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Northern Exposure Season 4 Episodes
Season 4 Episode Guide
25 Episodes 1992 - 1993
Episode 1
Northwest Passages
Mon, Sep 28, 199245 mins
On Maggie's 30th birthday, she decides to perform an ancient Native American ritual for saying goodbye to her dead boyfriends. Joel and Ed later have to rush in for the rescue when she turns out to be ill.
Episode 2
Midnight Sun
Mon, Oct 5, 199260 mins
When the midnight sun, days of constant sunlight, hits Cicely, Joel experiences a relentless surge of energy and begins coaching Cicely's local basketball team.
Episode 3
Nothing's Perfect
Mon, Oct 12, 199245 mins
Chris runs over a dog and is smitten by the owner. Maurice gets a very rare antique clock. Ed makes a new friend of the horologist.
Episode 4
Heroes
Mon, Oct 19, 199247 mins
A rock musician (played by Adam Ant) accidentally arrives in Cicely, creating quite a stir-up among the locals. While Ed makes a documentary about the visit, Chris has trouble deciding how to put an old friend to his final rest.
Episode 5
Blowing Bubbles
Mon, Nov 2, 199246 mins
A former lawyer named Mike Monroe moves to town with a unique medical condition and has to live in a bubble. Ruth Anne's son comes for a visit.
Episode 6
On Your Own
Mon, Nov 9, 199260 mins
While Ed catches a fish containing a ring that he thinks belonged to Fedrico Fellini, the Flying Man and some circus performers revisit Cicely.
Episode 7
The Bad Seed
Mon, Nov 16, 199260 mins
A woman arrives in town claiming to be Holling's daughter. Marilyn looks for a new house and asks Maggie to help. A friend of Ed's migrates south.
Episode 8
Thanksgiving
Mon, Nov 23, 199247 mins
It's Thanksgiving in Cicely, which means they celebrate in their usual 'unique' way. Joel is lied to again by the State of Alaska. Maggie goes after Mike.
Episode 9
Do the Right Thing
Mon, Nov 30, 199260 mins
Maurice has a visitor who claims to be an ex KGB agent who offers to sell him his KBG dossier. While in Cicely, the man enjoys all the services the town has to offer. A health-and-safety inspector visits the Brick and is visibly impressed by Shelly. Maggie hears of the death of another pilot and is convinced that she has narrowly escaped death. She decides to change and be positive and helpful.
Episode 10
Crime and Punishment
Mon, Dec 14, 199247 mins
The law catches up with Chris when the authorities begin setting up an extraction to have him turned in to the West Virginia police for violating parole.
Episode 11
Survival of the Species
Mon, Jan 4, 199347 mins
Ed goes green after having a post-apocalyptic dream, Maggie discovers some old Indian artifacts in her front yard and Holling begins associating with a young runaway (Brad) from Los Angeles who develops a major crush on Shelly.
Episode 12
Revelations
Mon, Jan 11, 199347 mins
Ruth Anne pays off her store loan to Maurice and they begin to fight over Ed. Joel has a crisis of identity when he gets no patients for 2 weeks. Bernard fills in for Chris while he is on a week-long self-discovery journey at a monastery.
Episode 13
Duets
Mon, Jan 18, 199346 mins
Ed's spirit guide returns claiming to have found the identity of Ed's father. Maggie and Mike grow closer. An itinerant, blind piano tuner shows up at the Brick.
Episode 14
Grosse Pointe, 48230
Mon, Feb 1, 199346 mins
Maggie bribes Joel with basketball tickets to escort her home to Grosse Pointe, Michigan to face her family. The usual bizarre hilarity ensues.
Episode 15
Learning Curve
Mon, Feb 8, 199346 mins
Marilyn decides to use her semi-annual "Indian corporation check" of $5000 to go for a vacation in Seattle. It it the first time she's going to leave Alaska. "I just want an adventure", she tells Fleischman who produces never ending advice on how-to-survive-in-the-city. He brings he a neck pillow for the airplane, a money belt, hires a town car to meet her at the airport, and makes reservations at a hotel in a good part of the city. She spurns all of this help as she wanders the city totally enjoying herself. Holling has decided that he wants to get his high school diploma finally. He tells Shelly that he quit after his junior year to work for good money on the railroad. Although he can read, write, and manage the books for his business with no trouble, he wants the certificate as a sense of pride to show Shelly that he wants to be a good provider. At school. he fifty years older than everyone else. During math he displays a trick for multiplying large numbers that a patent medicine salesman taught him. The teacher, Miss Jane Harris, is mightily impressed, but tells him that won't work on the GED exam because they will want to see his work. His essays are full of rich life experiences but have run-on sentences and punctuation errors. Maggie is enthralled by Jane because she flew cover and refueling mission in the Middle East. Thus, she is disappointed when Jane suggests that women are not suitable to be fighter pilots. Maggie was sure she was part of the "sisterhood". Jane manages to coach Holling through a successful GED exam and present him with his diploma. Maggie apologizes for not allowing Jane to hold her own opinions. Jane accepts it. Joel borrows $800 from Holling to go search for Marilyn in Seattle. He finally finds her eating a corn dog at the zoo. He need not have worries at all about her. She has had an adventure.
Episode 16
Ill Wind
Mon, Feb 15, 199346 mins
When the seasonal Coho winds blow into Cicely in from the east, strange things begin to happen. Joel is playing Risk with some of the gang. When Maggie selects Joel as the target of her attacks, he throws up his hands call foul play. Other moves are much more advantageous. Maggie sticks to her guns leading an argument with Joel, He tauntingly invites her to punch him in the nose, which she does. He falls over with a broken nose. A short time later, he hands her notice of an impending lawsuit. She quickly retaliates with an eviction notice. This leads to a second nose punch. The hostility builds until Joel decides they need to talk things over. During the talk, which takes place in a barn full of hay, they tussle. Before either of them can stop things, Joel kisses Maggie and clothes begin to fly off. Later, when they show up at The Brick, they are sure everyone can tell what they have been doing. They stand up and announce their deed. No one seems to care. Maurice, Chris and Ed are up on the roof of KBHR mounting a new, more powerful antenna. IN the stiff Coho winds, Maurice loses his balance at the edge of the roof. Chris jumps over to catch his tool belt, preventing him from falling headfirst onto the concrete below. Maurice has unwanted feelings an obligation to do something in return. He decides that he wants to give Chris a monetary reward to even the score. After Joel tells him that the elements in a body are worth $14.39, Maurice offers him a package of $30,000 in securities. Chris wants nothing to do with it. Ed, thinking about Maurices's near fall, grows intrigued by death. He starts asking everyone if they've ever considered various forms of suicide. This gets people thinking that Ed is depressed and considering the deed himself. He reassures everyone that he is not considering offing himself. The Coho winds go away, and things return to normal.
Episode 17
Love's Labour Mislaid
Mon, Feb 22, 199346 mins
Ed's uncle tells him he needs to be married and has arranged a wife for him. Joel obsesses over Maggie denying they had sex. Holling and Ruth Anne chase after a rare bird.
Episode 18
Northern Lights
Mon, Mar 1, 199347 mins
Joel withholds practicing medicine until the State honors his contract and he gets his week vacation. Chris builds an art piece. Holling hibernates for 2 weeks.
Episode 19
Family Feud
Mon, Mar 8, 199346 mins
Shelly is suddenly having hallucinations about dancers. First a troupe of seven ballerinas toe-dance down main street without Floyd seeing them. When she goes to see Joel about her problem, she sees him doing a tap dance in a tux and top hat. Back at The Brick, there is a flamenco dancer and guitarist. Having only gotten a suggestion from Joel that maybe she should see a psychiatrist and a declaration that she might have residuals from some bad acid, she learns from Leonard that she needs to get married to stop the dancers. "Life is a dance and you need a partner. She rushes to Holling and insists they must get married tomorrow. Leonard is also responsible for triggering a feud between the Bear and the Raven clans in Cicely when he unveils a new Whirlwind totem pole. The Bear clan take offense at a fish symbol on the fourth tier. There is disagreement between the two clans over this portrayal of Harold Whirlwind. In 1934 he started a salmon cannery using money he claimed to have found in a jar. The Bear clan contend that he embezzled the money from Roland Killdeer's auto repair shop. Leonard eventually comes up with a compromise solution in the form of a nearly identical companion pole that does not contain the fish symbol for Harold's tier. As all this is transpiring, Joel is still troubled by the meaning of his relationship with Maggie and their little horizontal tango episode. He sees her being publicly demonstrative with Mike, yet he knows there remains so animal attraction between the two of them. They talk it over and decide to express the two of them as "mutually desirous incompatibles".
Episode 20
Homesick
Mon, Mar 15, 199346 mins
Now that Shelly and Holling are married, she decides it is time for her to have a role in how their home looks. She is so fixated on catalog shopping that customers at The Brick are ignored. The end result is a pink palace. It renders Holling so shocked that his intestines have locked up. For the first time in his life, he is constipated. Mike's medical test results all show that he is no longer anything but normal. He attributes his cure to Maggie making him feel good about himself and Joel providing excellent medical care. His wellness prompts him to look at reports of environmental disasters with a new sense of obligation. He submits paperwork to be an attorney for Greenpeace. They are sending him to Murmansk right away. Maggie is speechless about Mike's abandoning of her. Everyone else is proud of what he aspires to do. Ruth-Anne holds a fund raiser for him by selling green ribbons to help pay his expenses to get to Russia. Ed tells him that he wants to come with him. Ed talks him out of it by telling him he needs to make films about environmental problems so that the public knows about them. He makes a grand speech to the community as he boards the bus and heads into his new life. Holling hears that his boyhood home is going to be demolished for a highway expansion project. Rather than see it destroyed, he has it trucked to Cicely where he installs it on a new foundation. As he tells Chris stories of his boyhood years, he remembers a secret treasure box that is hidden underneath one of the stairs. He pries it open to find it contents. Included are four metal fish from a game that his brother Malcom was extremely fond of. He guiltily admits that he stole them and never admitted to Malcolm what he had done. A vision of Malcom appears and offers forgiveness.
Episode 21
The Big Feast
Mon, Mar 22, 199346 mins
It's the 25th anniversary of Minnifield Communications and Maurice is throwing a party (in honor of himself) with no expenses spared. All the invitations come with fancy calligraphy done in gold ink. The elegant cake cost $10,000 and there are mountains of beluga caviar. Everyone in town is talking about the extravaganzas that Maurice has thrown in the past, figuring that this one may even eclipse those. The only person in town who isn't salivating at the party's prospects is Joel. That's because he never got an invitation. He thinks the snub is due to his inadvertent leak to the authorities that Maurice didn't use a snowplow as he claimed. When Maurice drops by his office to borrow some first aid supplies for the affair, Joel is petulant about his offerings. Maurice queries him about the bad attitude. Joel blurts out that he wasn't invited. Maurice begs to differ, indicating that an invitation was sent to him. Now Joel figures that Maggie probably "lost" in retaliation for his snide comments about her relationship with Mike. Shelly is super excited about the big party until she accidentally breaks a bottle of 1929 Château Latour wine. Hoping that she can replace it, she asks Joel how much it is worth. He tells her $5-6000. Now she's heartsick. A glimmer of hope arrives when Adam, Eve and baby Aldrich show up for the party. When Shelly confesses to Eve her dilemma, Eve reveals that she has doctored some inferior vintages in the past that even fooled Adam's palate. They take some jug wine, add food coloring, a bit of potting soil and a few other ingredients. Then they super-glue the bottom of the bottle back on. Adam has taken over duties as executive chef, supervising the preparation of a demi-glace sauce reduced to a rich cup of product from 40 cows. Marilyn gets sick from a little bit of bad fish. In the end things work out. Chris delivers a flattering toast and Joel is among the seated guests.
Episode 22
Kaddish, for Uncle Manny
Mon, May 3, 199347 mins
Joel arrives at his office to find a long line has accumulated there. Figuring it is part of the flu epidemic he has been helping with in Yellow Knife, he takes a deep breath. But the line is not made up of patients. They are hopefuls for Marilyn's dance partner in the upcoming Cajun two-step contest. The phone rings, and Joel learns that his Uncle Manny has died. He feels that it is important for him to say a kaddish prayer for this favorite uncle but that requires a minyan, ten adult male Jews. Where is he to find that many Jews near Cicely? Maurice is sympathetic to his needs. He organizes the community into searching various sectors of Alaska to locate the requisite number. Maggie offers to help in any way she can. Ed turns up one, Ruth-Anne another, and a converted cousin of Marilyn will kayak down. At the same time, two Miller brothers have shown up from West Virginia. It seems there has been a long-term feud between the Millers and the Stevens. Chris is eager to meet them in a fight, even offering the visiting Bernard a chance to join him because he is a half-brother. Bernard, who has never been in a fight, is less than enthusiastic about this. Marilyn decides that the way Holling moves makes him the perfect dance partner. She begins training him, keeping him out very late. The more Holling gets into the dancing, the less Shelly likes it. She feels that Marilyn has co-opted time with her husband. The time for the Miller-Stevens fight arrives. Bernard begins talking about how a one side losing the fight will end this long feud tradition. The two Miller boys and Chris agree that they would rather continue their squabble. Nothing happens. Marilyn fires Holling because his "stillness" is not good. She rehires her former partner. With only two more Jews needed, Joel starts feeling that a kaddish among a group of strangers is less meaningful than before his circle of friends in Cicely. He dismisses the Jews that Maurice's search has assembled and presents the kaddish prayer to his friends in the church.
Episode 23
Mud and Blood
Mon, May 10, 199346 mins
Joel and the other inhabitants of Cicely are plagued by the returning mosquitoes, only Maggie remains immune to them. Holling feels the need to work the land and sow seeds. He works to exhaustion on a farm. Maurice purchases a truffle pig and leaves it to Chris to look after the animal. A letter from Mike arrives, informing the townspeople that he is well and healed from his allergies. Maggie is astonished when she finds that she no longer brings death and destruction to the people around her but has a healing and mending influence. Shelly announces that she is pregnant.
Episode 24
Sleeping with the Enemy
Mon, May 17, 199346 mins
Duk Won, Maurice's son, comes all the way from South Korea with his fiancée, Soon Ae, seeking his blessing for their marriage to be. Evidently, this is an important step in Korean culture. Maurice is sure that Duk wants some of his money, too. He does not. Maurice is enchanted with Soon Ae until he finds out that she is the daughter of a North Korean Colonel Pak Soon Ye, better known as the butcher of Yangdok, who was his archenemy from his days in the Korean War. He tells Duk Won that the permission is withdrawn. Duk Won takes this seriously and tells Soon Ae there will be no marriage. Eventually, Maurice feels bad about something that happened forty years ago preventing his son from finding happiness with Soon Ae. He relents. Ron, who was also a Marine in the Korean War and has been his interpreter, chides him for being a softy and caving in. Holling has problems with Shelley. He goes to see Joel and ask for advice. His libido is running high, and Shelly wants nothing to do with him of an intimate kind. Joel is incredulous to learn that Holling has been used to making love with Shelly up to four times a day before her pregnancy. He suggests that he talk to her, plus there are other ways to sublime his pent-up feelings. Chris shares with and coaches them in some touching and chanting techniques used by Eastern cultures. Ed is suddenly worried that the Tlingit language is in danger of dying out. Only some tribal elders seem very fluent with it. He takes action in an attempt to save Tlingit by having some of the elders dub in a Tlingit soundtrack for the 1937 movie "The Prisoner of Zenda". His chief voice actor is Leston Havens, a tribal member with a real acting resume. When Ed is not satisfied with Leston performance in one scene, Leston takes offense and walks out. Later, he recants, saying that a good actor should always be willing to take constructive criticism.
Episode 25
Old Tree
Mon, May 24, 199346 mins
Cicely's oldest tree is affected by a fungal disease and Maurice wants to have it cut down so he can build on the site. The townspeople, who are very attached to the tree and have even given it a name, object. It falls to Joel as the local doctor to diagnose the tree and decide if the disease is fatal. Shelly wakes up one morning and starts singing uncontrollably. Every word that comes out of her mouth is song. Holling soon finds her constant crooning irritating. Maggie has changed her hostile attitude towards Joel and is nice to him, which invariably leads to him getting injured in some way.