"I do not know who I am this summer," Kathy said to him.
While the mood of Kathy and persona often change during the three episodes of "Big C" I watched, I'm pretty well know who and what it will. How to play always fabulous Laura Linney, it is another in a long line of movie and television characters (recent ancestral include TV, Mary-Louise Parker for "Weeds" and Bryan Cranston for "Breaking Bad"), who respond to life changes - or, in this case, life-threatening - news, determined to change that life even more.
Kathy is the wife (Paul Oliver Platt's), mother (Adam Gabriel Basso) and a high school teacher in a suburb of Minneapolis. Her life was gentle and joyless. The series' opening scene, it allows the contractor to dissuade her for swimming, she wants it to expand its deck instead, and it is clear that she has spent years satisfied wants of others.
But Kathy secret: she has a serious case of skin cancer. She tells her recruit's oncologist, Dr. Todd (Reid Scott of "My Boys"), she does not want chemotherapy because she would not lose her hair, but ultimately, doctors and patients to recognize that cancer can not be treatment. (Scott and Linney is relaxed, totally sincere touch that one part of the show that feels completely original.) So, rather than spend all their shortened lifespan is currently taking care of others, Katie decides she is going to reinvent myself a free spirit, who does what she wants - and who can not tell Paul, Adam, Sean (John Benjamin Hickey), or anyone else about her condition.
Her justification - that if her family found her relationship with them will change too much for her soul - it makes sense for about half a second, until it becomes clear that radically change their behavior, not telling anyone why change things just like how much, if not more, than, truth will prevail. She wants to be closer to his son, for example, but its context-free clinginess only pushes him away.
But even if it is flimsy rationale, it still gives her license to operate cuh-razy! She deliberately spill wine on her couch! She carthweels in the hallway at school! She shoots at a school bus with paintball guns! It is not so strange, as Sean - save the planet activist who is homeless, does not bathe and eat only food that was thrown out or is about to be, and in which every scene is fraught with the air of self-righteous fantasy, unfortunately, affects most comedies cable - but by the end of summer, it can be closed.
And if the actress playing Cathy was not so talented and committed as Laura Linney, "Big C" can be unbearable.
Fortunately, the creative team - including founder Darlene Hunt and producer Jenny Bicks, Sex and the City "alum which makes cancer survivor (it was bought by Porsche after the diagnosis) - has Linney and Platt (played by the same overgrown a child he did on "Huff Showtime", but played it with pleasure), and Gabourey Sidibe. And it does cast "Big C", it seems, is less than comforting almost banal in its vicinity.
In particular, the show comes most of all, when life is on a Sidibe Linney, Academy Award "precious" star, who is played by a student from Katy, elegant, overweight girl, whom Cathy decides to make a personal project.
When Andrea arrives late to class in summer school and loudly ridiculed the teaching style Cathy, Cathy pulls her aside and reduce through it, saying: "You can not be fat and mean, Andrea." Fat people are funny for some reason. Fat repels people, but the joy attracts them. You can be fat and jolly and skinny bitches. It depends on you. "
This is a beautiful moment: Ice Queen trying to warm up and go, but too impatient and tactless to do it any other way, and joy in Linney the opportunity to speak and do whatever comes to mind is contagious. One day, Kathy, Andrea takes under his wing and encourages her 100 dollars for every pound lost, Sidibe just as charming as the young woman slowly realizing that the boundaries of her life quickly redrawn.
As a "Nurse Jackie" and "Hung", "Big C", not so much as a comedy half-hour drama with a few laughs (most of whom come from Sidibe and Platt), and show less deep and the novel than he seems to think he . But the performances are strong enough that I want to stay on his last journey Cathy Jamieson, even if the path feels particularly well come.
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