One of my favorite TV shows of all time is Northern Exposure. For those of you who haven't heard of it, it takes place in a small Alaskan town, Cicely, where a Jewish doctor from Queens is forced to work because he didn't read the fine print on his med school scholarship. It's quite a culture clash, and Joel spends a lot of time counting down the days until he can go home. The residents of Cicely include a millionaire former astronaut, a philosophic ex-con DJ (who I'm totally in love with), and a young Indian who's an inspiring filmmaker/shaman. The real and the fantastic exist very close together in Cicely--Ed, the filmmaker, sees ghosts, which he takes perfectly in stride. Shelley, experiencing her first pregnanacy, finds herself only able to communicate in song.

I cannot possibly express how fabulous this series is, and since the entire thing is out on DVD, you can (and should) go watch it for yourselves. Though I loved the show the first time I saw it, I was too young to really appreciate a lot of it, and am having a fantastic time wathcing it the second time around. The relationship betwee Joel and Maggie, a bush pilot who's lovers have an alarming tendency to drop dead, is the driving force behind the whole sereies. This is not to say that it is the focus of the show, or that the rest of the ensemble cast can't hold their weight, because all the characters and relationships are fabulous. Joel and Maggie are somehow different, and I ship them like crazy, even though I know how it ends (I guess I shouldn't spoil you all).

I managed to get my dear orangeaddict hooked, and we've spent an alarming amount of our college career parking in front of one or the other of our identical laptops squeeing over various episodes. Anyway, there's no real point to this entry, and I should be working, but I was in an unhappy mood, so felt the need to write about something that makes me happy.