Dr. Joel Fleischman (Rob Morrow) is fresh out of medical college, and fresh out of luck. Failing to read the fine print in his scholarship conditions, he finds he has no choice but to move to the remote and somewhat eccentric town of Cicely, Alaska.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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'.

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.