The Big C-op Out

If you have not watched the Season 3 premiere of The Big C or plan on catching up with the series later on. STOP READING. Spoilers ahead.

The Big C is not a great show. It's a decent way to spend a half hour but it has it's flaws. The two biggest things it has going for it are Laura Linney and Oliver Platt. I was very impressed with how Season 2 ended with Paul(Platt) having a heart attack and the show giving a pretty good inclination that he died. While it would have been a shame to lose Platt from the show, I applauded the fact that they would kill him off. It's ballsy, it would add another layer to the show with Cathy's(Linney) cancer not only being the thing that is probably going to kill her, it's also the thing that could cause her son to be an orphan. That would have been interesting. So when the show opens season 2 and Cathy is in a bar and she's asked to come up with a name for a drink and she calls it a "Thirsty Widow" I thought, "Sweet. They went through with it." When Cathy gets home from the bar and we see Oliver Platt sitting in the chair I was okay with it since I figured that she would be imagining dead people not unlike she sees her old neighbor. It's part comedy, so I get that Paul is a big part of the comic relief. I could let that slide.

But when it turned out Paul was actually alive, for real, I found myself pretty disappointed. And on top of that, Cathy's drug trial is working too. She has more time! Now the show can maybe go 6 or 7 seasons! For a show that seemed to be aiming for a quirky yet realistic look at a woman and her family dealing with he cancer, it really dropped the ball. It showed me that there are no stakes on this show. Sure, there has been a death in each of the two seasons so far but they were just essentially season long guest stars. Nobody that really mattered though and the neighbor who died in season 1 has appeared in a handful of episodes since anyway. So technically they can get away without losing any actors.