4:23:22

Rewatching all of Northern Exposure, my favorite show as a teenager. I bought the box set of the entire series. I've been wanting to do this for years. I think I love it even more now, knowing everything I know today. And I still love Joel. That hasn't changed.

These screenshots are from S2, E1, April 1991. They are about heartbreak.

The show looks like a painting. It is shot and acted so beautifully. And it's full of surprises, pathos, humor, camaraderie, care. In 2017, Rob Morrow, who plays Joel, described why the show was so special: "It was cinematic, it was literary, and it was spiritual...It was highbrow, it was lowbrow."

It's hard to believe this was ever on network TV. I didn't discover it until it was off the air. That's always the way with me.

Northern Exposure is so much better than Twin Peaks or Sopranos because it's about being good. Everyone does the right thing, and not because it's easy. But because they strive to, because they respect their community and way of life. Their traditions.

A mix of modernity and folklore. Wisdom and irreverence. City and country.

At the heart of it are Joel and Maggie's frictions, a great 1930s screwball comedy trope, still alive and well in the 1990s. When that kind of eroticism and banter still existed between men and women.

Am I also one of those people who walked out onto the ice and never came back? I feel like I am. My heart has never been the same.