'The Big C' Treats Cancer as Comedy

Aug. 16, 2010 — -- Cancer, comedy: just putting the two words next to each other seems wrong, like playing Katy Perry at a funeral.

But making the wrong feel so right is Showtime's speciality. (See: "Dexter," "Californication," "Weeds.") Now comes "The Big C," which premieres tonight on the cable channel, about a teacher (Laura Linney) who finds out she has stage four melanoma and decides she doesn't want to do a damn thing about it.

Well, that's not entirely true -- Linney's character, Cathy Jamison, doesn't want the pain, the helplessness, the ordeal of treating cancer. (She tells her doctor that she especially does not want to lose her lovely blond locks of hair.) Initially, she doesn't even tell her estranged husband (Oliver Platt) or her family about her diagnosis.

But she does use the disease as an excuse to "grab life by the balls." That means installing a full-length swimming pool in her too-tiny front yard, adopting a diet of desserts and liquor, using sick practical jokes to con her son into learning valuable life lessons, and spilling red wine on her beige couch with abandon.

This is not a teary, hug-filled, "everything's going to be OK" portrayal of terminal disease. This is "well, I'm out of here soon, so I'm going to ditch this type-A facade, do a few cartwheels, pour a drink, light up a cigarette and have some fun."

"I don't think people are going to watch it thinking she suffers nobly with a tear in her eye," said John Benjamin Hickey, who plays Cathy's eco-extremist brother, Sean. "I think really outrageous and extraordinary things happen in the first season of the show that will put to rest anyone's notion that this is going to be dark and serious."

For example: midway through "The Big C's" pilot, Cathy's teenage son walks into the bathroom to find what looks like his mother dead in a blood-filled bathtub. He runs away screaming -- while she slips into a robe and smirks, relishing her comeback for an earlier prank in which he pretended to chop off the tip of his finger while cutting vegetables. She then shoves him back into the bathroom, pours a pot of chili in the toilet, and tells him to learn how to use a plunger (sans the help of his iPhone, which she steals). She locks the door, turns up "I'll Take You There" and dumps half a bottle of red wine on the sofa before stretching out with a smile.