I knew this episode was going to be a game-changer based on its first few minutes when Marlene slapped Cathy across the face upon learning that Cathy had cheated on Paul. Then, a few moments later, Cathy referred to herself as a “dying person” and wondered aloud if getting back in touch with God would afford her “some sense of peace.”
When you go from pretending to house hunt with your cute, single doctor and impulsively buying a red sports car, to musing about whether God could provide you with some solace, you’ve gone to an entirely different place.
Of all the episodes in The Big C this season, this one was my favorite. Maybe it was because characters like Marlene and Andrea, and to some extent Rebecca, were telling Cathy what I’ve been thinking this whole time: that the lies and passive aggressive behavior weren’t helping Cathy come to terms with her situation. She didn’t seem any happier. She didn’t seem as though she’d found any peace in dealing with her dire diagnosis by avoiding her life or anything truly meaningful, what with her aimlessly flitting from thing to thing to thing. (Confronting her father a few episodes back was pretty substantive though.)
Cathy — who’d been portrayed as a super-serious, super-responsible, khakis-wearing suburbanite before learning that she had cancer — didn’t seem like the type of person who could keep pretending that what was happening to her wasn’t really happening by distracting herself by getting a bikini wax, drinking pricey champagne and buying herself a giant wedding cake. Thus, I felt myself growing annoyed with Cathy and bored with her superficial distraction-seeking.
But it took Marlene’s bracing slap and Andrea threatening to drop out of summer school — which would mean she wouldn’t graduate from high school the following year — to wake Cathy up. Andrea lied, right to Cathy’s face, saying her home life was a druggie mess, that her dad was dead. The delicious truth was that Andrea’s parents were living a life a lot like Cathy’s, in a pretty home in the ‘burbs. Andrea’s dad wasn’t dead, he was preparing steaks for dinner when Cathy showed up at the house. In-your-face Andrea is a member of her church choir.
As the camera lingered over the sign in front of Andrea’s church which read, “Need a do-over? Our God is the God of second chances,” the scenes in church were strong, moving and funny as the hat-wearing Cathy accidentally let slip the “f” word and asked the congregation to pray for her because she was sitting on “a huge pile of lies” and had turned her “once average life” into an abject mess. The show does a fine job of lightening the utter seriousness of the show’s premise with comic undertones.
But the best scene in “Divine Intervention” came in the form of Cathy presenting a jar of olives to Paul, fresh from his booty call. Loved how Cathy didn’t even flinch upon seeing Tina leave, or when Paul threw it in her face that he’d just had sex with Tina. Cathy just smiled, extended her symbolic olives and told him those three, life-altering words, “I have cancer.”
Now I’m really curious as to how this is going to play out for the final three episodes.
Clacked by Meredith O'Brien 
on Oct 26, 2010 @ 13:12 EST5EDT
