Laura Linney as Cathy on The Big C. Photo by Ken Regan, courtesy of Showtime.

Never has television programming had such commitment issues as it does when concerning the issue of cancer, which, according to late comedienne Gilda Radner, is “the most unfunny thing in the world.” First, as I wrote about yesterday, Walt White’s cancer went into remission on Breaking Bad. Then, in the second season of The Big C, fortysomething teacher Cathy Jamison’s (Laura Linney) melanoma no longer seems to be the terminal sentence it was at series’ end, thanks to an aggressive experimental treatment.

That’s great news for Cathy and her family, which includes husband Paul (Oliver Platt), mentally imbalanced and previously homeless brother Sean (John Benjamin Hickey), son Adam (Gabriel Basso), and essentially adopted student Andrea (Precious’ Gabourey Sidibe), who moved into the Jamison household last year as Cathy’s health took a turn for the better.

But it signals an identity crisis for the current third season of Big C, a show that never knew exactly what it wanted to be from the beginning. A cancer comedy? The very idea sounds incongruous, and while 50/50 toed the line with a large degree of success, such a story is easier to tell within 100 minutes, with a finite end in sight. Initially Cathy kept her diagnosis a secret from her husband and started acting out, talking back to her students and even having an affair (in fairness, Paul was unfaithful as well). Finally, she told Paul and Adam about her disease and they supported her through appointments, insurance woes and side effects.

As Darlene Hunt’s series progressed, it got lighter. Or at least Cathy’s load did. Other characters started bearing more of the series’ burden: in an extended guest role, Cynthia Nixon left Sean after a miscarriage. Cathy’s neighbor Marlene (Phyllis Somerville), afflicted with Alzheimer’s disease, committed suicide. Lee (Hugh Dancy), a fellow patient in Cathy’s clinical trial, succumbed to the disease that was starting to release its hold on Cathy. And then, at the end of last season, a coke-riddled Paul had a heart attack – a seemingly fatal one.

Evading what would have been a jump-the-shark moment, Paul turned up alive in the third season premiere. Now he and Cathy are both survivors. And yet Hunt’s series is currently neither inspiring nor riveting. The main storylines this season involve the Jamisons’ attempt to adopt a new baby and Paul’s burgeoning Internet celebrity. Sean, though heterosexual, has started fielding calls on a gay sex hotline. Andrea, while still a teen, has adopted a new African name and become Paul’s manager, and Adam’s girlfriend troubles, which could be meaty, are played for sexual laughs. Is Big C biding its time for an eventual dramatic humdinger? Or does Hunt just want viewers walking down the sunny side of the cable TV street?

While the material feels thin, Big C nonetheless attracts a cadre of terrific actors. Its Connecticut filming location attracts a cadre of great New York-based theater actors, including Michael Chernus, Victor Garber, and Hamish Linklater, and this season has season major stars like Allison Janney and Susan Sarandon make appearances too. And lest we forget about the show’s main cast, Linney, Hickey and Platt turn in razor-sharp work week after week. They know how to ring each line of dialogue for just the right amount of zing.

That’s what makes this show, middling in its current form, so frustrating. A show about life and death really should us far more to laugh and cry about.

Center School parents have been adamantly opposed to their school’s relocation as a solution for P.S. 199’s overcrowding. At the outset of last week’s emotional meeting, parent council members pleaded with angry parents, saying they had run the numbers to find a solution that would keep The Center School in place. However, the parent council felt that P.S. 199’s overcrowding was too dire to allow The Center School to stay put.

In a period of scheduled public comments from PTA presidents throughout the district, Center School parents and supporters spoke passionately about the need to preserve a racial and socio-economic mix as a reason to protect their diverse school.

Center School parents got a public boost from one of their own: actress and education activist Cynthia Nixon, known to many New Yorkers as Miranda from Sex and the City. Side by side with fellow Center School parent Mary DiPalermo, Nixon stood at the microphone and waited out boos from current and prospective P.S. 199 parents. She delivered an impassioned plea, saying that without The Center School, P.S. 199 would become a “de facto segregated school.”

On the other side, P.S. 199 parents and prospective parents praised the parent council’s plan for enabling small children to attend a neighborhood school.
John White, from the Department of Education’s Office of Portfolio Development, praised the parent council and tried to assuage parents throughout the evening.

“I ask that you understand that this represents, in many instances, a set of tradeoffs that we’re not enthused about making,” he said. “And yet we believe, the chancellor [Joel Klein] believes, that these are the best answers to ensuring that as of next fall we have stability, that we are not doing these meetings again next fall.”

White did not, however, directly address the diversity issue brought up by parents, saying he’d only respond to “fact-based” comments.

During the reading of the proposal just before the vote, about 50 parents from The Center School and their allies walked out of the room in protest. The vote then proceeded without incident. At press time, the parent council was expected to uphold the plan in a second vote, largely a formality, at a public meeting on Nov. 19.