
What if, right when you were about to get everything you ever wanted, your entire life fell apart? That question is the driving ideology behind ABC Familyâs new drama Chasing Life, in which young journalist April Carver gets diagnosed with cancer just as her personal and professional lives are about to take flight. She must decide how she wants to live the rest of her lifeâwithout knowing how much life she actually has left.
Cancer stories have an innate sense of urgency built into the premise, with the constant threat of death ticking in the background like a factory-installed clock. Chasing Life does something interesting (if ultimately somewhat problematic) with this ticking clock: It sort of ignores it. April gets diagnosed before the second-act break of the pilot, but any urgency that comes with this diagnosis gets strangely buried, added to the haphazard pile of complications that is her life. Itâs in these complicationsâa nascent internship at a big Boston newspaper, a new relationship with a co-worker, a family still reeling from the death of her father, and the obligatory troubled teenage sisterâthat Chasing Life gets caught up in, losing focus on Aprilâs character, and more importantly, Aprilâs cancer.
Itâs clear that Chasing Life wants to take its time, to tell small stories about a big problem, and to not solely be a âcancer story.â Aprilâs career and love life are presented in equal importance to her health, and as key factors in the decisions she makes regarding her well-beingâfor better or for worse. But when dealing with something as big as cancer, itâs almost as if the show is daring to ask the question: How small is too small a story to tell?
The most important thing needed to make this type of small story work is a strong driving force at its center, and thatâs unfortunately where Chasing Life stumbles right out of the gate. April is a frustrating characterâa type A go-getter who then immediately abandons this defining personality trait when it comes to her health, her romantic relationships, and her familyâs strange and increasingly labyrinthine web of secrets, which she immediately adds to by refusing to tell anyone she is sick. Italia Ricci does an admirable job of making all of these disparate pieces somewhat fit together to become a recognizable human being, but her character leaves the viewer with the question of why? Why is she so reluctant to burden her family with this life-changing news? Why, in a premise rife with built-in inner conflict, does all the conflict feel so falsely external?
Advertisement
Whatâs even more frustrating is how quickly Chasing Life branches out into telling other charactersâ stories before the show has figured out its lead. In the three episodes provided for review, Aprilâs mother (an impossibly warm and likable Mary Page Keller) gets back into the dating world with predictable results, and her surly teenage sister (sigh) gets an arc that hits just about every ABC Family teen clichĂŠ in the networkâs arsenal. Building out the ensemble is greatâespecially when the ensemble is almost solely made up of women, which is a welcome breath of fresh airâbut until April is fully nailed down it feels more like a distraction from the central premise of the show.
Between Breaking Bad, Kristinaâs wonderful breast cancer arc on Parenthood, 50/50, and the currently ubiquitous The Fault In Our Stars, cancer-as-story-driver certainly feels like well-trod territory. Though still stumbling around in search of a center, Chasing Life has the potential to tell an interesting story about this one personâs particular journey through life after diagnosisâif it doesnât get too caught up in the small details. Bits of this potential are seen as early as the third episode, where the central story takes an interesting and unexpected turn. But Chasing Life must make a choice: Does it want to be a show about one personâs journey through life after diagnosis, or does it want to be a show about one person keeping that journey a secret? The latter is an inherently less interesting choice.
Developed by: Susanna Fogel, Joni Lefkowitz, Patrick Sean Smith, and Aaron Kaplan
Starring: Italia Ricci, Mary Page Keller, Aisha Dee, Richard Brancatisano, Haley Ramm
Debuts: Tuesday at 9 p.m. Eastern on ABC Family
Format: Hour-long serialized drama
Three episodes watched for review
Advertisement