The Big C Information

The Big C is a Showtime original television series created by Darlene Hunt which premiered on August 16, 2010. It drew the largest audience for a Showtime original series premiere in eight years. The second season premiered on June 27, 2011. The third season premiered on April 8, 2012. On July 31, 2012, The Big C was renewed for a fourth and final season, which is set to premiere on Monday, April 29, 2013.

Premise

The show follows teacher Cathy Jamisona reserved, suburban wife and mother who is diagnosed with melanoma. The realization of this forces her to really begin to live for the first time in her adult life. At first she chooses to keep her diagnosis from her family, behaving in ways they find puzzling and increasingly bizarre. She finds new freedom to express herself. As the show progresses, Cathy allows her family and some new friends to support her as she copes with her terminal diagnosis, and finds both humor and pathos in the many idiosyncratic relationships in her life.

Cast

Main cast

• Laura Linney as Catherine "Cathy" Jamison. Cathy is a high school teacher who, at the start of the series, has been recently diagnosed with terminal (stage IV) melanoma. Reluctant to burden her family and friends with the news, she keeps it a secret for months. She does reveal her illness to elderly neighbor Marlene (who later commits suicide) and her dog. Her behavior dramatically changes as she begins to make reckless choices in the face of oncoming death. These include kicking her husband out of the house, spending money on an expensive car, and having an affair. She befriends Andrea, a mouthy student in her summer English class. Desperate to make sure her teenage son is on the right path before she dies, she unintentionally drives a rift between them. She ends her affair when it is exposed, and allows her husband to move back in after finally revealing to him that she is sick. She gives Marlene's house, which Marlene left to Cathy in her will, to her brother Sean. She decides to undergo a treatment with great risks because she wants to live.
• Oliver Platt as Paul Jamison, Cathy's husband. Paul has a somewhat childlike approach to life, and Cathy kicks him out of the house because she is fed up looking after him. He doesn't really understand the situation but appeases her in the hopes that their marriage can be repaired. While separated, he has a sexual encounter with another woman; this is ultimately forgiven in the face of Cathy's affair. After Cathy reveals her cancer to him, he moves back in and becomes overly-attentive and doting. At the end of the second season finale episode Paul appears to Cathy as a hallucination at the end of the marathon she runs and then a cut scene shows him being worked on by an EMS team after ingesting cocaine earlier in the day. Platt had previously co-starred with Laura Linney in the film Kinsey.
• John Benjamin Hickey as Sean Tolke, Cathy's brother. Sean is an eccentric, homeless, anti-establishment environmentalist. He is frequently dirty and eats out of garbage cans. Though somewhat removed in their relationship, Cathy begins making a concerned effort to get closer to him after she is diagnosed with cancer. He starts a relationship with Cathy's college friend Rebecca; it ends badly. At one point Cathy reveals her illness to him and he has an emotional breakdown; she reneges, claiming she made it up to get a reaction. In the season one finale, Rebecca reveals to Sean that she is pregnant. At the beginning of Season Two, Sean and Rebecca have moved into Marlene's house. It's revealed that Sean suffers from bipolar disorder but has refused to treat it in the past. He begins taking medications in order to become a more sane person for his unborn child, but then goes off them when Rebecca miscarries. After Rebecca leaves Sean, he has an emotional downward spiral that causes him to lash out against Cathy and other family members. He comes home at the end of second season, and tells Cathy that he was working for a traveling circus. In the third season, Sean gets a job as a janitor at Adam's school. After finally getting a landline, he starts getting calls for "Willy Wanker"; discovering that the last person who had the phone number was a gay phone sex operator. Sean starts his own phone sex operation as a way to make extra money, and ends up connecting with a client named Tim. He then starts a relationship with him and his wife Giselle, but they break it off when Sean's presence starts to negatively effect their marriage.
• Gabriel Basso as Adam Jamison, Cathy and Paul's son. A typical teenager, he resists his mother's sudden increase in attention and affection. He strikes an unsteady friendship with schoolmate Andrea, but it falls apart after he blanches when it is insinuated by others that they are sexually intimate. After getting in trouble, he is punished by being forced to do house chores for Marlene. He is the first to realize Marlene has Alzheimer's disease. In season one episode "Everything that rises must Converge", Marlene, not recognizing Adam, pulls a gun on him and chases him out of her home. Adam does not know about his mother's cancer until the season one finale. While his mother is in the hospital getting treatment, he discovers a key to a storage locker that is filled with hundreds of gifts for his future birthdays, holidays and major life events. He realizes his mother is not going to live very long and finally reacts emotionally. At the beginning of season two, Adam feels frustrated with all the attention he's been getting at school due to Cathy's illness. He wants to pursue a sexual relationship with his girlfriend Mia, who he started dating at the end of season one, but she wants to take things slow. He then sleeps with classmate Emily, but refuses to take any responsibility for his actions. While his parent's are away, Adam has sex with a hooker/dominatrix in their bedroom, but then has Uncle Sean help get rid of her. In the episode "The little C", it is revealed that Adam got crabs from his encounter with the hooker, and accidentally exposed Cathy and Paul. He confesses this to them, and Cathy tells Mia thinking Adam got it from her. Mia promptly dumps him, and refuses to give him any sympathy due to his mother's illness. He then begins chatting with a girl named Poppy through an online cancer support group. When they finally meet, Adam discovers that Poppy is actually a thirty-something year old woman. Despite this, they bond over their immature sense of humor, and their parent's diseases. Before the family is supposed to go to Italy for Christmas, Adam discovers that Poppy's father has actually been dead for several years. He confronts Poppy, but she explains that once he loses his mom, he will feel like a part of him is missing. In the third season, Adam has joined a prayer group at school, where he meets the extremely religious Jessie.
• Cynthia Nixon as Rebecca, Cathy's college roommate and long-time friend. She resurfaces at Cathy's birthday party after a long absence. When she begins a sexual relationship with Sean, Cathy reveals that she has always found Rebecca to be selfish and a bad friend, which serves as a wake-up call and leads to the end of the romance. In the finale she reveals to Sean she is pregnant with his child, after which he arrives at her hotel to tell her he is wanting to raise the child together. She later moves in with Sean and they fall in love, becoming engaged. However, when Rebecca miscarries their child Sean goes off his meds leaving Rebecca no choice but to leave him.
• Gabourey Sidibe as Andrea Jackson (Season 3, recurring previously), a mouthy and combative student in Cathy's class. Cathy takes an interest in her and offers her a cash reward for losing weight. She is the first person to realize Cathy is having an affair. She lies to Cathy about her upbringing and economic status, claiming her mother is a drug addict and they live in poverty. Cathy visits their home to discover she lives in a lovely upper middle class home with two educated, caring parents. In the second season, Andrea comes to live with Cathy and her family due to her parents moving away to Africa for missionary work. She starts dating Paul's co-worker Myk, and gets engaged to him. But then Paul reveals that Myk is in the country illegally, and might be only marrying her for a green card. Heartbroken, Andrea spends her winter break in Africa and connects with her heritage.

Recurring cast

• Reid Scott as Dr. Todd Mauer, Cathy's oncologist and friend. Compassionate and concerned, he goes beyond the doctor/patient relationship by going on several personal outings with Cathy. He begins to become her confidante as she tells him all of the secrets she cannot tell her family. He allows her to accompany him while house shopping for him and his girlfriend. He reluctantly accompanies Cathy to Canada for an alternative therapy treatment, and while there reveals that he is "confused" and has feelings for her.
• Phyllis Somerville as Marlene (Season 1, recurring afterward), Cathy's elderly neighbor and friend. Somewhat crotchety, Marlene lost her husband to cancer many years earlier. She has two daughters, from whom she is estranged. Although she finds Cathy annoying first, the two quickly become friends, eventually becoming close to the whole family. Marlene is the first person to know Cathy's secret. She figures it out after her dog keeps stalking Cathy, because dogs can supposedly "smell" cancer. Marlene starts to exhibit episodes of memory loss, often suddenly forgetting where she is and who people are. She finally admits to Cathy that she has Alzheimer's. She pulls a gun on Adam, not recognizing who he is, and her horror of what she might do as she continues to deteriorate makes her decide to kill herself. At the beginning of the second season, she appears to Cathy during hallucinations.
• Nadia Dajani as Tina, who went to High School with Cathy and Paul and was then known as "Rugby Slut". Always attending the local rugby games, not saying die to her youth, she starts an affair with Paul (Paulie) after Cathy kicks him out. Cathy discovers their affair when she comes to offer Paul an olive branch and sees Tina leaving with her thong.
• Idris Elba as Lenny, a painter at Cathy's school, and Cathy's love-interest in a number of episodes. They have a brief affair but Cathy ends it as she re-examines her feelings for Paul.
• Hugh Dancy as Lee, a fellow patient in Cathy's clinical trial introduced in season two. Cathy thinks Lee is inappropriately interested in her until he comes out as gay. She and Lee find comfort in each other due to their cancer, and become "clinical trial" buddies. However, their relationship becomes strained when the treatment begins to work for Cathy and not Lee. As she encourages him to fight, he refuses. Ultimately Lee dies from his cancer, leaving Cathy devastated.

Critical reception

The Big C's pilot episode was received positively, while subsequent episodes received mixed reviews. Season One received an overall score of 66 on Metacritic. Alessandra Stanley of The New York Times wrote: "The Big C works because most of the writing is strong and believable, and so is Ms. Linney, who rarely sounds a false note and here has perfect pitch... the series is at its best when sardonic and subdued." Washington Post critic Hank Stuever said: "Buoyed by scalpel-sharp writing and even keener performances, The Big C?walks a fine line of having it both ways. It's for people who are repelled by the warm-fuzzy, disease-o'-the-week dramas of cable television," while EW.com's Ken Tucker quibbled with its major plot point: "My big problem with The Big C concerns a crucial decision the show made for the early episodes: Cathy declines to tell those closest to her that she has cancer. While this is one of the many different reactions people have to such a diagnosis in real life, in a comedy-drama like this, it makes everyone around her seem a bit dim."

The second season received similar reviews to the first, receiving a score of 64 on Metacritic. Maureen Ryan of AOL TV stated that "Having a character and her family deal with a potentially fatal illness is such a rich arena for both drama and black comedy, but so far, The Big C hasn't been able to mine that topic with consistent freshness and depth." Ken Tucker of Entertainment Weekly was critical towards the show, but commended the acting, stating that "Much of The Big C's unoriginal dramatization of cancer concerns is mitigated by the fresh, dynamic performances of Linney and Oliver Platt."

The third season received a score of 67 on Metacritic.

International broadcasting

Country	Network	Series Premiere
	GEM	September 29, 2010
	ORF1	March 26, 2012
	HBO	January 16, 2011
	bTV Comedy	January 13, 2013
	Super Channel	September 1, 2010
	Mega Channel	Summer 2012
	TV3 Puls	June 12, 2012
	YLE TV1	October 15, 2011
	[[Canal+]]	December 8, 2011
	FOX	April 5, 2011
	RUV	February 17, 2011
	RTE	June 17, 2011
	HOT3	April 4, 2011
	FoxLife	June 21, 2011
	Fox Life	April 20, 2010
	TV3	October 12, 2010
	Tele 5	March 30, 2012
	M-NET	May 17, 2011
	POP BRIO	September 7, 2011
	SVT	February 19, 2011
	ComedyMax	October 2, 2010
	More4	February 3, 2011
	HBO	January 22, 2011
	TV2	January 3, 2012
	TVSéries	October 2011

Awards and nominations

Year	Award	Category	Nominee	Result
2010	Satellite Award	Television Series (Musical or Comedy)	Series
		Best Actress - Television Series (Musical or Comedy)	Laura Linney
2011	Golden Globe Award	Television Series (Musical Or Comedy)	Series
		Best Actress - Television Series (Musical or Comedy)	Laura Linney
	American Cinema Editors Award	Best Edited Half Hour Series for Television	Brian A. Kates
	Primetime Emmy Award	Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series	Laura Linney
		Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Comedy Series	Idris Elba
		Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Casting for a Comedy Series	Julie Tucker and Ross Meyerson
	Satellite Award	Television Series (Musical or Comedy)	Series
		Best Actress - Television Series (Musical or Comedy)	Laura Linney
2012	Golden Globe Award	Best Actress - Television Series (Musical or Comedy)
	Primetime Emmy Award	Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Casting for a Comedy Series	Bernard Telsey