The show was an early example of a dramedy without a laugh track, juggling moods and respecting its audience's ability to get the joke in a way that would help create space for future comedy/drama hybrids like "The West Wing," "Parks and Recreation," "Buffy The Vampire Slayer" and "Gilmore Girls" (whose small-town quirk, screwball-meets-melodrama tone, and character archetypes owe almost everything to "Exposure"). It was also a show that respected its audience's intelligence, wisely ignoring "high/low"divisions of culture and assuming viewers would appreciate references to both Voltaire and "Aliens," Walt Whitman and the Home Shopping Network (in that sense, the program's recurring fascination with show-tunes is not just another entry point for Joel's Manhattan-centric worldview, or a playful way to explore and tweak the homophobia of Broadway super-fan Maurice, but also a tip of the hat to an earlier art form's ability to encompass the whole eight-eighths of American popular life).

Joel's eyes were also a creative window: He might have been resistant to the town's quirkiness (in one episode, he frantically mourns his growing assimilation by renting "The Godfather" and "Dog Day Afternoon," as if they will act as New York booster shots), but he was also its pulsating center, and so many of the program's "dream episodes" or pastiches start from Joel's perspective literally shifting. In one episode, a bump to the head sends him into a dreamscape where he is "Jules," his own ne'er do well twin; in another, a bout of insomnia causes Joel's view of the town to dramatically improve, in a subtle parody of "Charly" (1968) that also sees him enthusiastically coaching the Cicely basketball team; in still another, Joel's accidental ingestion of a Native American herbal remedy transports him to a version of New York where his dreams of big-city life intermingle with wildly different versions of the program's regulars.

"Northern Exposure" took the stylistic playfulness pioneered by "thirtysomething," "Moonlighting" and other '80s shows, and made it more organic to the program's usual mise-en-scene. Falsey and Brand's imagery was no less surreal or playful, but was more fully integrated into the program's ongoing camera and color schemes, so the line between fantasy and reality wasn't as clear or self-conscious; this confusion of space only intensified the show's richness (it's probably no coincidence that "Exposure" debuted the same year as "Twin Peaks," which it references in one first-season episode, or that "Exposure"'s show-runner in its final two seasons was David Chase, who would use a similarly dream/reality template to great effect on "The Sopranos"). Its dense intertextuality and fearlessness in building its narratives around Orson Welles, Ralph Waldo Emerson and—most spectacularly—Gabriel Garcia Marquez (in an episode-long homage to the magical realism of "One Hundred Years of Solitude") helped expand what kinds of stories could be done on a network show, breaking ground that would be followed by the daring of cable and "netlet" shows in the ensuing 20 years. Its open-ended narratives, ensemble casts, often melancholy and wistful tone—all of this speaks to a TV of the future as much as the TV of "Exposure"'s actual airdates. The show was a great success, won several Emmys and Peabodys, and launched many of its stars into great futures. And then it all came crashing down.