- Mo 15. Nov 2010, 20:55
#908701
Zum Finale heute gibt es bei der Los Angeles Times und dem Hollywood Reporter Interviews mit der Erfinderin und dem Showrunner der Serie:
Die Begründung von Marlenes Tod finde ich aber nach wie vor ziemlichen Bullshit. In meinen Augen ist jede Emotion, welche die Autoren damit bewirken wollten, nicht verdient und kommt auch viel zu früh in der Serie, wenn sie unbedingt beinhalten wollten, dass Tod ein Bestandteil eines jeden Lebens ist.
Summer ends on 'The Big C': A chat with executive producer Darlene Hunt
Note to "The Big C": You got us!
Heading into Monday's season finale, after an anxiety-ridden 12 episodes of worrying about Cathy, her Stage 4 melanoma and her crumbling marriage, viewers find themselves in an unexpected place. We grieve not for Cathy (Laura Linney) but for the lovable Marlene, Cathy's feisty neighbor and new friend, who chose suicide over living with Alzheimer's.
Fans of the show took to the Internet immediately after the Nov. 8 episode to voice their hurt and disappointment, a testament, really, to the magnetic performance of Phyllis Sommerville. But, while we will definitely still miss her, the series' first season finale (which we've seen) definitely shows there's a method to the madness of the writers. We asked creator and executive producer Darlene Hunt for a spoiler-free chat about her creative decisions and what viewers can look forward to in the second season.
"I love reading the Facebook page, and I was getting sick to my stomach as I was reading comments about how much people missed her and how devastating that was," Hunt said. "And I was overcome with this feeling of regret — why did we do that? In a bigger sense, this show is really an exploration of mortality. And death is part of everyday life, and there is still an opportunity to explore how Marlene affected Cathy. When we lose people, do they stay in our life in some way? Do they affect the decisions that we make? Because they live in us and continue to be a part of our lives. But I think having her die and having her choose her way out the way she did, it’s an interesting theme to explore, which really highlights what the series is about."
Hunt designed the show to follow Cathy one season at a time, figuring that if the show were a hit and lasted at least six years, that would amount to 18 months in Cathy's life. The end of the show's first season is timed with the end of summer: Cathy has finally told her family she is sick and has decided to seek alternative treatments, even though she is still unwilling to try radiation or chemotherapy.
"I’m really excited to tackle the cancer element of it," Hunt said. "It was a secret the first season, and I think viewers will be satisfied to see her, really, address the cancer head on." In January, the writers will begin working on the second season, which takes place in autumn, and production begins in March in Stamford, Conn.
"While we haven’t started the writers' room yet, we’ve been doing research and having meetings to discuss themes," Hunt said. "We're also meeting with an oncologist and a melanoma survivor to talk about their journeys and expertise."
To be sure, "The Big C" has navigated tricky waters, telling the story of a terminally ill woman in the prism of a half-hour comedy. Linney's Cathy is a complicated, nuanced woman who reacted to her diagnosis by wanting to make drastic changes in her life while keeping her disease a secret. In the process, she separates from her husband, Paul (Oliver Platt), without ever telling him why — a seemingly selfish decision that, at times, alienated viewers but made the journey all the more believable.
"I found out in some of my research that it’s not something wholly uncommon for people to do after they get diagnosed — to keep it a secret from a few or many people in their lives," Hunt said. "And I like this idea that this character would make that choice because she wanted to keep it to herself. She didn’t want to start living the cancer right away. She wanted to start living her life.
"I love it when people get inspired by her and say that they’ve been inspired to make better decisions in their own life because of the show. And that is so exciting to me. But I’m also not afraid when people don’t like her or don’t like decisions she makes because it’s real and interesting to create a character who you disagree with."
In hindsight, Hunt says she wishes she would have let viewers in on more of what was ailing Cathy and Paul's marriage before she was diagnosed and caused her to ask him to move out. In recent episodes, Paul and Cathy have reconciled in their own way, and he's committed to being a supportive partner for her.
"To be honest, I have a little regret that maybe we didn’t totally explore their marriage in a way that would have made people understand a little more why she’s shutting him out," Hunt said. "But that being said, the way it stands, I think she’s angry. And right or wrong, she feels like she lost herself to the marriage. She put him first. And maybe that was her fault and not his. But I think she’s mad about it. She has wanted to explore some different things and live a little separately from him."
Hunt, who wrote 15 pilots over nine years before she landed her deal with Showtime for "The Big C," says that even last week when some viewers criticized the decision to have Marlene die, she was struck by a single realization.
"It really is completely overwhelming to me that I’ve created something that affects people," she said. "Although Marlene's death may have been devastating for some, I hope as they continue to watch, they'll realize that it will be for good reason. But that people say they are affected by the show and even inspired to make changes in their lives — that's just overwhelming to me."
Note to readers/viewers: Have some Kleenex handy for the finale.
'The Big C' Showrunner Talks Finale
As Cathy (Laura Linney) playfully denied her cancer prognosis during Season 1 of The Big C, the Showtime dramedy has gotten darker as it approaches Monday’s season finale. In last week’s episode, Cathy’s neighbor/sounding board Marlene (Phillis Somerville) changed the trajectory of the series when, after having a scary Alzheimer’s-related memory loss moment, she took her own life. The Hollywood Reporter caught up with executive producer Jenny Bicks to discuss how Marlene’s death impacts Cathy, if we’ll see her again and what’s ahead in Season 2.
THR: You wrote the penultimate episode, "Everything That Rises Must Converge," which caught a lot of viewers by surprise. What was behind the decision to kill off a main character so soon in the series?
Jenny Bicks: We knew we were going to do it from the beginning. We wanted to be truthful about how life is. Part of what the show is about is life and death and, yes, Cathy may be dying, but other people die every day. We also felt like Marlene, to tell the story truthfully, would be a character who would probably make the decision to do what she did because she knew where she was headed and what she said to [Cathy’s husband] Paul [Oliver Platt]: that she doesn't want to be a burden. That made a lot of sense for that character. More importantly, we also wanted something that would turn Cathy. We look at these seasons as different stages of grief and that the first stage of grief is denial. This first season in a lot of ways was all about Cathy not really facing what was ultimately happening to her.
THR: How will Marlene's death change things for Cathy?
JB: With Marlene's death, I think it really knocks her. In the finale, you see how that works for her and starts to turn her. We wanted to give Cathy a real reason to turn away from the denial and into the next stage. And that's what Marlene's death gives us.
THR: Will we see Marlene again? How will she serve Cathy going forward?
JB: We love Phyllis and we love the character of Marlene. I don't think it's the last time you'll see Marlene. We're an unconventional show and we play with the idea of fantasy a bit in the first season and we'll continue to do that. If Cathy goes more toward her own mortality and toward her spirituality I think it gives us an opportunity to explore not just what's happening on Earth right now but what might be happening in other places. Marlene may, going forward, play an ongoing role for Cathy in terms of how she sees her own death.
THR: Will Marlene's death prompt Cathy and Paul to tell their son, Adam (Gabriel Brasso), about the cancer?
JB: Marlene's death causes Cathy to become more realistic about what's happened to her. In some ways it scares her. She does begin to think about how this will affect her child and because she makes her choices in the finale that involve medical treatment, she believes that she should start to clue Adam in to what's happening.
THR: How will Adam respond when he eventually finds out?
JB: When Adam realizes that his mom may actually be in danger, it hits him really hard. Obviously they have a complicated relationship and I think he has grown up a bit and she has had some influence on him. I hope that the Adam you see in the finale is a lot more enlightened than the Adam that you saw at the beginning.
THR: Cathy sets out to change her husband from a man-child and her son from a selfish putz, and she's really accomplished that this season. Will Cathy set specific goals in Season 2?
JB: Most definitely. She's going to continue as she faces her own mortality to want to get closer to Adam and make him as much of a decent citizen and feel as comfortable as she can about leaving him, which obviously is not something any of us could feel comfortable with. Paul is going to struggle with being the perfect husband — the "cancierge" — and being Paul. We believe very strongly that with any character development that it's two steps forward, one step back, so nobody is suddenly going to change their stripes. Paul is going to try as hard as he can but I think he'll have some lapses. It's going to be hard for him.
THR: Season 1 has been about Cathy’s denial. Will there be a theme for Season 2?
JB: The second stage is anger, which we consider to be fighting. I think Cathy is going to set out to more actively fight her medical condition in a variety of ways and it's going to cause her to struggle both with what's happening to her and with her close family. Right now Paul feels like he can be heroic but things are going to become more difficult when he realizes what he's up against.
THR: With Cathy seeing new treatments, there's a prime opportunity for guest stars like Liam Neeson's bee doctor. Are you looking at any guest stars for Season 2?
JB: We have an idea of somebody but it's somebody that we'll have for a fairly prolonged arc on the show that Cathy may meet while seeking treatment. I think it would be interesting for her to come up against somebody else going through what she's going through and to see what it looks like from the outside. We have an opportunity in the second season to open up her world. It's going to be fall, so she'll be back teaching at school, which means other teachers will be back. Andrea [Gabby Sidibe] will be back and it gives us the chance to fulfill and strengthen the world around her. It's not just her and her nuclear family.
THR: Will Cynthia Nixon return?
JB: We hope so, yes. I know she wants to do it and we want her to do it. She now has ties to Cathy that she did not have before. And a tie to Sean that she didn't have before. It's going to allow for her to get really enmeshed in that family.
The Big C finale airs Monday on Showtime.
Theologe hat geschrieben: Es besteht aber die Chance, dass die Serie zur zweiten Staffel den Ton ändert, wenn Cathy den Kampf gegen den Krebs richtig annimmt.Also liegst du eventuell gar nicht mal so falsch, dass die Serie in der zweiten Staffel ihren Ton ändert und doch noch eine ausgeglichenere Serie wird.
Die Begründung von Marlenes Tod finde ich aber nach wie vor ziemlichen Bullshit. In meinen Augen ist jede Emotion, welche die Autoren damit bewirken wollten, nicht verdient und kommt auch viel zu früh in der Serie, wenn sie unbedingt beinhalten wollten, dass Tod ein Bestandteil eines jeden Lebens ist.
Schwangerschaft ist auch das Potential da, um den Charakter etwas erträglicher und weniger übertrieben darzustellen. 
:lol: :lol: 