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By Elaine Schattner, MD, on September 28th, 2011
Last night Showtime aired the second season’s finale of the Big C. As usual, there was no detail whatsoever about Cathy’s advanced melanoma or treatment.
I didn’t think the show could get worse, in the reality-of-having-cancer sense, but it did. Cathy, who still looks great and complains of no physical problems, determinately runs, walks and trudges through a New Year’s marathon. OK, that might happen, but it shouldn’t.
Biggest mistake ever in this series so far: In a scene near the end, Cathy’s first oncologist shows up at the race to see her meet the finish line. While they’re waiting, he and Cathy’s teenage son Adam go to a diner. Adam asks the doctor about his mom’s prognosis, and the oncologist answers.
It’s a blatant, medical ethics 101 no-no — talking to a patient’s family member without her permission. And to a minor, no less.
I just read the program has been renewed for a 3rd Season.
See more End of the Big C Season 2, ML Coverage Stops
By Elaine Schattner, MD, on September 20th, 2011
I stayed up last night watching the Big C. The latest episode, The Darkest Day, takes place on Dec 21 at the end of the show’s pseudo-fall second season.
Here, two things happen of above-average interest to this doctor-patient-viewer:
First, the characters’ usual and crude shenanigans are interrupted by Cathy’s visit to a class of future cancer doctors. (Can we say “oncologists”? No, it’s too big a word for this program.)
Second, Cathy aborts her family’s planned vacation to stay with her friend Lee, who’s dying. Her decision to stay with Lee is perhaps the most interesting, and controversial, decision she’s made so far, but I won’t harp on this, because how can anyone judge what she’s doing?
The lecture scene:
Dr. Sherman (Alan Alda) “presents” Cathy (Laura Linney) to his class, a group of diverse young people most of whom are taking notes on (Apple – another story) laptops in a small lecture style room. The
See more Cathy Tells Future Cancer Docs to Shut their Laptops and Speak Plainly
By Elaine Schattner, MD, on September 15th, 2011
Watching the Big C feels like a chore lately.
It reminds me of the feeling I used to get when I had to see and examine a patient in the hospital, under my care for some administrative non-reason, who didn’t need to be in the hospital IMO, and whose hospital presence took time my time away from patients who needed my attention. But because I was responsible, I’d go and see her every day just the same, and listen and examine, make notes and occasional suggestions.
The show is terrible. There, I said it on the Internet.
In the most recent episode, Cathy (the melanoma patient who’s said to be responding to a treatment about which viewers know nothing) runs into her oncologist at the pool where she symptom-freely coaches a swim team. The doctor, portrayed by Alan Alda, has a young wife who talks openly about sex with her husband and invites Cathy to a meal in their home.
See more ‘The Big C’ is Failing
By Elaine Schattner, MD, on September 12th, 2011
 A Labor Day break in broadcasting afforded some respite from the Big C. The latest episode continues with its focus on normal and not-so-normal life among Cathy’s family and friends.
On the family front, her teenage son “Adam” goes with the woman he met on-line in a cancer kids’ support forum to her high school reunion and has a good time there, despite a strange blip in which she calls from the ladies’ room and asks him to buy her tampons. Cathy’s brother, said to have manic depression but to this doctor-TV-critic seeming more like a schizophrenic, continues to deteriorate off his meds. Cathy’s overweight husband buys a fancy scale with a computerized voice that tells him his “metabolic age” is too high.
About cancer, there’s little on screen: Lee, Cathy’s “cancer friend” and clinical trial companion, is coughing, but that detail goes unmentioned. He mentions that Dr. Sherman, the clinical trials oncologist, wants to see
See more The Big C Continues: on Family Life and Friendship, Season 2, Episode 10
By Elaine Schattner, MD, on August 23rd, 2011
Last night’s episode of the Big C may been the strangest yet. What happens, more or less, is that Cathy (Laura Linney) gets to attend her own funeral.
This odd situation arises because Cathy’s old, recently-pregnant friend (Cynthia Nixon) miscarries the child who would have been named in Cathy’s honor. Through a series of errors including miscommunication attributed to Twitter, some of Cathy’s childhood friends think that she has died. They arrive at the memorial service for the unborn child, thinking it will be Cathy’s funeral.
So the sad gathering turns into a weird reunion for people who care about the protagonist, along the lines of fulfilling a psychological fantasy about seeing who’d show up at one’s funeral, replete with the message that “life is short” and you shouldn’t wait to do what makes you happy.
No news, still, on Cathy’s melanoma, treatment or progress -
This show may lose me. I’m not sure
See more Cathy Attends What Friends Think Is Her Funeral
By Elaine Schattner, MD, on August 16th, 2011
I found it hard to stomach yesterday’s Last Thanksgiving episode of the Big C.
Besides that it’s August, and ill-timed, the show was just plain awful. (Sorry, Showtime, but if you don’t get this patient back on track you’re gonna lose her.)
Cancer was absent again. But I really want to know: What drug is Cathy on? Is it intravenous? Is it a pill? How often does she take it? Is she anemic? Does she have mets in her liver? Does she have pain? Give the audience something real to wonder and care about, please. Even one, meaningfully-informed treatment decision would be welcome. I have full confidence Laura Linney could handle the discussion, and more.
The only reference to the drug is that Cathy’s fingernails are falling off, said to be a side effect of the drug. So as not to make her cancer friend jealous, she covers the tips of her fingers with fake fingernails.
See more A Miserable Episode of ‘The Big C’
By Elaine Schattner, MD, on August 9th, 2011
 This week’s installment of the Big C starts, promisingly, in a medical facility. A nurse or technologists notes that Cathy, melanoma patient extraordinaire, has high blood pressure. The plan is that Cathy should try to relax, and she’ll speak with “the doctor” next week about possible pills for treating the hypertension.
When she leaves the clinic we have no inkling about the protocol or what kind of experimental treatment she’s getting.
At the Bear Bar (“The Big C” Season 2, Episode 7)
Lee, Cathy’s friend in cancer-land on the show (portrayed by Hugh Dancy), suggests she try acupuncture. She’s open to this, of course. The duo go to an odd place where a woman inserts needles into Cathy’s head while telling her about chi (aka qi) and medical terms like anastomosis and symbiosis. This viewer learned that these words can apply to interpersonal relationships and connections between people. Great!
Here again, the show’s
See more Life on the Big C – Cathy Tries Acupuncture and Visits a Gay Bar (Season 2, Episode 7)
By Elaine Schattner, MD, on August 3rd, 2011
 I almost liked the latest installment of the Big C. Cathy swims, for starters. I could relate.
She’s wearing goggles, no less. That’s universal “code” for seriousness about swimming, or acting. She swims well and pretty fast. Within seconds she befriends the competitive girl-swimmer in the next lane and, wouldn’t you know it, the girl’s team needs a new coach.
Cathy, who is undergoing treatment for Stage IV melanoma in a clinical trial about which the audience knows 0, steps in to coach the team. She meets some resistance from parents who worry about her condition and associated unreliability. She alludes, vaguely, to her rights as a cancer patient and firmly vows to lead the team.
“I can do it” is this episode’s message.
After some ups and downs, and after the viewer suffers from the director’s crude decision to mix the patient’s possibly having a pelvic rash as a side effect with her learning that she has crabs,
See more Cathy Swims and Runs in Episode 6, Season 2 of the Big C
By Elaine Schattner, MD, on July 31st, 2011
Tonight the Discovery Channel will begin its annual Shark Week festival on TV. “Show me your teeth,” dares a singing woman, repeatedly, in the preview.
Show Me Your Teeth
I’m reminded of my thoughts on the advice — if you can call it that; it holds as a puzzle with me – from the recently-troubled Tracy Morgan as Tracy Jordan on NBC’s 30 Rock. Here’s a rerun, from last year’s ML on the same:
Dialog from Jack the Writer (Season 1, Episode 4, 2006):
Tracy Jordan: But I want you to know something… You and me, it’s not gonna be a one-way street. Cos I don’t believe in one-way streets. Not between people, and not while I’m driving.
Kenneth: Oh, okay.
Tracy Jordan: So here’s some advice I wish I would have got when I was your age… Live every week, like it’s shark week.
—-
Now, five years later, I still don’t watch the Discovery Channel by choice. And I’m afraid
See more Live Every Week Like It’s Shark Week, Again!
By Elaine Schattner, MD, on July 26th, 2011
 Last night I stayed up to watch the Big C. Really it was a sleeper, except if you get excited when Cathy’s teenage son hires a dominatrix and then can’t pay the bill.
Cathy’s son in an experimental phase, Showtime’s “The Big C”
On the cancer front, there’s nothing new to report. We still don’t know what kind of treatment Cathy’s getting. The only “medical” topic is the uncovered cost of some procedures, like $1800 for an MRI, and her husband’s lack of an insurance-carrying job.
Emotionally there’s some development in this episode. Cathy befriends a young man, another patient on the clinical trial. The two talk about life and death in a college dorm-y way. They go to his apartment and get drunk. Wow.
This can’t be as deep as it gets.
Feels like a long season, already. As I said last week, I’ll stick with the show because I said I would, for this year at least. Maybe
See more Cathy Bonds With a Fellow Patient in the Big C Season 2 Episode 5
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