Watch The Big C
Cancer appears an unlikely theme for a comedy, but leave it to Showtime, currently picking laughs from an adulterous, pain killer-addicted nurse (Jackie) and a suburban mother and pot dealer (Weeds).
Cathy was a sweet, mild-mannered teacher, wife and mother in perfect control of her beautiful suburban home, but not her man-child husband (Oliver Platt), her horrifyingly bratty teen son (Gabriel Basso) or her self-righteous Dumpster-diving brother (John Benjamin Hickey).
Just after being diagnosed with Stage 4 melanoma, she starts feeling her way through both the finality of her condition and what she’s going to do with the rest of her life, that life that’s going to be so much shorter than she’d thought.
While Cathy’s story is framed by death, the emotions brought up by a cancer diagnosis can be just as strong when, thankfully, the news is better.
A melanoma diagnosis, according to Tameka Peay, executive director of West Palm Beach’s Richard David Kann Melanoma Foundation, invites frustration, because “it can be prevented, 99 percent of the time. One in three people in Florida get (some form of) skin cancer. It’s very prevalent here.”
In Showtime’s The Big C, which premieres this Monday at 10:30 p.m., terminal cancer patient Cathy Jamison (Laura Linney) just wants a pool.