Instead of the usual 10 or 12 half-hour episodes, Showtime is sending The Big C off to the great beyond in four full-hour installments, beginning tonight—follow? ---

Doesn’t matter; Cathy (Laura Linney) will meet her end at the bony hand of cancer or cancellation within a month, guaranteed.

The fourth and final season of The Big C (subtitled Hereafter) is a tearjerker, for sure, eschewing the forced comedy of the past few years and returning to what made Season 1 so good: real anguish, real laughs, real emotion. It’s still not perfect—this four-hour farewell could have easily been trimmed to 120 tighter minutes—but it’s a fitting goodbye for one of Showtime’s most unusual series. Now, somebody give John Benjamin Hickey his own show, already.