Having only seen the first season of Nurse Jackie and up to a bit of the second season of Weeds, I can’t make a comparison as to where The Big C stands. Nor would I want to, because what’s remarkable here is that all three shows have female leads, which is often rare on television today outside of Shonda Rhimes shows on ABC. But most importantly, they all have talented female leads. With Laura Linney as the cancer-stricken Cathy Jamison, whose son Adam (Gabriel Basso) now knows that she has cancer and is having trouble dealing with it despite his insistence that he isn’t, and whose husband Paul (Oliver Platt) is a strong support system, though he’s beginning to slip dangerously even though he doesn’t show it to Cathy, there’s such a strong performance of sheer iron will and emotional turmoil simultaneously. It’s remarkable here how this series, created by Darlene Hunt, deftly navigates between heavy drama and comedy. There’s no jarring change, no comedic moment that’s so obviously inserted just to lighten the load. This is life for Cathy, as she struggles to keep it, even as she also deals with Sean, her manic-depressive brother (John Benjamin Hickey), and an at-first obnoxious fellow clinical trial participant (Hugh Dancy), who turns out to truly know what she’s going through because he’s gone through it much longer, knows that hope is generally dim, but there is still hope.
There is a kind of satisfying dance between the writers and the actors. Notes taken while watching this season show more quotes copied verbatim than actual notes about these 13 episodes. In “Boo!”, the Halloween episode, Cathy sits up in bed, ahead of her clinical trial that day, unable to sleep, and Paul loudly wonders if it’s the neighbor’s skeleton flopping against the window that’s keeping her up. Cathy tells Paul that the skeleton isn’t keeping her up, referencing it as a “he,” and Paul replies, “How do you know it’s a he? You can’t even tell the gender of a skeleton. That’s what makes them extra creepy.” With observations like that that make you wonder why you hadn’t thought of them before since they’re so true, one wonders about the writers’ room for The Big C. Is there a writers’ room? Do the writers gather to hash out the episodes? If they do, and there likely is a writers’ room, you have to marvel at such likely discussions about skeletons and a spot-on description of Sean by Andrea (Gabourey Sidibe) in the episode “The Last Thanksgiving.”
Speaking of Sidibe, known for Precious, but becoming an even more remarkable actress in her own right, she’s one of many talented actors in this cast, who help the writing make that seemingly always easy transition from drama to comedy and back again. Cynthia Nixon is here as Sean’s girlfriend Rebecca, whose pregnant with his child. Alda plays Dr. Atticus Sherman, whose clinical trial Cathy hopes to get into and does. Parker Posey plays Poppy Kowalski, who Adam meets in a kids of cancer chat room, and confounds Adam’s expectations that she’s actually 17, which she’s definitely not. Posey makes the most out of her role, just like Alda does in his portrayal of Sherman, who Cathy is lucky to have. There are no wrong-headed performances here. Each one is compelling, showing yet again that a 30-minute drama is a viable form on television. Weeds does it and so does Nurse Jackie, and sometimes you don’t need the whole hour to get the story across. Because it’s more compact, it’s often more powerful.
This is especially true in the final moments of the season finale “Crossing the Line,” in an is-he-or-isn’t-he? shocker. Jaws will be agape. It can’t possibly be true, not with everything that Cathy has gone through, in trying to hold so much together.
I’ve nearly gone this entire review without mentioning Phyllis Somerville, whose Marlene killed herself at the end of the first season, and occasionally appears as a ghost to Cathy in the run of this season. This makes that shocker ever more potent and Cathy’s horrified look justifies it. Somerville makes it work.
There is a smattering of deleted scenes across all three discs, shown without context being listed, though if you’ve seen these episodes, then you can probably recognize where they’ve come from. Outtakes are generously provided on disc 2, six minutes of them, including Laura Linney thanking Alan Alda for his work on the show, presenting him with cannolis, which make sense upon seeing one of the scenes in the season. Previews of The Vow, The Artist, In Darkness, A Separation, and Salmon Fishing in the Yemen are provided on disc 3.
The Big C should be seen to appreciate that while television is usually shaky on the network side, the cable side is doing quite well, thank you very much. Linney is a perfect anchor, with outstanding support from so many great actors that it’s amazing they could all be on one show. But here they are, giving it their all with Linney, as great as she is. You can’t ask for better. It’s best.
