The WORST episodes of Northern Exposure
Every episode of Northern Exposure ever, ranked from worst to best by thousands of votes from fans of the show. The worst episodes of Northern Exposure!
Dr. Joel Fleischman graduates from Columbia University medical school thanks to a scholarship from the state of Alaska. Though he was promised a placement at the large hospital in Anchorage, he is instead whisked away to the tiny town of Cicely, where he must work off his education debt as the local General Practitioner. The location is remote, the people are weird and quirky, and all Joel wants is to return to New York.
#1 - Grand Prix
Season 5 - Episode 22 - Aired 5/9/1994
Ted tries to impress Marilyn with the rich client he's just landed and learns what makes them different. Maurice organizes Cicely's 1st International wheelchair race and demands too much from the contestant he is sponsoring. Ed prescribes a remedy for a racer with tennis elbow, but the little green man returns to try to undermine his confidence in his healing abilities.
#2 - Buss Stop
Season 6 - Episode 20 - Aired 4/24/1995
Michelle decides to mount a stage production of "Bus Stop" unaware of the curse that has plague past stage productions. Ron helps guarantee that Erick gets a coveted role and Shelly is jealous when Maggie gets the female lead. Hayden designs the sets and a stage with a trap door. Holling, Erick and Chris all have issues to deal with about their parts in the play, which they discuss while drinking out at Holling's still.
#3 - Baby Blues
Season 5 - Episode 11 - Aired 1/3/1994
An agent stops by to see Ed about his idea for "The Shaman" but he wants a few "little" changes made to better sell the script. Chris seeks to discover his feminine side. Joel and Maggie "discuss" motherhood. Shelly flees her baby shower as all the pressures of motherhood begin to show themselves to her, when Eve and others tell their child birthing experiences.
#4 - Lovers and Madmen
Season 5 - Episode 24 - Aired 5/23/1994
Joel is the only one awestruck by his discovery of a frozen woolly mammoth. Chris gets reacquainted with a girl whose beauty he remembers from high school; however, when she arrives, all is not as he recalled and she appears to be getting uglier. Maurice has a birthday dinner surprise for Barbara complete with the violin playing of the man who blew up his truck. The next morning he escapes. Joel concedes that he's become a Cicelian.
#5 - Northern Lights
Season 4 - Episode 18 - Aired 3/1/1993
Joel goes on strike when the state of Alaska will not allow him time off for a Caribbean vacation he was planning. Chris has trouble seeking inspiration for his new sculpture. A vagrant's presence on Main St. outrages Maurice, when he learns the man is an ex-marine he tries to become his benefactor. Maggie debates about having sex with Mike. Holling spends his time in hibernation. The town of Cicely strikes back against Joel.
#6 - Midnight Sun
Season 4 - Episode 2 - Aired 10/5/1992
Joel is charged with energy as the sun hasn't set and he uses his pent up energy to try to coach Cicely's basketball team to victory. Holling is distracted by Shelly's cheerleading outfit. The traveling salesman/tailor comes back to Cicely to sell his wares and he romances Ruth-Anne.
#7 - Survival of the Species
Season 4 - Episode 11 - Aired 1/4/1993
Ed becomes gloomy about the future and begins to share Mike's visions about the future. Maggie digs up some artifacts from an ancient female in her front yard and Maurice wants to turn it into a major excavation. A young boy who runs away from a survival camp gets a job at "The Brick" to cover his room and board; he also falls madly in love with Shelly. Maggie and the rest of the women band together against the men who have dominated the dig in her front yard.
#8 - On Your Own
Season 4 - Episode 6 - Aired 11/9/1992
The ever-quiet Bob returns to Cicely, with "The New Perception Players" and still hopes to win Marilyn's affection. Maurice receives a package from his son and it reminds him that he needs to adjust his will to cover his Korean offspring. Maggie tries to develop her relationship with Mike, by helping him with the revisions to Maurice's will. Ed is suffering from a creativity block and finds a ring with the initials F.F. engraved on the inside, and then he begins to have Fellini-like visions.
#9 - The Big Feast
Season 4 - Episode 21 - Aired 3/22/1993
When Maggie distributes the invitations for Maurice's 25th Anniversary Bash for Minnifield Communications an event "everyone" is attending Joel doesn't get one. Shelly accidentally breaks one of Maurice's expensive bottles of wine and tries to find a way to replace it. Adam and Eve return with the baby, Aldrich, and Adam takes over the food preparation of a special dish.
#10 - Learning Curve
Season 4 - Episode 15 - Aired 2/8/1993
Holling decides to go back to school to get his high school equivalency certificate. Marilyn goes on an adventure in Seattle and Joel is worried for her safety so he tries to over plan her trip for her, plans she just ignores. A worried Joel, ventures down to Seattle to locate her. Maggie is at odds with the teacher over her philosophy about female combat pilots and sisterhood.
#11 - Revelations
Season 4 - Episode 12 - Aired 1/11/1993
Ruth-Anne pays off her store which gives her great satisfaction and Maurice's great pain; however, Ed feels the most pain when these two old friends begin to fight after she begins to change the store and he finds himself caught in the middle. Chris goes to religious retreat to become a monk for a couple weeks. He thinks he has a problem when really feels an attraction for one of the other monks. Joel is going stir crazy when no one in town has sick for two weeks.
#12 - Crime and Punishment
Season 4 - Episode 10 - Aired 12/14/1992
Chris is taken into custody for an extradition trial to bring him back to West Virginia, where he currently has a parole violation. Chris knows he is guilty and really isn't interested in his defense. Mike comes up with an angle that he can prove to the judge that the Chris Stevens that skipped bail is different from the Chris Stevens standing before her.
#13 - Do the Right Thing
Season 4 - Episode 9 - Aired 11/30/1992
An ex-Soviet member of their state security comes to Maurice and offers to sell him the file of all the information they have in his dossier. Maurice is discomforted by the fact that the information in the file is legitimate and shows things about the past he would prefer not knowing, like the fact he may have divulged top secret information. Maggie is reminded of her mortality when a pilot is killed making a flight she was supposed to make. The health inspector comes to inspect "The Brick" and besides finding many violations is interested in Shelly. Maggie decides to be positive to everyone, including Joel, to the point where is begins to affect her health. The ex-Soviet tries to sell other items of interest as barter for goods & services.
#14 - Thanksgiving
Season 4 - Episode 8 - Aired 11/23/1992
The Indians in Cicely celebrate Thanksgiving by throwing tomatoes at white people. Joel is Ed's first victim and he is angered because in his words he is "definitely not white." The town gets decorated with skulls and pumpkins as they also celebrate "The Day of the Dead." Joel also gets bad news in a letter telling him that he must serve another year on his contract. Mike's latest reactions to the environment are caused by something he can't trace so he thinks about moving to Greenland. Chris waxes nostalgic and decides that the something missing from his life is "the joint" when he finds a can of beans that he remembers from Thanksgiving.
#15 - The Bad Seed
Season 4 - Episode 7 - Aired 11/16/1992
Holling's less than honest daughter arrives in Cicely and begins to operate. Holling and Shelly have a disagreement about his "sterility" and starts hanging out with his daughter. Marilyn decides it may be time to move out when she decides her mother has made one too many changes she doesn't like and asks Maggie to find her dream house. Ed goes to meet "Princess," a crane that returns every year, though after taking with Chris he begins to think it isn't such a good idea.
#16 - Blowing Bubbles
Season 4 - Episode 5 - Aired 11/2/1992
Cicely's newest resident, Mike Monroe, is confined to live in a plastic bubble because of M.C.S. (Multiple Chemical Sensitivity), which makes him allergic to nearly everything manufactured in the twentieth century. After Maggie meets Mike she becomes interested in him. Ruth-Anne's son Matthew, the investment banker, comes to Cicely to try to get away from it all when he is fired from his job. Maurice's prospectus on making Cicely a place for sick people to move to and recover from their illnesses draws Matthew back into thinking about money.
#17 - My Mother, My Sister
Season 3 - Episode 18 - Aired 3/16/1992
An abandoned baby gets attention from the whole town and helps awaken Adam's paternal instincts while Shelly's life is unsettled by a visit from her youthful, giddy mother and her new boy friend.
#18 - Three Amigos
Season 3 - Episode 16 - Aired 3/2/1992
The death of an old friend sends Maurice and Holling packing off into the snowy wilderness to bury him at No-Name Point. But the way is hard, including an unexpected run-in with the man's attractive widow.
#19 - Things Become Extinct
Season 3 - Episode 13 - Aired 1/20/1992
The death of his uncle sends Holling out to his still and into an orgy of self-doubt, Joel feels isolated as he searches for proof of other Jews in Alaska, and Ed widens his own horizons when he films Ira Wingfeather producing his unique wooden flutes.
#20 - Our Tribe
Season 3 - Episode 12 - Aired 1/13/1992
Joel agrees, under pressure from Marilyn, to be adopted by a grateful village elder, but wonders if he'll survive. Maggie becomes concerned when Holling shuts down the Brick while Shelly's away, ostensibly to wax the floors.
#21 - Dateline: Cicely
Season 3 - Episode 11 - Aired 1/6/1992
Maurice hires a colorful but questionable new investigative reporter for his newspaper, Maggie tries to enlighten Joel about the "talking" trees, and Chris becomes a co-owner of the Brick when Holling needs money to pay an unexpected tax bill.
#22 - Oy, Wilderness
Season 3 - Episode 3 - Aired 10/7/1991
Maggie and Joel are forced to rough it when her plane is forced down by mechanical problems, and Shelly receives a visit from her former best friend, who is seeking a divorce for her boyfriend, Shelly's husband back in Saskatchewan.
#23 - All Is Vanity
Season 2 - Episode 3 - Aired 4/22/1991
Holling decides to be circumcised to please Shelly, Chris and Maurice organize the town to keep watch over an anonymous man whom died in Dr. Fleischman's office, and Maggie persuades Joel to pose as her boyfriend to please her father.
#24 - A Kodiak Moment
Season 1 - Episode 7 - Aired 8/23/1990
Maurice feels his mortality after his brother dies, and decides to adopt Chris as the Minnifield heir, but the title doesn't sit well on the younger man. Shelly distracts Holling when she tags along on a journey to capture an elusive bear on film. Joel is irritated when Maggie takes over the childbirth class he's disdained and makes a success of it.
#25 - Sex, Lies and Ed's Tapes
Season 1 - Episode 6 - Aired 8/16/1990
A young man from Saskatchewan further rocks the already delicate relationship between Shelly and Holling. Ed suffers from writer's block and a lack of focus as he tries to begin work on his blockbuster movie. Maggie and Rick tiptoe around "Maggie's curse" when he shows symptoms of a serious medical problem.