“I’m not ready to tell them yet.”
Though The Big C’s Cathy Jamison pushed back against her neighbor Marlene’s frequent cajoling that she should tell her son and husband about her cancer, Cathy seemed as though she was inching a tad closer to considering the possibility of letting them in on her secret, what with the amorous chocolate fountain moment with Paul, the butt “high”-fives and the matching family “Drain Gang” T-shirts.
For perhaps the first time, I felt as though we were seeing Cathy reveal her vulnerable side, entertain the notion of allowing her family have to access her authentic feelings as a way to test the waters to see if their suburban bubble could withstand the fall-out of her life-altering news.
Though her doctor told her not to blame herself for all of this, the discovery of a new cancerous bump made Cathy start to panic about karma and about the fact that she didn’t think she’d “been a very good person lately.”
After that news, Cathy broke it off with Lenny, the muralist saying, “I can’t cheat on my husband … I want to be better than that woman.” She reunited the Jamison family’s charity bathtub derby team, the “Drain Gang,” and decided she’d host an after-race party at her house. She slept with Paul, much to his sheer delight, and soon thereafter all three Jamisons were happily dancing together after Paul and Adam won the bathtub race.
Before the Jamisons emerged victorious, Marlene attempted once more to persuade Cathy to come clean and Cathy responded with sparkling clarity: “My surgery is tomorrow. Can’t I just have fun today? Can’t I just enjoy the moment, see the people I love smiling big smiles without having it all be ruined? I refuse to believe that makes me a bad person … Stop telling me to tell them.”
Then Paul erased all those big smiles and, ironically, ruined it all, just when it seemed as though Cathy was possibly going to tell him about her cancer diagnosis or at least about her surgery the next day, by drunkenly and foolishly telling her that he’d allowed the “rugby slut” to give him a hand-job. “I felt so damned guilty about the hand incident,” Paul said, unwittingly sabotaging Cathy’s desire to create a “new, better family.”
Cathy realized that the only thing that had changed in her family was her and went solo to get her lump removed. When Marlene never showed to pick her up, Cathy didn’t seem so worried about karma anymore and called Lenny to pick her up.
During the entire episode, I kept thinking about Dr. Todd’s remark, “Cancer is one of those illnesses where all the patients think they’re being punished,” and wondering how much that sentiment has to do with Cathy’s fear of karma and not being a “very good person.”
Clacked by Meredith O'Brien 
on Sep 28, 2010 @ 13:00 EST5EDT
