I’ve recently started watching Northern Exposure again from the very beginning, which is reminding of how much I loved this show. Airing from 1990 – 1995, Northern Exposure was a quirky, dramatic, comedic jewel, taking place in a small Alaskan town, which to this very day I want to live in. The show’s quirkiness came from it’s wide variety of influences, most notably, the show’s creators who were members of the Esalen Institute in California, which presents an eclectic and “spritual” worldview, exemplified in the writings of Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell. The show’s rich appreciation for Native American culture and mythology also gave the writer’s a rich background of material to use in future episodes and was also one of the few shows to present a wonderfully positive view of Native American culture (kudos!). Because of the show’s quirkiness however, it was often compared to Twin Peaks, something that would flatter the hell out of me, might have gotten a bit annoying after several years. This is where one of my fondest memories of Northern Exposure comes from, episode 5 of season 1, where Northern Exposure does a spot on parody of Twin Peaks, even goning so far as to film sequences at Snoqualmie Falls in northern Washington, the infamous waterfall seen throughout Twin Peaks.

Watch Northern Exposure’s parody of Twin Peaks after the jump..

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