The premise of The Big C is a provocative one: What would you do if you were suddenly faced with a stage four cancer diagnosis?
Would you go through with treatment, knowing that there’s a distinct possibility that it won’t work and that your final months could be spent feeling lousy as your family and friends look upon you with pity and you have no energy to do the things you love? Or would you forgo treatment and live it up, do everything you always wanted to do before you got too sick to do it?
Cathy Jamison picked option number two (at least thus far into the show’s first season), the livin’ it up part, to be the person she always wanted to be but wasn’t because she was afraid to dabble in wildness. This option appealed to her button-downed persona because, for too long she’s simply worn her respectable khakis, picked up after/took care of her son and child-like husband, strictly followed suburban society’s rules, used coupons and made responsible consumer choices.
Now, facing down a dire diagnosis, Cathy’s breakin’ free of all that and buyin’ the best champagne she can find because she fears she’ll never get the chance to before she dies. But can an entire show succeed if all the lead character does is run around and try to fulfill her every whim in a race against the cancer clock? Won’t that get old after a while, particularly if Cathy refuses to engage, intellectually or emotionally with those closest to her, with herself?
Sure, it’s fun to watch Cathy have a brand new red convertible delivered to her house without her having diligently researched it and checked in with what Consumer Reports had to say about it, like the pre-cancer Cathy would’ve done, before buying it. It was amusing to see her buy the biggest lobster in a restaurant’s lobster tank in order to save it (notable because she doesn’t think she can save herself … although I doubt that the lobster would last very long in the chlorinated pool into which she released it). And while it was disturbing and sad, I did chuckle as Cathy nuked the ethical doctor-patient line and pretended to be her dermatologist’s girlfriend as he went house hunting.
But can this go on for an entire season and still be interesting, watching Cathy act on every deep-seated desire and detonate her former life as she steps closer to what she believes is the end of it? I’m not so sure.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m a Laura Linney fan, but she can’t carry The Big C on her shoulders if it’s only going to be about watching various iterations of her acting “inappropriately” (asking her doctor to check out her fortysomething naked body to assess its attractiveness, previews showed her getting a bikini wax then pulling a Sharon Stone/Basic Instinct in view of a janitor who works at the school where she’s a teacher) or at least at odds with how she behaved pre-cancer diagnosis.
The difference between watching Linney’s Cathy allow the expectations and social mores under which she’d previously lived her life fall by the wayside as act as though there’s no filter between her thoughts/impulses and her behavior and, say, what I witnessed with Mad Men’s Don Draper falling apart (drinking, blacking out, having sex with people he didn’t remember meeting, with women whose services for which he’d paid, letting his work and his parenting suffer) was that Don’s decision to act upon his every whim was portrayed as being imbued with meaning because he was consciously punishing himself for allowing his marriage and family to fall apart.
With Cathy, all of her acting out seems like a lark as she whistles through the graveyard. True, there are always moments — a brief beat if you will — in each episode when it gets heavy (like when Cathy put her convertible in storage for her son’s18th 30th birthday) but other than those brief moments, we’re just seeing Cathy acting like as much of an indulgent teenager as she accuses her husband and son of being. And I’m afraid I’m going to quickly become bored watching her buy stuff and act on impulse.
Clacked by Meredith O'Brien 
on Sep 14, 2010 @ 13:00 EST5EDT
Again, I am of a differing opinion. While I can still see her trying to keep up the facade that she doesn’t care and is living the dream, inside she’s breaking. Subtle comments; about wishing she was buying her first house, seeing Paul play rugby, stepping out into the rain…Linney is portraying this just right. I don’t think the intent is to keep her flying high, but to fly as high as she can for as long as she can keep lying to herself. I find every episode both wonderful and painful in equal doses.
The Big C is about much more than impulsively acting out. It’s about making the best use of her remaining time because it is limited and precious. No other actress could make this work but Laura Linney. She attacks this role with abandon as Cathy keeps her terminal diagnosis from those who should be supporting her.
If her behavior is outrageous, then it is equally outrageous to live blandly, silently and safely. She has no time to ponder moral choices when raw experience is what she craves as her clock ticks away. Don’t miss the subtlety in this show. She buys a red convertible but makes a gift of it to her son while writing, “Happy 30th Birthday” on a card she puts on the windshield. She does that because she will not live to see his 30th birthday.
She walks into her neighbor’s house to find her sleeping. Cathy touches the wrinkles on her neighbor’s face because she will not live long enough to have her own. Though over the top on its face, this program is loaded with pathos, poignancy and the desperate race to love life enough before it deserts her.
Laura Linney is special. If you don’t like The Big C, you’re just not paying attention.