Northern Exposure - Season 1

A doctor from New York City adjusts to life in a rural town in Alaska. (imdb)

Dr. Joel Fleischman slowly starts accepting his desperately desolate fate, despite a defective shower leaving him to choose between swallowing his pride in order to get Maggie's plumbing help or bathing in the utterly icy lake. Popular DJ Chris Stevens' 'irreverent' comments on even Walt Whitman get him sacked from Maurice's radio K-Bear, but the boss soon offends everyone else in Cecily. (imdb)

Dr. Joel Fleischman is depressed when grumpy old patient Soapy Sanderson completely ignores his medical advice, and is stunned when he and Maggie are named joint executors of his 140 acres forest estate where only wolves live. (imdb)

Shelly becomes pregnant and a wedding is arranged, but Holling has a deep-rooted fear - both his father and grandfather lived over a century, while their wives died young, leaving them alone and grieving for over sixty years each. Holling vowed to avoid their fate. Meanwhile, Maurice and Fleischman entertain a Japanese investor interested in building a resort in Cicely.

Fleischman has his hands full when his fiancé Elaine flies to Cicely for a visit. He becomes so busy trying to defend himself against the townspeople's charges that he is a KGB agent releasing the Russian flu upon them and competing with Marilyn over the best treatment for the illness, that he has no time to spend with his betrothed. Instead Maggie, entertains Elaine, which only further annoys Joel.

There's much to deal with in Cicely when Shelly's husband arrives with the hopes of taking her back to Saskatchewan, much to the astonishment of Holling. Furthermore, Maggie's boyfriend fears he will soon die as the next victim of the O'Connell curse and Ed searches for inspiration while working on his movie script.

Hearing his brother and only surviving fellow Minnifeld died, Maurice looks for a 'son' to adopt. After Joel declines, he gets Chris to try, but although generosity gets them through the hard stuff, a game of croquet proves you can't adopt 'breeding'. When Ed tells Holling Jesse that the fiercest grizzly, who caused him to stop hunting anything else, is back, Shelly insists on joining them on a hunt which shows that although the men are older, the bear still knows them.

Joel claims to have been rescued by a legendary Bigfoot-like creature, and Chris becomes friends with an artist who turns out to be his brother.