September 28, 2025

Me: I'm rewatching Northern Exposure.

Dad: Did you lose a bet?

I am very pleased to welcome you back for a DFGRR analysis of Northern Exposure and the dead boyfriends of Maggie O'Connell. I was less pleased to be rewatching Northern Exposure, which ran 1990-1995 and was the first DVD box set I ever bought for my father.

The DVD cases came in a little parka. 

But aren't you excited that it's finally available on streaming (1)?

Sure. That won't stop me from complaining about a) the abrupt drop in quality after the creative team shakeup in season 5, nor b) its overuse of my least favorite trope, the will-they-or-won't-they romance. I'm getting ahead of myself, though. Let's start with...

The Show

Northern Exposure is a 110-episode series about the tiny, quirky town of Cicely, Alaska, which was founded by a lesbian couple in the 1890s and is populated entirely by odd ducks. These include an ex-astronaut; an 18-year-old beauty queen who originally came there to marry the astronaut but left him for his best friend, a 63-year-old bar owner to whom she's happily married; a parole jumper from West Virginia who now runs the town's radio station and is earning a PhD by mail; and a half-Indian young man who makes films when he's not busy being a shaman and/or working every odd job in town. In the pilot, Dr. Joel Fleischman (Rob Morrow), a graduate of Columbia University in New York City, is forced to move to town because the state of Alaska gave him a scholarship for medical school in exchange for his serving an underserved community. This fish-out-of-water experience kicks off the whole shebang. See, while most of the town's residents moved there from somewhere else, Joel is the first to be forced there rather than attracted by the chance to start over. He hates the place, but comes to love the people over 5 seasons.

This show can best be summarized with "It's weird, but it works."

- My husband's analysis

Sounds like there are women on-screen, at least.

Oh yes, lots of ladies, of all ages. In fact, there was more than one episode dedicated to the battle of the sexes, and the women often came out on top. This show also played with gender identities & gender roles by having some of the manlier men being huge showtunes fans, and featuring a gay ex-Marine as a recurring character. In fact, it has the distinction of being the first CBS show - and only the second American TV show ever - to portray a same-sex wedding, in Season 5's "I Feel the Earth Move." (The marriage wouldn't have been legally recognized in Alaska at the time, but the Cecilians are shown treating it like any other wedding, which was pretty groundbreaking for 1994.)

I digress, though. Let's talk about...

The Character

Our contestant for this franchise is Maggie O'Connell (Janine Turner, center front in above picture). She's an upper-crust beauty queen from Grosse Pointe, Michigan who moved to Cecily when her boyfriend was working on a book about mountain-climbing. Said boyfriend had a fatal misadventure shortly afterwards:

Maggie: We were on a glacier. I take a hike. He decides to take a nap... and froze.

- "Pilot," aired 1990-07-12

Yet she stayed in Alaska, having found a refuge from her family's shenanigans, and racked up several more dead boyfriends. When the audience meets her, she's a bush pilot with multiple investment properties (including the cabin that the state rents for Joel) and traditionally masculine hobbies like subsistence hunting. She also has an attitude that would be extremely abrasive in real life. An episode in which she tries to give up yelling at people results in her developing health problems from repressed stress. In other words, we're led to believe that Maggie is her best self when she does things like (*checks notes*) throw cheesecakes at people's heads, tear up contracts in the name of women's empowerment, insult other women who are not feminist enough for her taste, and let loose with zingers like the following.

Maggie: Why were you born, Fleischman? A mosquito has more utilitarian value!

- S02E03 "All Is Vanity," aired 1991-04-22

She sounds...fun?

Don't worry, this is mostly played for laughs. Despite her rough edges, Maggie is well-liked in town. There's one snag in that all her neighbors are convinced that she's cursed, given all the dead boyfriends.

Oh, they've noticed those, have they?

Indeed they have. This makes her a unique contestant for us: her Cartwright Curse is acknowledged in-universe from day one. However, at first, she's not convinced by the supernatural interpretation.

Maggie: [Men] do stupid things and die and then I'm supposed to feel responsible?

- S01E06 "Sex, Lies, and Ed's Tapes," aired 1990-08-16

Although in vulnerable moments, she does wonder:

Maggie: Do I kill guys, or is it sheer coincidence that every guy I go out with ends up dead?

Holling (John Cullum): Maybe you're just putting something out into the universe.

- S01E03 "Soapy Sanderson," aired 1990-07-26

It gets to a point where local women who want their husbands gone will encourage those husbands to have an affair with Maggie (who is, to her credit, horrified by the idea.) One man hits on her because he's suicidal and figures it's a good way to go out happy.

This brings us to...

The Men

Joel Fleischman: Let me tell you something, O'Connell. Glasses are not your problem. You're a knockout. I don't mean just pretty. No, beautiful. The lips, the mouth, the eyes, the quality of the skin, the smile, the whole megillah. You have a face that could launch a thousand ships.

Maggie: Really?

Joel: Absolutely. Your problems are not physical, they're emotional, psychological. If men aren't attracted to you, it's totally because of your abrasive personality, your defensiveness, and the fact that you don't like us.

Maggie: Thank you. Thank you, Fleischman.

- S03E02 "Only You," aired 1991-09-30

Her curse notwithstanding, Maggie has no trouble attracting the opposite sex. However, the audience doesn't see her boyfriends very often. Five of them appear only as ghosts when she does a vision quest on her 30th birthday.

All my boyfriends die. every one has been a horrible coincidence.

- Maggie explains the vision quest to someone else who was hoping to camp there that night, S04E01 "Northwest Passages," aired 1992-09-28

Of the ones we get to meet during life, the most memorable are:

• Rick Pederson, her live-in partner for seasons 1 and 2. It is revealed after his death that he had live-in girlfriends in every town on his bush pilot route, the sleaze.
• Mike Monroe (Anthony Edwards), a man with Multiple Chemical Sensitivity who moves to a bubble in Cicely in hopes of avoiding chemical pollution.

[I'm] toxic sludge, the greenhouse effect, and global warming rolled into one... I kill men.

- Maggie to Mike, S04E13 "Duets," aired 1993-01-18

• "Arthur," a bear spirit in human form. Yes, Maggie dates a man who is also a bear.
• Chris Stevens (John Corbett), the town's DJ, philosopher, and minister, whom she must kiss to break a curse in season 2 and then (30-year-old spoiler alert) ends up with in the finale.
• And last but not least, Dr. Joel Fleischman, with whom she spends 5 seasons as frenemies, only to turn around and accept his marriage proposal...then kick him out an episode later...and eventually dump him for good during a mystical quest.

As I believe I mentioned earlier, I dislike the will-they-won't-they romance between Maggie and Joel.

Because you hate will-they-won't-they, right?

Not only that, but also, Maggie and Joel are downright hostile to one another. The screenwriters were trying to play with a trope that's sometimes called "enemies to lovers" or "belligerent sexual tension". However, as I noted in our MacGyver write-up, that doesn't quite work if two people just hate each other. And Maggie and Joel, despite the tension between them, pretty much despise each other.

Joel: [Our] relationship can best be described as an allergic reaction.

- S03E10 "Seoul Mates," aired 1991-12-16

In fact, the episode in which they first have sex begins with them arguing over a game of Risk, and her punching him in the face. Over a board game!

Maggie: When my fist hit your face, I knew who I was.

- S04E16 "Ill Wind," aired 1993-02-15

This leads to him suing her for assault, and her suing to evict him from the cabin (recall that she's his landlady). When they meet up in a barn to discuss settling both lawsuits, they find themselves hitting each other some more, then ripping each other's clothes off for a literal roll in the hay.

(Clip presented as a GIF because YouTube doesn't understand the concept of fair use, and won't let me upload a video.)

Maggie is so embarrassed by this afterwards that she mentally blocks out the memory and contemplates suicide. This is the conversation she has about it with Shelley, the 22-year-old waitress at the town bar.

Shelley: Anything else?

Maggie: How about a big gun with a bullet in it?

Shelley: Well, Holling keeps all his big guns locked up. Would a .22 be all right?

Maggie: How could I, Shelley?

Shelley: How could you what?

Maggie: Have sex with Fleischman.

Shelley: If it makes you feel any better...I thought you two got down a long time ago.

Maggie: Fleischman represents everything I despise in a man. I mean, he's actually the antithesis to everything I hold sacred. He's rude, and arrogant, and sexist, and narrow-minded, and anal-retentive.

Shelley: Kind of cute, though. You gotta admit.

Joel, meanwhile, is so exasperated by Maggie's attempts to forget the whole thing that he declares the following to his friend Ed:

Women are the enemy, never forget it. Biologically, emotionally, their main function in life is to make us crazy. But we have a function, too. You see, men were put on this earth to not let women make us crazy. And by the way, congratulations on your engagement.

- S04E17 "Love's Labour Mislaid," aired 1993-02-22

These two do not sound like a happy couple.

Exactly! They aren't! And they never could be. It's absurd to think they should ever pursue a relationship, given how little they care for one another. In fact, they acknowledge multiple times in-universe that they should not try to date.

Joel: Whatever it is that we've been doing to each other, you are clearly the undisputed winner... face it, O'Connell. we are never gonna have a romantic relationship. We are never even gonna have a superficial sexual relationship... because neither of us has a clue as to what the other person is about.

Maggie: You sure?

Joel: Did I not sound sure?

- S03E22 "Our Wedding," aired 1992-05-11

...and then a season later, they sleep together. Maggie admits that she did that while in love with Mike because she would be upset if Mike died from her curse, but doesn't care what happens to Joel. After that, Joel and Maggie start to refer to themselves as "mutually desirous incompatibles." 

...and then a season later, they become a couple. Maggie even rejects a marriage proposal from an old flame on the grounds that she enjoys arguing with Joel too much to settle for someone who agrees with her on everything.

...and then a season later, she breaks off an engagement to Joel because they can't get along, and every time they try to, they nearly die in freak accidents.

...and then she gets upset that Joel moves away and moves on.

Phew.

It gets exhausting, is my point. These two people should never be in a relationship with each other - a fact that is obvious to the audience, and some of the characters, literal years before the screenwriters let the idea rest in peace. The phrase "beat a dead horse" can fairly be applied to how this show treats its Official Couple, is what I'm telling you.

Were there any women behind the scenes?

Some! Screenwriters Diane Frolov and Robin Green contributed 49 episodes, with another 7 being written by various one-time women screenwriters. Women directed only 3 of the 110 episodes. A bright spot, however, was the production team. Frolov, Green, and Cheryl Bloch were all supervising producers at various times. Women were in the room where it happened.

And no behind-the-scenes drama?

Ah, no, I didn't say that. Fortunately, unlike with Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the behind-the-scenes production drama was not sexist in nature. Instead, it was an intellectual property dispute. The original showrunners, Joshua Brand and John Falsey, were hired by Universal to develop the concept without knowing it had been stolen from another writer, Sandy Veith. When Veith's lawsuit brought out the facts, they felt ill-used, and quit after season 4. David Chase was hired as their replacement, but didn't really enjoy the concept of the show, which is why the whole tone and quality of seasons 5 & 6 are different from seasons 1-4. It may also explain why Maggie and Joel go from "mutually desirous incompatibles" to "suddenly a couple," too, though that's speculation on my part.

So how do the deaths stack up?

For that, you'll have to tune in next time. Meanwhile, keep your sexy lamps burning.