing with outward presentation, and b) compare with margaret’s relationship to HER gender. which, margaret’s gender by itself is an absolutely wildly progressive examination of womanhood where she is allowed to be “masculine” in many aspects of her life while still asserting herself that she is a WOMAN and always will be despite what she does, or how her life, career, or personality looks. that SHE is the arbiter and determinator of her gender and not how much she keeps into the femininity box. i wish i had concrete examples of why i think this, but it’s been a little bit since i watched the show and i think it’s mostly me reading too much into things

i think also hawkeye’s disassociation issues and complex ptsd is really like. advanced in contrast to other people in the 4077th. he’s the main character for a reason and that’s because he’s the one with the deepest emotional wounds and the drunkest, promiscuous, saddest, most insomniatic doctor in the place. there had been psychological issues in place before he had been sent to korea and none of them were very cut-and-dry as we find.

in conclusion i think the fictional man with noted androgynous presentation who flouts gender conventions as well as masculine army structures and patriarchal power structures and constantly refers to himself as a woman and uses a psuedonym instead of his birth name and has very pronounced psychological issues and self-harming tendencies could be trans in 1950-whatever without good words for it, or be unable to in any way shape or form live authentically, and i think being able to be a woman would have probably made hawkeye’s life just a little bit easier. maybe transitioning wouldn’t save her because estrogen won’t airlift you out of korea but like maybe hawkeye would be a little less buffeted by the outward winds of the world. if any part of the world wouldn’t have buffeted her harder for it, anyways.

i mean, one of mash’s biggest themes at the end of the day is that we’re trapped in the time loop, a small and restrictive and violent thing set up by forces outside of our control that will hurt us if we defy them or dare to do anything the loop doesn’t already contain. and it hurts everyone, all the time, and no one knows why we keep doing it, only that we have to. and hawkeye’s the central victim of this. the time loop is war, the time loop is gender, the time loop is the american empire, the time loop is religion, the time loop is being who you are, forever, as They have forced you to be

[i-just-give-you-the-vidya-songs]

The song is "The Trapper and The Trader" from the game 'Inscryption', a 2021 roguelike deck building game developed by Daniel Mullins Games and published by Devolver Digital. Originally released on Windows, later released on Linux / macOS / PS4 / PS5 / Switch in 2022 and Xbox Series X/S in 2023.

-Submission by @chzdavmpr

[lola-andheruniverse]

WIP Saturday - Caryl Fanfiction Rec

Dear fellow carylers, today's WIP is a fic that I'm slowly consuming because it's so damn poetically eerie I keep going back and forth, rereading and contemplating passages. A Resting Echo, written by @thegratefulsouth, is posted on 9Lives and AO3.

Summary: Years after leaving Ed, Carol buys a haunted house in Maryville, East Georgia. Daryl, who is making a living as a hunter and trapper, selling furs and other animal products, lives next door. AU Non ZA

Rated: E Word count: 54.456 (11 chapters of?) Published: May 28, 2024 - WIP Our author is doing such a good job with this story! It's very emotional and full of rich detail and imagery, so you as the reader can become truly absorbed by what our favorite characters are experiencing. The way Carol and Daryl connect is as endearing as interesting. I love how drawn they are to each other and how important Carol's haunted cabin is to their bond. Also, I'm only on chapter five and it's great that some secondary characters from TWD have already appeared to enrich the story (Alden! *o* Eugene!). But the most important participation of all is hers and hers alone: ​​Sophia. But not any Sophia, an adult Sophia! Imagining her all grown-up and having a full (albeit complex) relationship with her mother is incredibly touching. For this reason alone, this WIP is a must-read.

Please, go read it, dear fellow caryler. And, if you can, leave a review/kudos. I'm sure it'll be deeply appreciated.

[pomegranate]

Im not disagreeing re Trapper Complex and ppl in fandom centering it just a little too much, but there was a whole episode dedicated in part to bj feeling jealous of people (because hes a massively envious guy generally) and the jealousy he feels towards trapper in particular seems pretty consequential. And also the added meta context that bj is structurally there in the narrative to replace trapper in the first place....i understand that its rlly significant. It honestly felt kind of novel to me that a sitcom character felt the strain of his narrative position that way (as klinger also feels replacing radar in the plot structurally) i feel like a lot of sitcoms try to cover the artiface of these scenarios by staunchly avoiding this context, but mash rlly leans into the skid instead (not just how bj demonstrates a bit of diegetic strain from replacing trapper if that makes sense, but also with killing henry and replacing him with potter so that the characters of mash feel the same apprehension and resentment towards potter that the audience inevitably would by virtue of him replacing henry blake regardless of how henry's character left the narrative) I hope this isnt coming off "um, actually" or unfriendly or something btw! In case thats not apparent id like it stated clearly that this is benign. Im very curious of ur thoughts on this matter tho if ur willing to talk on it?

Hey, no worries, I appreciate the opportunity to clarify! I think my frustration with “the Trapper complex” is that it’s an oversimplification and misrepresentation of why BJ might be jealous of Trapper. I think there’s absolutely jealousy, because Trapper got to be close to Hawkeye and build the still with him AND he got to go home and be with his wife and daughters - he got the best of both worlds. BJ’s only at the 4077th because Trapper went home and he’s miserable because he’s missing out on his daughter’s formative years, and there’s nothing he can do about it. So yeah, he’s definitely jealous of him! But I don’t think it’s because Trapper’s dick was bigger or because BJ thinks that Hawkeye liked him more or whatever, which is how I’ve often see it referenced.

This ties into the thing that irritates me most about the Trapper complex, which is that it’s sometimes used as an excuse to sort of �� slam on BJ’s character in a way that I think is straight up dull. Essentially, I hate that fandom constantly pits them against each other. I find it exhausting because there’s no “winner” in those debates! Trapper and BJ serve the show well in their own ways during the time that they’re there. Trapper is a great partner for Hawkeye in the early, more satirical seasons and BJ is a great partner for Hawkeye in the later, more dramatic seasons. It’s not any deeper than that. You may like one more than the other, and that’s okay! But I personally think it’s pointless to compare them and suggest that one of them was better than the other, and too frequently the Trapper complex seems to come up in that context, as though it proves some kind of point about which character is better.

Just wanted to add that the thing that was annoying me & sparked that post in the first place was that multiple people were ignoring the part of the Mike Farrell interview clip where he fully admitted that he was wrong in thinking that the role he would eventually fill wouldn’t be difficult! He owns up to his own hubris and I think that was very sexy of him.

SORRY for the wall of text but I hope this makes my perspective clearer!

OH AND TO ANSWER YOUR QUESTION -

I totally agree that it’s neat that MASH fully acknowledges the characters that came before! It’s great that BJ does show conflicted feelings about who came before him. I just think calling it the Trapper complex does a disservice to what is ultimately a really well-built characterization of a young father who’s been pulled away from his family, is all.

[thebreakfastgenie]

Hawkeye for the character ask game please ❤️

How I feel about this character

"Character of all time" is perhaps played out, but... I love this character. He's complex and interesting and shaped like that. He's one of my favorite characters ever. He's from Maine! He has one of the best character names of all time.

All the people I ship romantically with this character

Margaret

Frank

Trapper

Charles

Bigelow

Carlye (not endgame)

Inga

I'm also a big fan of Hawkeye/OC, especially Female OC but Male OC too

My non-romantic OTP for this character

Hawkeye and Trapper probably takes the cake, but I also love his dynamics with Radar, Klinger, and Sidney.

My unpopular opinion about this character

This is tricky because there's a lot of fanon that I agree with the broad strokes of but disagree with the details, or feel it's taken too far. I'm a fan of exploring his trauma; I think he has PTSD and he's still going to have an adjustment, but I don't think he's a broken bird.

I don't think he's overly political. I don't think he's read theory, I don't think he throws around words like imperialism. He certainly has political opinions but I don't think they're ovelry sophisticated. I think he's much more of a mainstream liberal than a leftist and he's definitely not a communist (though people like Flagg would call him one). I think his strong anti-war feelings come from a more basic moral place of hating death and violence and his anti-bigotry views come from a similar place. I think that's an important part of his character, because the show is trying to say that the horror of war should transcend politics, that everyone should be as horrified by it as Hawkeye is.

I don't think he's especially feminine, I think he has a lot of masculine traits and he's a man who's very comfortable in his masculinity which makes him willing to explore more feminine traits too, because he's not afraid of being "less" of a man. I think most of his gender-nonconformity is about about rebelling against authority much more than gender expression. Even his more feminine traits feel like more of a statement of what a man is allowed to be.

I don't think he's a bottom and I hate the bratty bottom characterization (he's vers; I can buy bottom-leaning but he definitely enjoys topping).

The last thing he would ever do is sit around pining for someone who wasn't available. I don't think fandom consciously characterizes him as a pining love martyr, but a lot of ship fic/fanon relies on that characterization, so it's very popular.

I don't think he was wrong in Fallen Idol, Commander Pierce, or Bottle Fatigue, but I don't think he's a saint who's never wrong.

I think a lot of his friends treat him badly in the later seasons, especially 8-11, and he doesn't deserve it.

I'm not sure what the popular view on this is these days but I feel very strongly that Hawkeye was raised culturally New England protestant but agnostic.

I think he wants to get married and have kids someday, just not yet, and he probably does eventually.

Of course, my least popular opinion is that he has no romantic feelings for BJ whatsoever.

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon.

I wish he'd gotten a medal! You could get a great storyline out of his attempts to avoid it. Unlike BJ's bronze star storyline, it wouldn't be out of guilt, it would be purely because he doesn't want to be honored by the military.

[chaigirly]

Egon Spengler

Oh my good looking boy ⬅️ Link

Preview ⤵️

Saying you loved Egon was an understatement.

You adored this man with your whole heart, even if you didn’t understand most of the things he’d talk about it.

“So how do the ghost trappers work exactly?” You ask, walking with Egon downstairs to load todays catch into the containment unit.

You knew that would spark one of his rants, going on about things you couldn’t even repeat due to the complexity of his vocabulary.

You didn’t care though, it was intentional.

Just because you didn’t get it didn’t mean you couldn’t listen and try to understand.

Plus you loved his voice and the little glimmer in his eyes whenever he talked about something he was passionate about.

“When they’re activated by spiritual energy, they generate a localized electromagnetic field that attracts and captures spectral entities.

The trap opens to create a containment vortex, which, assisted by our proton streams, draws the ghost inside.

Once captured, the trap seals automatically, securing the ghost within a stable containment grid to prevent its escape,” he says as if it was common knowledge and you hadn’t zoned out while staring at him.

Oh he was so cute when he talked about anything to do with spiritual activity.

This hadn’t been the first time you had asked him about it and it certainly wouldn’t be the last time either.

How could you not?

He loved talking to you about it even if he knew you didn’t completely understand.

And you loved listening to him.

Well, staring at him and daydreaming would be more accurate.

———————————

[majorbaby]

What are your favourite things about Margaret Houlihan?

I like that she's a complex character with a very diverse arc. She's good and kind yes, she's also insufferable and cruel at times.

I personally liked her best as an antagonist, but I like when she's a hero to, and in that role, Loretta/Margaret could be villain and hero at the same time just by virtue of taking up so much space, despite the fact that Gelbart and Reynolds gave much of her MASH (1970) role to Frank Burns. Everyone knows it's Margaret calling the shots, and so the production reflects the plot and I love that shit - can we not almost immediately tell that Frank Burns will run his course, but Margaret Houlihan will go on to grow and continue to be a force in a new way?

so even though i love her as a villain, in this case, I place more value on what she and Loretta brought to primetime american television audiences than what I as an individual want. More on that some other time.

I like that she's self-aware, and the show is aware of that too. It makes the transition from early to late-seasons Margaret feel natural, rather than shoe-horned in. She knows she's changed. She reflects on her past relationships (Stars and Stripes) and her past selves (Comrades in Arms pt. 2).

I like that it makes so much fucking sense for her to have such dramatic character development because she's done it before: Lorraine Anderson remarks how much Margaret has changed when they're reunited. Are you Now, Margaret tells us that Margaret was apparently hanging out with young "undesirables" and perhaps even was one herself at some point, rubbing shoulders with communists and having car sex with her college boyfriend. And I like that she then grows up to be Frank Burns' sidechick, homewrecker, repressed hot mess... the poorest of poor little meow meows. A blorbo if I ever had one.

I like that she's kinky.

I like that she's a foil to Hawkeye but she's also his equal in loving without fear or reservation. I love that every time she does that, it blows up in her face, but it's still clear to us that she'll do it as many times as it takes to find the real thing. I like that just like Hawkeye, by the end of the show I'm confident that she's going to be just fine.

I like that whenever Margaret is on screen, it's clear to me that she wants something and she's going to do whatever she can in her power to get that thing. I especially like when that "thing" that she wants is something more for herself. That "wanting something and going for it" is what makes her main character material. I like that she's a main character and you kind of get that sense no matter how often she's relegated to supporting cast. She and Klinger are alike in that way.

I like that she fucks Hawkeye when she's still married to Donald. I like that she doesn't fuck Trapper even though she's attracted to him, because she loves Frank. I like that she fucks Frank outdoors, in supply, behind supply and in the x-ray room. I like that she fucks.

I like that she leaves. She leaves Frank, Donald and Scully. I like that it's easy to extrapolate her leaving a man who can't offer what she deserves in exchange for her loyalty, love and dedication, to her one day leaving the military.

I'd like to say I'd watch a whole show about Margaret, but because of her enormous, demanding presence on MASH, it feels as though I've already done that.

[bisexualdawnsummers]

DOWN SOUTH. And MASH if you're up for it. I want to know every opinion you've ever had.

Thanks for the ask! <3

I assumed that you meant due South, which I answered in another ask here :)

As for MASH:

my favorite female character: Margaret Houlihan. She’s such a complex, flawed, mess. She can be downright unlikeable sometimes, and I couldn’t love her more for that.

my favorite male character: Hawkeye (I love him almost as much as he hates war)

my favorite book/season/etc: season 3

my favorite episode (if it’s a tv show): Dr. Pierce and Mr. Hyde 

my favorite cast member: Alan Alda

my favorite ship: Hawkeye/Trapper. I love how much they delight in each other and always ‘yes and’ each other in any situation. They just have such a natural rapport with each other. You can really feel how they met and instantly clicked in a rare and beautiful way. I love how they were there for each under unimaginably awful circumstances and ‘made it bearable’.

a character I’d die defending: Trapper (I don’t have time for any ‘he didn’t even leave a note’ bs!)

a character I just can’t sympathize with: Colonel Flagg, I guess for a recurring character. But there are a lot of one-off characters that come in that are just plain awful.

a character I grew to love: Charles Emerson Winchester III 

my anti otp: I don’t hate them or anything, but I’d have to say Hawkeye/BJ (sorry, they just do nothing for me)

[boscoebros]

The Charm of Northern Exposure, Summed Up in 10 Episodes

Plucking out individual best episodes of Northern Exposure is like ranking individual cups pulled from the same expertly spiked punch. It’s not impossible to do, it just feels not in the spirit of the gift you’ve been given or the eccentrically twinkling host who’s presented it to you.

Of course, Northern Exposure, the tale of petulant young New York Jewish doctor Joel Fleischman (Rob Morrow) sent against his will to the beyond-tiny town of Cicely, Alaska as payment for his med school debts, has its odd sour draught or two during its six-seasons.

Quirk can turn twee with just a single wrong step. From the start, the series, created by St. Elsewhere vets Joshua Brand and John Falsey (with executive production help by future Sopranos don David Chase) presented unsuspecting CBS viewers with a much headier and more ambitious formula than its fish-out-of-water premise suggested. That degree of difficulty, which only increased in each of the series’s six seasons, meant taking big creative swings.

The town of Cicely was quickly established as a haven for eccentrics of all stripes, from frostbitten locals with colorful backwoods backstories to transplants in various stages of flight; from old lives too fraught or too comfortably suburban for their liking, to the region’s Native population, whose culture and individuality were allowed far more complexity than on any American TV show at the time.

Installed in a crumbling storefront office with a largely monosyllabic Native receptionist named Marilyn Whirlwind (stealth series MVP Elaine Miles), the constantly kvetching Joel immediately began sparring with Maggie O’Connell (Janine Turner), the equally combative bush pilot (and Joel’s unimpressed landlord) in the sort of will-they/won’t-they relationship that, like Joel’s predicament, gradually receded in favor of fleshing out the series’s roster of singular figures.

Roaring over the town was Barry Corbin’s barrel-chested Maurice Minnifield, a former Oklahoma astronaut, millionaire, and bona fide American man’s man drawn to the untamed tundra as blank slate for his singular vision of an “Alaskan Riviera” hewn in his own stubborn image. Greeting the irascible Joel were everyone from a legendary sexagenarian animal trapper turned (mostly) pacifist barkeep, Holling Vincoeur (John Cullum) and his spacey but worldly 18-year-old former beauty pageant girlfriend Shelley (Cynthia Geary); aged and resolutely sensible town shopkeep, postmistress, and all-purpose town official Ruth-Anne (Peg Phillips); philosophizing ex-con turned all-day radio DJ Chris (John Corbett); and perpetually amiable half-Indian teen and aspiring filmmaker Ed Chigliak (Darren E. Burrows).

As the series progressed, Joel’s predicament persisted (he’d essentially been dragooned into Cicely by Maurice over his expected post in an Anchorage hospital) but sank back into ensemble status, with each character in turn bobbing up to take the show’s delightfully unpredictable center stage. (Whether due to his diminished role or contract disputes, Morrow chafed in his first series lead, eventually leaving partway through the sixth and final season.)

New oddballs emerged to fill out Cicely’s ranks: Adam Arkin’s mysteriously obnoxious master chef/mountain man Adam and his heiress hypochondriac wife Eve (Valerie Mahaffey), Anthony Edward’s bubble-bound lawyer Mike Monroe, fled to Alaska ahead of encroaching environmental allergies, Graham Greene’s Native medicine man and artist Leonard, Richard Cummings’ Bernard, revealed as Chris’ long lost Black half brother, and sharing the pair’s preternatural psychic bond.

Throughout it all, Falsey and Brand steered Northern Exposure according to their own set of wide-open, anything goes constellations. Dream sequences, strange local traditions and superstitions (Maggie’s old lovers have all died in unusual circumstances), singular personal obsessions and quests — anything could happen in Cicely. And, with astounding reliability, the results were as warm, weird, and welcoming as the people of Cicely themselves.

With the series at long last available to stream (all six seasons are on Prime Video), we’ve put together a list of 10 favorite episodes drawn from Northern Exposure’s heady brew of comedy, drama, and enduring whimsy, in broadcast order. Drink up.

"Aurora Borealis: A Fairy Tale for Big People" (Season 1, Episode 8)

By the time this first season finale aired, it was already crystal clear that Cicely didn’t need any outside help in the strangeness department. That doesn’t stop a massive full moon and the appearance of the shimmering-with-portent northern lights from putting a double-whammy on the town’s inhabitants. Some can’t sleep, others are drawn on mysterious walkabouts, and a confused, citified accountant from Portland shows up on a brand new Harley and immediately latches onto Chris’ barroom talk of the collective unconscious, with the mismatched pair gradually realizing that they share the same absent father.Northern Exposure tosses a lot into each episode’s hearty stew, and this was one of the first episodes to find the perfect balance of soulfulness, incident, and knockabout comedy.

"The Big Kiss" (Season 2, Episode 2)

Darren E. Burrows (son of perennial B-movie bad guy Billy Drago) is Cicely’s most endearing figure as Ed Chigliak, a patiently unassuming and guileless presence whose clouded backstory as a half-Native, half-white foundling the would-be Scorsese accepts from his tribal elders with typical resignation. At least until a 256-year-old Native spirit guide named One Who Waits (legendary character actor Floyd Red Crow Westerman) appears to no one but him and tells Ed he might just have a bead on the identities of Ed’s parents.

It’s to Northern Exposure’s credit that we can accept the reality of the delightfully deadpan One Who Waits, or not. But Ed’s ultimately fruitless journey is as resonant either way, his rapport with the old ghost registering in Burrows’ performance with aching sincerity and sweetness. One Who Waits would return in Season 4, and Westerman is always a gift, but that episode’s more concrete conclusion to Ed’s story pales next to the lovely ambiguity of his roadside encounter with a friendly older Native man in “The Big Kiss.”

"War and Peace" (Season 2, Episode 6)

While Northern Exposure would stretch its woozy reality in all manner of ways throughout its run, it never did so as straightforwardly or delightfully than in this tale of a famed Russian singer Nikolai Ivanovich Appollanov (Elya Baskin) whose intermittent appearances in Cicely are greeted with delight by everyone — except the Cold War patriotic Maurice. Challenged to renew their one-sided chess rivalry, perennial loser Maurice accuses the gentlemanly Russian of cheating, leading to a duel where the series’s typical spell of whimsical benevolence seems headed for inevitable, bloody disaster. Meanwhile, Ed’s first love with a randy preacher’s daughter sees the heartstruck teen turning to ladies man Chris for some Cyrano-style flowery prose, with similarly doomed results.

That both stories turn out unexpectedly more or less okay is a relief, although Ed’s heartbroken confrontation with the contrite and more worldly Chris is about as emotionally rough as Ed gets. The series decided not to spoil things, a decision that was as cheeky as it was refreshingly necessary to a viewing public mired in coverage of another needless overseas war.

"A-Hunting We Will Go" (Season 3, Episode 8)

Northern Exposure’s ostensible lead was one the series’ least successful elements, oddly. Joel’s incessant complaining about his plight might have been understandable, but Morrow struggled with the show’s often inconsistent treatment of the New Yorker’s wavering integration into Cicely’s mix. (The number of times Joel’s episode-ending epiphanies plop him right back into crabapple first position for the next are too numerous to list.) Still, when the show gets the ultra-rational Joel right, it really gets him right, as in this outing where the city boy feels duty-bound to test out his visceral revulsion against the locals’ offhand love of hunting.

Joel goes on the offensive about the “barbaric” bloodsport, only to accept Maggie’s challenge that, without experiencing the phenomenon himself, he’s just blowing hot air. Joining veteran hunters Holling and Chris on a grouse hunt brings Joel unexpected (and long-winded) elation—and then a huge comedown when he comes across the wounded bird he’d only managed to wing. Themes permeate the best Northern Exposure episodes in the slyest of ways. As Joel desperately tries to heal his victim, Ed becomes similarly protective of Ruth-Anne upon learning of her recent 75th birthday. IN the end, both men resign themselves to death’s looming and necessary presence in their own way, with Joel confiding to Maggie how death and killing are two very different things and Ed’s surprise gift to Ruth-Anne seeing the two literally dancing on her grave.

"Burning Down the House" (Season 3, Episode 14)

Opposing forces meet more often than Cicely’s benign exterior suggests, with this third-season installment proving that a community packed with dreamers will occasionally spit out some darker fancies.

When Chris builds a catapult in order to “fling” a live cow in order to create what he terms a “perfect moment,” only Joel objects, the rest of Cicely regarding the stunt with idle curiosity. (After all, as Marilyn states, they’re going to eat the cow.) Throughout the series, this undercurrent of eccentricity edging into rustic anarchy runs through Cicely—it’s like they’re one rough winter away from stuffing Joel into a wicker man. Here, the unfortunate cow is only saved via an artistic quandary, not a moral one, as Ed accidentally reveals how the whole cow-flinging concept has been done in one particular movie. Chris adjusts to a less-lethal concept, with the resulting fling filling the assembled townsfolk (and viewers) with suitably collective awe.

“Three Amigos” (Season 3, Episode 16)

The bond between former astronaut and American hero Maurice Minnifield and legendary game hunter Holling Vincoeur gets the rough and tumble outdoor adventure tale it deserves in this episode where the two old friends and romantic rivals strike out into the wilderness to fulfill the last wish of an old friend. Pros Barry Corbin and John Cullum had career-best roles on Northern Exposure, and they’re never better than here, as the two aging tough guys brave impossible weather and their own aging bodies to bury wild Bill Haney, their longtime drinking, hunting, and brawling buddy at the legendarily treacherous No-Name Point.

Portrayed often as two distinct but similar examples of a dying breed of masculinity, both men ultimately have to concede that dying for your word might not be all it's cracked up to be, especially for two old men with warm beds and, in Holling’s case, Shelly to return to. Willie Nelson on the soundtrack singing “Hands on the Wheel” over scenes the boys’ game attempts to honor an old promise signals an elegiac farewell to an old way of life.

"Cicely" (Season 3, Episode 23)

With its season order expanded after two short first go-rounds, Season 3 gave Northern Exposure even more territory to explore stylistically. A flashback episode might not sound groundbreaking, but this tale of the founding of Cicely reframes everything we thought we knew about Alaska’s most eccentric town, all while lending unexpected insight into its denizens, all of whom pop up in different roles in the reminiscences of a 108-year-old man (veteran actor Roberts Blossom) who Joel accidentally hits with his pickup.

Brought to Joel’s cabin for treatment, the old man spins a yarn about the town’s eventual founders, a pair of lesbian free-thinkers named Jo and Cicely (Jo Anderson and Yvonne Suhor) who fled polite Montana society to create a matriarchal utopia right in the dangerously lawless heart of untamed Alaska. The story of the rough-and-tumble Jo and the delicate Cicely plays out with the tragic heroism of two such forward-thinking (gay, female) dreamers. The town is turned around and only a stray bullet (and some “kill your gays” TV tradition) prevents a completely happy ending. Still, as Joel drops the old man at the graveyard where he’s come to honor Cicely’s 100th birthday, Cicely, Alaska comes that much further into focus.

"Thanksgiving" (Season 4, Episode 8)

The Native population of Northern Exposure is an integral part of the show’s melting pot of oddballs, but this eventful episode adds a needed dose of spice surrounding the outwardly ordinary Indian citizens’ existence in a colonized America. Walking to work, Joel is ambushed with a tomato hurled by the friendly Ed, introducing the yearly tradition by which Cicely’s native population takes out centuries of otherwise sublimated anger and resentment in a symbolically messy assault on the town’s white people.

While the rest of Cicely’s white folks uncomplainingly accept this once a year pelting, Joel complains to Marilyn that his status as a perpetually oppressed Jew should exempt him from the Native’s wrath. It’s when he sinks into an even more miserable than usual depression upon being informed that his intended four-year sentence as Cicely’s general practitioner has been (thanks to inflation) upped another year that Marilyn finally recognizes Joel’s kinship with the town’s Natives.

Listening to the bereft and unshaven doctor’s fetal position lament about his complete and utter lack of hope, Marilyn tells Joel he can now march in the Native’s day of the dead parade. “You’re not white anymore,” coming from the no-bullshit Marilyn, lands with unexpected force on Joel, and us. The people of Cicely, in their insularity, are free to process generations of racial and personal trauma in their own unique manner, and as the whole town, Indian and white, gathers at The Brick for a sumptuous post-parade Thanksgiving feast, Joel is free to complain to the face-painted Ed about his own misfortune in strangely liberating kinship.

"Mister Sandman" (Season 5, Episode 12)

The northern lights are back and everyone’s having each other’s dreams. What sounds like a high-concept lark turns typically thought-provoking and stubbornly resonant, as Maggie jumps into Holling’s revelatory dreams about his horrible, abusive father, Joel sleepwalks into Ruth-Anne’s store with a little boy’s thwarted dreams about bottomless candy, and Maurice becomes incensed when one of a pair of gay B&B proprietors (Doug Ballard’s Ron) discovers Maurice’s secret dreams involving women’s shoes.

There’s plenty to unpack, as with most dreams, and there are laughs aplenty around the margins. But it’s in the townsfolk’s variously grudging willingness to accept that their unpredictable home has yet another metaphysical trick up its sleeve that “Mister Sandman” achieves surprising depth. Holling has long decried his French-Canadian lineage’s legacy of awful behavior, here evincing a revulsion to food tied both to Shelly’s pregnancy and his repressed memories of his mother and father. And Maurice, whose bluff, all-purpose bigotry is never quite offset by his old school macho act, gets into a truly ugly poker table confrontation with Ron and his partner Erick (Don R. McManus) stemming from what he considers these “deviants’” insight into his private thoughts.It’s up to the sage Ruth-Anne to have some frank talk with Maurice about his bigotry, and Joel to overcome his usual skepticism when he sees that Maggie’s recounting of her dream actually assists in treating the despondent Holling.

"The Quest" (Season 6, Episode 15)

Rob Morrow’s desire to leave Northern Exposure (he’d already filmed Robert Redford’s Quiz Show during Season 5) is given a typically strange payoff in his final season fantasy/dream/who-knows final outing. After Joel and Maggie’s on-and-off romance sputtered one too many times, the perpetually disgruntled Joel had left Cicely some episodes earlier, going AWOL on his debts and setting himself up as the GP of an even more upriver Native village. Unexpectedly arriving in the middle of the night at Maggie’s house, the shaggy and wild-eyed doctor unfurls an ancient trapper’s map, claiming to have uncovered the location of the mythical lost city of Kiwa’ani and asking for Maggie to fly him the first leg of his trip to find this magical “jeweled city.”

As far as goodbyes to disgruntled stars go, “The Quest” is a confoundingly thorny metaphysical flight of fancy. With the skeptical Maggie in tow, the obsessed Joel first encounters one of those elderly Japanese soldiers still fighting WWII (and is repaid for his ensuing medical treatment with a bounty of sushi), almost gets sidetracked in an impossible, dreamlike spa in the middle of the Alaskan nowhere, and finally coming across an incongruously locked chain-link bridge fence and the abusive gatekeeper (who looks suspiciously identical to Adam) demanding the answer to an impossible riddle. Joel answers and spies the glittering skyline of his beloved Manhattan in the mists—and he walks into it, and out of Northern Exposure forever.

Is the episode something of a make-the-best-of-it exercise? Maybe. But it’s a great one, perfectly in keeping with the series’ spirit. As Marilyn sense Joel’s departure with a signature, unreadable “Good bye” back in Cicely and Maggie receives a days-later postcard of the Staten Island ferry from Joel reading “New York is a state of mind,” “The Quest” stretches Northern Exposure’s woozy reality to its breaking point while still slotting comfortably—and touchingly — into the show’s world in as satisfying a way as could be hoped.

~ Dennis Perkins || Primetimer