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A city doctor is forced to work in the remote Alaskan town of Cicely, where he encounters peculiar locals, including a former astronaut, as he adjusts to small-town life.

An ex-Miami cop just back from prison for corruption gets caught up in the Florida drug trade.

Hearing his brother and only surviving fellow Minnifeld died, Maurice looks for a 'son' to adopt. After Joel declines, he gets Chris to try, but although generosity gets them through the hard stuff, a game of croquet proves you can't adopt 'breeding'. When Ed tells Holling Jesse that the fiercest grizzly, who caused him to stop hunting anything else, is back, Shelly insists on joining them on a hunt which shows that although the men are older, the bear still knows them. Joel is asked to attend a hygiene class, but when he arrives learns it's for expectant mothers, which Maggie makes him improvise.

While Joel gives Ed golf lessons, the Indian warns him Adam is around, the never actually seen monster-prankster, blamed for all kinds of weirdness for some 15 years. Passing the night in his car in the woods after diagnosing a park ranger Burns, Joel is apparently robbed, actually taken in, by very human loner Vietnam vet Adam. Chris is delighted his instinctive sculptural inspiration fits the astronomical phenomenon Aurora Borealis (northern light). Chris accepts help from lost motor-biker Bernard, and discovers they share a lot, even an identity essential.

Dr. Joel Fleischman slowly starts accepting his desperately desolate fate, despite a defective shower leaving him to choose between swallowing his pride in order to get Maggie's plumbing help or bathing in the utterly icy lake. Popular DJ Chris Stevens' 'irreverent' comments on even Walt Whitman get him sacked from Maurice's radio K-Bear, but the boss soon offends everyone else in Cecily. Ed Chigliak's suave way gets reluctant Joel to make confusing house-calls on Ed's uncle, paradoxical medicine man Anku, who treats Joel to a Kentucky takeaway, traditional dancing and a sauna but refuses to be treated for his fatal cancer.

Shelly becomes pregnant and a wedding is arranged, but Holling has a deep-rooted fear - both his father and grandfather lived over a century, while their wives died young, leaving them alone and grieving for over sixty years each. Holling vowed to avoid their fate. Meanwhile, Maurice and Fleischman entertain a Japanese investor interested in building a resort in Cicely.

A doctor from New York City adjusts to life in a rural town in Alaska.

Dr. Joel Fleischman has his hands full when his fiancé Elaine flies to Cicely for a visit. He becomes so busy trying to defend himself against the townspeople's charges that he is a KGB agent releasing the Russian flu upon them and competing with Marilyn over the best treatment for the illness, that he has no time to spend with his betrothed. Instead Maggie entertains Elaine, which only further annoys Joel.

There's much to deal with in Cicely when Shelly's husband arrives with the hopes of taking her back to Saskatchewan, much to the astonishment of Holling. Furthermore, Maggie's boyfriend fears he will soon die as the next victim of the O'Connell curse and Ed searches for inspiration while working on his movie script.

Dr. Joel Fleischman is depressed when grumpy old patient Soapy Sanderson completely ignores his medical advice, and is stunned when he and Maggie are named joint executors of his 140 acres forest estate where only wolves live. Maggie wants to turn it into a nature reserve, however un-required it is in this part of Alaska. Joel is rather tempted by the Indian chief Ronkomkoma's idea to turn it into a tax shelter by formally drilling for oil which everybody knows isn't there, hoping it may pay his way back to New York. Later Joel learns Soapy was a spirituality college professor for 20 years. Soapy also left them a $200 Lafitte-Latour for their trouble, which nearly works a romantic wonder, and a journal. Meanwhile the press gets interested.