AS SEEN ON TV: NATE BURNS & MEG GALLIGAN

MEG GALLIGAN & NATE BURNS

CREATED BY:

Nora Roberts

PORTRAYED BY:

Eddie Cibrian as Nate Burns

LeAnn Rimes as Meg Galligan

AS SEEN IN:

"Northern Lights"

TV DIMENSION:

Earth Prime-Time

From Wikipedia:

"Northern Lights", also known as "Nora Roberts' Northern Lights", is a 2009 made-for-tv movie directed by Mike Robe, which stars Eddie Cibrian, LeAnn Rimes, and Rosanna Arquette. The film is based on the Nora Roberts novel of the same name and is part of the Nora Roberts 2009 movie collection, which also includes "Midnight Bayou", "High Noon", and "Tribute". The movie debuted March 21, 2009 on Lifetime.

Nate Burns accepts a job as chief of police in Lunacy, Alaska, hoping to get away from the traumatic death of his partner back in Baltimore. He meets Meg, an independent bush pilot, whose father is found dead in a mountain cave.

The job comes with a free room in the 'lodge', the town's multi-purpose inn, pub etcetera run by 'loose' flirter Charlene Galligan. Sole deputy Otto Gruber is among the failed local applicants. 

Shortly after Nate gets on sensual-bickering terms with Charlene's fickle, estranged daughter, pilot Meg, lost mountaineers find the frozen corpse of Meg's dad Pat, missing for 15 years. 

State police sergeant Coben dubiously claims jurisdiction and flies out the body. Nate soon discovers nothing is as it seems after "Lunatic" newspaper editor Max Hawbacker is found shot, with a fake suicide PC note 'I killed Pat'. Uncovering more past secret proves dangerous for dogs, Nate and his job.

From the source:

Strapped into the quivering soup can laughingly called a plane, bouncing his way on the pummeling air through the stingy window of light that was winter, through the gaps and breaks in snow-sheathed mountains toward a town called Lunacy, Ignatious Burke had an epiphany.

He wasn't nearly as prepared to die as he'd believed.

It was a hell of a thing to realize when his fate hung precariously in the hands of a stranger who was buried in a canary yellow parka and whose face was nearly concealed by a battered leather bush hat perched on top of a purple watch cap.

The stranger had seemed competent enough in Anchorage, and had given Nate's hand a hearty slap before wagging a thumb at the soup can with propellers.

Then he'd told Nate to "just call me Jerk." That's when the initial unease had set in. What kind of an idiot got into a flying tin can piloted by a guy named Jerk?

But flying was the only sure way to reach Lunacy this late in the year. Or so Mayor Hopp had informed him when he'd conferred with her over his travel arrangements.

The plane dipped hard to the right, and as Nate's stomach followed, he wondered just how Mayor Hopp defined sure.

He'd thought he hadn't given a good damn one way or the other. Live or die, what did it matter in the big scheme? When he'd boarded the big jet at Baltimore-Washington, he'd resigned himself that he was heading to the end of his life in any case.

The department shrink had warned him about making major decisions when he was suffering from depression, but he'd applied for the position as chief of police in Lunacy for no reason other than that the name seemed apt. And he'd accepted the position with a who-gives-a-shit shrug.

Even now, reeling with nausea, shivering with his epiphany, Nate realized it wasn't so much death that worried him, but the method. He just didn't want to end the whole deal by smashing into a mountain in the fucking gloom.

At least if he'd stayed in Baltimore, had danced more affably with the shrink and his captain, he could've gone down in the line of duty. That wouldn't have been so bad.

But no, he'd tossed in his badge, hadn't just burned his bridges but had incinerated them. And now he was going to end up a bloody smear somewhere in the Alaska Range.

"Gonna get a little rough through here," Jerk said with a drawn-out Texas drawl.

Nate swallowed bile. "And it's been so smooth up to now."

Jerk grinned, winked. "This ain't nothing. Ought to try it fighting a headwind."

"No, thanks. How much longer?"

"Not much."

The plane bucked and shuddered. Nate gave up and closed his eyes. He prayed he wouldn't add to the indignity of his death by puking on his boots first.

He was never going up in a plane again. If he lived, he'd drive out of Alaska. Or walk. Or crawl. But he was never going into the air again.

The plane gave a kind of jerking leap that had Nate's eyes popping open. And he saw through the windscreen the triumphant victory of the sun, a wondrous sort of lessening of gloom that turned the sky pearly so that the world below was defined in long ripples of white and blue, sudden rises, shimmering swarms of icy lakes and what had to be miles of snow-draped trees.

Excerpted from “Northern Lights” by Nora Roberts. Copyright © 2004.

The real story here of course is what happened off the set during the filming of this TV movie: Rimes and Cibrian, both married to others, and Cibrian with two kids, had a torrid affair... which he denied.  Yet here we are, a couple of years later, and they're now married to each other.

Here's the story on that......

Today's "As Seen On TV" showcase is dedicated to one of my co-workers, Sonia Vee. I don't think she was too happy I didn't bother seeing any of the Nora Roberts TV movie collection, but the Monitaur can only view so much.  I'm just happy to add Lunacy, Alaska, to the map of Telemerica.....

BCnU!