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The episode titled “Aurora Borealis: A Fairy Tale for Grown-Ups” aired as the season one finale, in 1990. However, CBS execs thought the episode was “too weird” and so they didn’t want to air it. “Once we knew that people did like this episode, my partner and I turned to each other and we said, ‘We can do anything we want on this show,’ and it was incredibly liberating,” Brand told a crowd at the ATX Television Festival. “We understood that the audience was willing to go on any ride we wanted to take them... It opened up the whole show for us.”

Morrow and Joel departed the show in February 1995. The final shot featured Joel on a boat in New York Harbor, insinuating that the doctor had returned to his pre-Alaska life. Morrow told People he considered a different trajectory for the doctor. “Josh [Brand] always felt that Joel would go back to New York and would step into the life he always wanted [as a big-city physician],” Morrow said. “I didn't care for that ending. He’s on a boat in New York Harbor in the last shot, but I think of it as mythical rather than literal. I’d like to think Joel moved on and didn’t go back to the life you expected.”