Chasing Life

As episodes unfold, the relationships resonate, and the characters run deeper.

Through three episodes the series manages to mine the arbitrary nature of her predicament without being cloying--no small feat, given the venue and subject matter.

Life traffics in all the tropes you've come to expect from the network.... Which wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing if it didn't all overshadow the cancer. [13 Jun 2014, p.76]

When it's not being completely ridiculous, Chasing Life is very good.

It would be great to see the network come up with something as honest as, say, “My So-Called Life,” or as original and amusingly metaphorical as “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” or as thought-provoking as a movie like “River’s Edge.” But in the meantime, a mostly happy dramedy like Chasing Life will do, marrying strong female roles with CW-style 20-something melodrama that’s as mindlessly angsty as the Bon Iver on the soundtrack.

There are one or two (or five) plot points too many packed into each episode, potentially lessening the impact of any single one but also ensuring that Life won't be one long sobfest.

Though still stumbling around in search of a center, Chasing Life has the potential to tell an interesting story about this one person’s particular journey through life after diagnosis--if it doesn’t get too caught up in the small details.

The series is an adaptation of popular Mexican tele­novela “Terminales” and doesn’t do enough to shake off its more sensational roots. A plot swerve at the end of the hour will set off more groans than gasps.

The show turns into a case study in how not to be subtle. It has a reasonable point to make--next to a cancer diagnosis, a lot of life seems trivial--but makes it over and over again.

If April’s work world is silly, her home life is uninvolving because it’s barely sketched out and seems like an afterthought.