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television The Big C Laura Linney struggles elegantly against Stage IV eccentricity. Posted Monday, Aug. 16, 2010, at 11:36 AM ET
Early on, we see Cathy in an examining room, where she's flirting with her doctor in a spirit of giddy play. We are quickly brought to understand that this is uncharacteristic behavior, that Cathy's family members are unanimous in finding her repressed, uptight, finicky, mild, and cautious to a fault. Her personality had been rather beige; then she was diagnosed with Stage IV melanoma. Cathy is sufficiently fatalistic or unwilling to struggle (and also, she says, prideful of her hair) that she refuses--or, more to the point, casually declines--chemotherapy and all other treatment. Choosing not to break this news to her dopey husband, snide son, or aggressively flaky brother and further lacking any discernible friends, Cathy goes it alone for a couple of episodes, confiding her troubles to no one but a neighbor's drowsy basset hound. As if striving for a summa cum laude in carpe diem, she embarks on one of those id-indulging alternative-medicine regimens featured in the likes of My Life Without Me (the half-decent indie film starring Sarah Polley) and The Bucket List (the indecent studio picture starring the shells of Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman). Soon she is cracking wise, turning cartwheels, destroying property, sunbathing in the nude, smoking a cigarette she just confiscated from one the summer-school students she now teaches with perfect indifference. The student, Andrea (Gabourey Sidibe), is another of Cathy's recent projects: She offers the girl $100 for every pound she drops. Invited to dinner, the new sidekick warns her prospective mentor, "This better not be like one of those Blind Side fantasies." Cathy's behavior is somewhat more palatable that it might sound. It very much helps that The Big C, aiming to be sardonic and hitting this mark half the time, is hostile to platitudes and empty sunshine. In the third episode, burdened by the secret of her disease, Cathy visits a support group, encountering a roomful of well-meaning self-deceivers sitting beneath a motivational poster: "Cancer is the passport to the life you were meant to live," it reads over a picture of a rainbow. Thus, although our heroine devotes herself to spending more time with her ingrate teenager and less energy on her immature husband, although she makes an effort to be a better, more interesting person, the show rarely submits to cliches regarding suffering and enlightenment. This is Showtime, after all, where sentimentality is blessedly scarce. Besides, the show is busy tending to other cliches. There is a noun beginning with the letter Q and rhyming with the first syllable of irksome, and I'm trying to take an open-ended sabbatical from using it and its adjectival forms. The Big C is among the entertainments making this attempt a real challenge, such is the resolute Sundance-quality kookiness of its attitude, particularly as regards the supporting characters. On the mild end of things is Cathy's husband, Paul, played by Oliver Platt. A sloppy puppy dog and arrested adolescent, Paul has elevated leaving the cap off the toothpaste to an entire lifestyle, a sensibility that made it all the easier for his wife to kick him out of the house. Elsewhere we discover the aggressive weirdness of Cathy's brother Sean (John Benjamin Hickey), who dropped out of bourgeois life to become a dumpster-diving freegan. You could call Sean a committed environmental activist, but only if you consider it activism to stand shirtless on street corners yelling at passing SUVs, pedestrians, parking meters, whatever. Across the street from Cathy lives a grouchy widow, comprehensively gray, with whom she sometimes trade insults and sometimes--spoiler alert--shares feelings. As for Cathy herself, well, if you're being portrayed by Laura Linney, then you've really got something going for you. Though she isn't quite a credible character, she's a thoroughly fun one, for which much credit is due to the actress's steady subtlety and elastic wit. Keep an eye out, for instance, for a throwaway moment where Sidibe's character does the talking while Cathy steps onto a beam scale just because it's there, weighing herself for the heck of it. She discovers that she's heavier than she'd thought, and each rightward tap of balance brings an escalated level of surprise to her face: slight shock; modest concern; honest disbelief. Nothing gets said about this. There really is nothing to say beyond observing that Cathy, having a crisis at middle age, stands in for many a person having a midlife crisis. Like Slate on Facebook. Follow us on Twitter. To continue reading, click here. Troy Patterson is Slate's television critic.Join the Fray: our reader discussion forum What did you think of this article? POST A MESSAGE | READ MESSAGES Also In Slate Hitchens: Six Reasons--Besides Israel--We Can't Let Iran Get Nukes Why Do Some Drugs Cost $8,000 a Dose? It's Not as Hard as You Might Think To Meet the Queen | Advertisement |
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Culturebox: The Big C
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