To follow up on my own post, here are the columns to which I was referring:
August 23, 2010 Monday Cancer, comedy a beguiling mix in sitcom 'The Big C,' KC patients say BYLINE: AARON BARNHART; The Kansas City Star SECTION: A; Pg. 1 LENGTH: 935 words Is cancer a laughing matter? More to the point, is America ready for a TV sitcom in which the heroine responds to a diagnosis of gravely advanced melanoma by burning a couch she never liked and playing an awful prank on her teenage son? That’s what the pay-cable network Showtime is asking its audience to do with its new comedy, “The Big C.” Laura Linney plays Cathy, a woman who reacts to her grim cancer report by letting her tightly wound life unravel through a series of outrageous moments that are played for laughs. Showtime reported that nearly 1.6 million viewers watched “The Big C” when it premiered last Monday, the largest audience to watch a new Showtime series in eight years. After the debut of “The Big C,” four people living with advanced-stage cancer sat down to watch and discuss the show’s first two episodes. Their consensus: While not very realistic at first, “The Big C” grew on them because of its puckishness toward the disease, an attitude not seen much in popular culture. “I almost didn’t come tonight, because I saw an ad for it on the Internet and I thought it’s going to be one of those cancer things that’s so dreary,” said Bob Legler of Overland Park. “I hate all those self-help books, like ‘Chicken Soup for the Soul.’ ” But after watching Cathy pour wine on the couch and set it aflame, Legler changed his mind. “I loved it because — what’s that store in Brookside that sells cancer cards?” “Stuff,” said Lynne Elder of Kansas City. “Stuff sells a line of humorous cancer cards and they’re great,” Legler said. “This show is like that. It just puts a different spin on things.” In “The Big C,” Cathy, a prim schoolteacher, begins throwing caution to the wind in a big way after her diagnosis. She decides to install a pool in her yard. She tries nude sunbathing. She kicks her irresponsible husband, Paul (played by Oliver Platt), out of the house while conspiring to keep their teenage son, Adam (played by Gabriel Basso), from going to soccer camp. Adding to their confusion, Cathy hasn’t told them she has cancer. Cathy also starts flirting with the dermatologist who diagnosed her melanoma, at one point asking him to rate her breasts. That scene didn’t do much for Gene Ledgerwood of Olathe. He was diagnosed with a virulent form of head and neck cancer in 2004. “I didn’t feel like joking with my doctor when he gave me a 50-50 chance of surviving the treatments and 50-50 chance of coming back in five years,” Ledgerwood said. But one day during treatment, that doctor, Stephen Smalley, suddenly told him: “Take off your shoes!” Ledgerwood obliged, but he wasn’t sure what was going on. Turns out, it was Smalley’s way of checking out his feet. “I want to make sure you’re keeping your weight up,” the doctor said. That, Ledgerwood admitted, “was kind of funny.” Which raises the question: Is there a cultural divide between people who have been through cancer and those who haven’t? Do you have to have suffered before you can laugh at the source of your suffering? The show’s creator, Darlene Hunt, said no. While promoting “The Big C” to TV critics last month, she insisted that her cancer comedy isn’t aimed at cancer patients. “It’s a show for everybody, because we are all on borrowed time,” Hunt said. But that line didn’t wash with the four viewers who volunteer for the cancer hot line sponsored by the Richard A. Bloch Cancer Foundation of Kansas City. Legler, whose thyroid cancer was so serious that he had trouble finding a medical center that would treat him, said: “I don’t think people are going to get this unless they’ve been through it.” Like Cathy on the show, Legler had a teenage son when the bad news came seven years ago. “When I got my diagnosis, I was a little more reserved, a little more uptight, especially with my son,” he said. “And since then we’ve gotten more adventurous. I’m not a big thrill seeker, but he’s big into extreme sports. So we went on an extreme Hummer tour in the Sonoran Desert.” Elder’s carcinoid cancer forced her, as well, to hunt down a doctor willing to treat it. She said the humor in the show didn’t bother her nearly as much as Cathy’s refusal to tell anyone about her diagnosis. “I’ve known a lot of people who had cancer, and I’ve never met anyone who’s taken it that way,” she said. But she identified completely when Cathy lamented about all the hours and days that she spent cleaning up after her family. “I have four children and I’m always spending so much time saying, ‘You’re not shutting the damn cabinets,’ ” Elder said. “My second one’s getting ready to go to college. That’s something in my own life I’ve had to step back and say, ‘You know what? It’s not important.’ ” Pat Trout was first told that she had cancer in 1998 and then, a year later, that it had returned more aggressively. She loved “The Big C” from start to finish. “I thought it was hysterical,” she said. As for Cathy’s refusal to divulge her condition, Trout said: “This is her way of denial. I think she will finally work herself to where it finally hits her. This is her way of getting through the first shock.” “I didn’t shed a tear for days,” Legler said. “You were in shock,” Trout said. “I was just in practicality mode,” Legler said. “Thinking very practically.” “That’s what guys do,” Ledgerwood said. “ ‘How much sick time do I have?’ ” Obviously, these are conversations that people who have never had cancer never have. TONIGHT “The Big C” airs at 9:30 p.m. today on Showtime. Episodes also are available on Showtime On Demand. Read how TV critic Aaron Barnhart, also a cancer survivor, reacted to “The Big C” and discuss the show on his blog, TVBarn.com. August 15, 2010 Sunday Why ‘The Big C’ is a big deal BYLINE: AARON BARNHART; The Kansas City Star SECTION: F; Pg. 1 LENGTH: 750 words In the tradition of “The Day After” and “My So-Called Life” comes “The Big C,” an important show premiering Monday that’s not necessarily a great show. Important, because its protagonist, a working mom played by Laura Linney, is diagnosed with late-stage cancer — and chooses to forgo treatment. However long she lives, be it the length of one television season or seven, and whatever that translates to in human years, we will be there to the bitter end. That is, if the endless parade of sitcom and cancer clichés doesn’t drive us away first. Linney’s character, Cathy, is a schoolteacher in Minneapolis whose life is as impeccably kept as any desperate housewife’s. She complains to her devil-may-care hubby, Paul (Oliver Platt), that she has lost months of her life picking up clothing and closing cabinet doors left open by the men in her house. Cathy’s larger problem, though, is that she’s walking around with Stage 4 melanoma. Other than her Hollywood-handsome doctor, no one knows about it but her. “I’m kind of a private person,” she tells the doctor. Private, perfectionistic and suddenly aware that the more contented life she may have dreamed of, one that lay somewhere in the hazy, post-teaching and perhaps post-husband future, is likely never to come her way. If she wants a future, she’s going to have to invent it now. So she tosses her husband out of the house and orders up a swimming pool. (“I thought we were saving for closet systems!” Paul says.) She decides she and her teenage son haven’t spent enough time together, so she conspires to rope him back in from soccer camp. And she adopts a failing student of hers, played by Gabourey Sidibe of “Precious” fame, in an obviously misguided attempt to bring her weight down and her scores up. All of this happens in short order and with not much subtlety. Cathy is asked to do a lot of crazy things — dig a hole in her yard, burn an unwanted piece of furniture, suddenly develop a prowess for paintball. In every scene, Linney makes the most of the material, with ample assists from Platt, who as Paul is puppy-dog eager to please but makes a fairly persuasive case that, in Cathy’s need-to-know world, he is not one to be trusted with her secret. Less convincing are the others in the show’s small, cable-budget-sized ensemble. Cathy’s brother (played by John Benjamin Hickey), who has made himself voluntarily homeless and yells profanities at people in parking lots, manages to be both unlikable and a poor sounding board for Cathy to reveal herself. A crusty neighbor named Marlene (Phyllis Somerville) despises Cathy so much, they are bound to become close friends by the end of the season. By the way, nobody on this show sounds even vaguely Minnesotan — why not set the show in Connecticut, where it was actually filmed? Tonally, the “The Big C” is more like its Showtime cousins “Weeds” and “Californication” than it is like “Nurse Jackie” or “United States of Tara,” which is surprising. If you wanted to showcase a talent like Linney, wouldn’t you pick the shows that feature real women with ordinary lives faced with extraordinary circumstances rather than the show with the pot-dealing mom who’s constantly on the lam? Showtime has a track record of patience with emerging shows, and Linney’s star power alone should be enough to guarantee it three seasons. Jenny Bicks, an executive producer and writer on the series, and herself a cancer survivor, has said that if there is a lesson to “The Big C,” it is “don’t wait until you get cancer to make yourself happy.” Still, “The Big C” has a long way to go. The support group in the third episode is atrocious. It’s more like a taping of Ellen DeGeneres’ talk show than any support group I’ve ever been in. (For one thing, people are not asked to spill their guts while they’re still closing the door behind them.) The thing about cancer is, when you get it, you’re sure it’s going to change your life. In some ways it does; in many ways, often, it does not. The people behind “The Big C” have decided that showing Cathy’s life going end-over-end is more entertaining. I think a less conventional show, however, could emerge if they take a less obvious approach: namely, stop tinkering with Cathy and let her be herself (whoever that is). If “The Big C” took a slightly less farcical and slightly more documentarian approach to living with cancer, it could speak to millions. If not, maybe the next show that comes along will. That’s what makes “The Big C” an important show, regardless. -- TV or Not TV .... The Smartest (TV) People! You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TV or Not TV" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/tvornottv?hl=en
