The Big C – A team of one

So she’s going to do this thing pretty much alone, shunning the help of well meaning — though really pushy — people, and shutting out those who are closest to her.

She’s going to be like an I-can-go-it-alone Dr. House of the cancer set: She doesn’t want any help because there’s not much that can be done, and no, she doesn’t want to talk about it, thank you very much.

Three episodes into The Big C, I’m still finding myself struggling to get a handle on Cathy Jamison. I can’t tell if she really wants her family members to suddenly, on their own, read her mind and figure out how she wants them to behave, in some sort of meta-passive aggressive game of chess that no one else realizes they’re playing, or if she really and truly doesn’t want any help from anyone and wants to be allowed to act in any way she sees fit without any interference or discussions with anyone.

I also can’t decide if Cathy’s way of coping with her cancer is some kind of an anti-hero, realistic, healthy approach — doing it on her own terms without having to worry about emotionally guiding her husband and son through this with her — or whether she’s just having a series of knee-jerk, fearful, erratic reactions to her diagnosis because she thinks everyone else around her “couldn’t handle” the news, or wouldn’t “handle” it the way she’d like them to.

In some ways, I still feel like Cathy is punishing those close to her for not figuring out what’s going on with her as she spurned Paul’s romantic gesture by questioning who’s going to clean up the sand in the living room, and she continued to allow Adam to remain in the dark as he brooded over missing soccer camp and wondered what’s causing his mom’s new “weird” behavior.

But I’ll tell you this, when I watched Cathy’s face during her oddball dinner party — as Adam joked around with Andrea, and her brother Sean nuzzled with his girlfriend — the loneliness Cathy felt was palpable as she sat at the head of the table, talking to no one. Her only companions were her wine and her cancer.

And while her cantankerous neighbor Marlene — who’s just as difficult to deal with as Cathy, who deludes herself into thinking she’s an easy person with whom to deal — figured out that Cathy has cancer, I can’t see Marlene providing the kind of emotional support it appears that Cathy is craving.

Previews showed Cathy going house shopping with her dermatologist, with whom she’s having a borderline inappropriate relationship (including her asking him to check out her body and him telling her she’s got a great “rack”). Obviously Cathy wants to be emotionally close to someone as she ventures into this uncharted territory, but maybe she’s just looking for someone who doesn’t have expectations of her (like thinking of cancer as a “gift” which changes your life, or expecting her to be the same old, dependable wife and mother when she’s decided she no longer wants to be play those roles).

Even if she does find solace, in one form or another, with her doctor, I continue to find myself feeling sorry for Cathy’s family members who are being kept in the dark, particularly for her dorky husband who has no idea what prompted this radical change in his wife’s behavior. Perhaps the show’s writers have decided to create a character whose reaction to her cancer is going to be unlike anything we’ve seen yet on TV. Perhaps. I’m hoping that’s what they’re going for.

Clacked by Meredith O'Brien
on Aug 31, 2010 @ 16:05 EST5EDT