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Popular Culture Review
Personal Identity Deconstructed
“The Graduate” was not the first Northern Exposure episode to take up
issues associated with differance. It was also addressed by parallel storylines in
an earlier episode titled “Altered Egos,” written by Jeff Melvoin and aired on
October 11, 1993. This episode contemplates the importance of a felt sense of
difference to personal identity. Three characters experience an intense identity
crisis when their sense of difference, and thus uniqueness, is erased.
One storyline concerns the half-brothers Chris and Bernard (who is also
a Stevens). Bernard is a CPA living in Portland who makes occasional visits to
Cicely. Both men have the same father, but Chris’s mother was white; Bern \