Da Da Da

--"Da Da Da", Trio

Everyone knows that Avonlea is my show. It's the basis of a lot of my personality, it's the show I've logged the most hours watching, and it's the show that I was the root of a lot of the decisions I made in my life. It's also the show that I most closely associate with Jina, Canada, and the theme of remembrance, which, as you can read, is a theme I consider a motif in my writing.

However, there is another show that I think has also been a great influence on my writing and, indeed, all my creative endeavors.

Northern Exposure.

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I remember late nights after midnight, sneaking into the den to watch every episode that would come on. I've always suffered from bouts of insomnia and it became a habit of mine to wait till my family were asleep to watch television in the den. At first, it used to be repeats of The Twilight Zone from the 80's, but that only lasted a year. After that would begin my great love affair with the quirky show with heart and intelligence. I remember those first couple of nights getting to know the various characters on the show and loving how they all worked together, functioning as a de facto family. It was unlike any other community I'd ever seen. Avonlea was a quaint town, but the class distinctions and the penchant for restraint placed in a different time period. The fact that the town of Cicely, Alaska was set in the present-day gave the show a sense of relatibility that I cherished. I envied the utopia depicted in the stories and I think that's why I fell in love with the show in the first place.

I remember when I started watching those late night sessions, it was just after I'd met Breanne. I would tell her about all these ideas the show would generate--a great line here, a song they used there. In time, the dialogue between us during those late-night sessions when I'd be waiting up for the show and she'd be already tucked away in bed would include five or ten minutes about the show. If I was to ever name a show that was all ours, I think that'd be it.

Maybe that's why I relegate it to a cerebral arena. Avonlea was intelligent too, but it more appealed to the child-like wonder and romantic sentimentality that I possess. That was a show I quoted because it made my heart smile. Northern Exposure was the show that made my brain sizzle. Philosophy, culture, religion, art, current events, politics--they all found their way into the discussions in the stories. Yes, there were sentimental plots to be found too (I especially loved the sweet scenes between Shelly and Holling), but I never quoted a show so much for its unique take on the world as it was in then present day as much as I quoted Northern Exposure. Yet the manner in which they snuck these ideas in was nothing short of brilliant. They ostensibly made the show seemingly not centered around the world at large; they focused on the town as its own global village... and in the process, it became a diorama of the world around us. It placed these high-minded ideals of how mankind should work and worship and think together, and made you believe that it was possible for it to be a reality, if only in miniature. That was always its greatest strength.

It could have billed itself as the show about nothing, like Seinfeld. After all, who would think that anyone could come to care about an eccentric group of ex-mountain men, ex-astronauts, ex-whatevers, and one fish-out-of-water Jewish doctor from Flushing before this show came out? Certainly not I. However, it made you care. It made you want to see what happened to these people because they weren't just characters. They felt like your family. They felt like people who, if you jumped onto a plane to Alaska right then and there, you could have met in the streets and just shook their hands. That's how well we as the viewers got to know them. That's how much we cared.

I can't think of another show where I actually wanted to know what happened to all these wonderful people after it was canceled except for, of course, Avonlea. It blurred the line between being a work of artifice and became something more to me. I couldn't imagine the characters not existing any more simply because their show wasn't on any more. They had to exist somewhere. They had to be continuing living if only because they possessed twice as much life as most shows that were on in that period of history.



Finally, I'll just say that there was one scene in the third season of Northern Exposure which still gives me goosebumps at how well-executed, written, and acted it was. It was a scene that involved Holling and Shelly (naturally) just after Holling began experiencing his mid-life crisis. Shelly had tried everything to snap him out of his funk and she was growing desperate to show him how important he was to her. Finally, she hit upon the solution that stands both as a fine example of her as a person and as fine example of how much the show liked to stretch out in new directions.

Holling comes back to the bar to find a simple puppet stage set up and a single chair waiting for him a few feet back from the curtains. It seems this performance would have an audience of one.

Then the curtain rises and Shelly proceeds to re-enact by herself a ten-minute account of how her and Holling met, were drawn to each other, and finally fell in love. Never mind the fact that any show would spend the last segment devoted to a one-camera shot of a barren puppet stage devoid of any background music or cuts away to another subplot. If anything, they simply swung the same camera to show some of his reactions every now and again. For the most part, though, it was Shelly's show. What really got to me was the plaintive devotion she had for him. Yeah, Shelly was the cutest girl on the show, but it was the way she was so straight-forward and plainspoken that made her my favorite character. It was the way she said, "okay," within nanoseconds of Holling asking her to marry him in another episode or the way she spoke from the heart much like Eeyore or Linus did that appealed to me. That's what the puppet show was, a ten-minute decree of her love for her man done in only the way Shelly could have done it.

Then, after it's done and Holling has already begun to shed a tear. Shelly shyly peeks her around the stage to see how it has gone over with her audience. He gently gets out of his chair, pulls her by the hand to her feet, and they walk off happily upstairs once again a united couple.

Mid-life crisis over.

On the surface, it seems rather silly and over-the-top eccentric. But it worked and it worked beautifully. It stands as one of my favorite scenes ever from anything I have ever seen in my lifetime.

That's why I watched the show, for those moments no other show would ever duplicate again. That's why I loved this show.

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers