Joel Fleischman quotes from Northern Exposure

Joel

You are single, you are heterosexual, you are a doctor, you are Jewish. Alaska is wide open for you and I was right. Believe me, I will be out there. I'll have to fight the women off.

Ed

What women?

Maggie

There are other ways besides sex to get a bladder infection, Fleischman.

Joel

Yeah, but that's the funniest.

Joel

Sex should be wild. Unfettered and free. We're animals, aren't we? And, basically, we're all wolves in sheep's fur. I always wanted more. Not frequency, I am not talking about frequency; although that would have been great, too. I wanted more intensity. I wanted to be out there, outside myself, outside my skin. I wanted sex to be like robbing life out of the jaws of death!

Maggie

Wow.

Maurice

You don't know your own patients?

Joel

He wasn't my patient, yet. And I have an assistant, here, who thinks it's unnecessary to take names. She'd rather run my office like a delicatessen.

Marilyn

He's number nine.

Joel

Be careful, there's some ice over there.

Maggie

You could offer to help, Fleischman.

Joel

You, our own Calamity Jane? Our torch-bearer of the pioneer spirit? I wouldn't presume to insult you.

Maggie

Why were you born, Fleischman? A mosquito has more utilitarian value!

Joel

Hold it, hold it, hold it! This is ridiculous! Hey, we play to a very sophisticated television audience. They know Maurice is not going to kill Nikolai, and they definitely know that Nikolai is not going to kill Maurice.

Maggie

Wait a minute, Fleischman. You can't just take it upon yourself to step out of character. Nobody yelled 'cut'.

Shelly

Joel's right. The duel is stupid.

Joel

Can we just stick to the matter at hand?

Ruth-Anne

How about the fifth revision? Where Nikolai's abscessed tooth starts acting up, and, well, he just cancels.

Shelly

Glib and textually unwarranted.

What if Maurice trips and kills someone else by mistake?

Maurice

Oh, great, so I'm a klutz now, huh?

Maggie

Look, if there's not a duel, then what is the point of this whole story?

Chris

What's the point? The point is - man's tendency to war, but Joel here is asking us to step outside of certain events and say enough. Am I right?

Shelly

Listen, whatever, it's getting cold out here.

Marilyn

Why don't we go on to the next scene? It's a pretty good one.

Joel

Are you flirting with me?

Maggie

No! I'm just merely saying that beneath that whiny, abrasive exterior of yours I sometimes get a glimpse of the teensiest, eensy bit of something

Joel

Do you believe this; have you ever seen a man with this kind of incredible irresistible magnetism for the opposite sex?

Ed

James Bond.

Joel

That's the movies Ed; try reality.

Ed

No thanks.