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Say hola once again to the iconic explorer in this faithful reboot of the children’s series.
“Fight cancer” should never worm its way onto anyone’s to-do list. And April Carver’s list was quite full already, thanks very much.
She was a fledgling reporter for a big-city daily in Boston (yes, apparently newspapers do still exist) looking to climb the journalistic ladder. Instead, she got married to Leo, a guy battling cancer. Alas, he died just a couple of episodes after their nuptials, so she’s back living at home with her mother and younger sister—both of whom have their own issues to sort through. She’s got friendships to cultivate, more men to smooch, gravesites to visit, her unexpected half-sister to chat with and family secrets to unravel.
She doesn’t have time to battle leukemia, too.
Sickness never comes when it’s convenient, though, and April must tackle this life-threatening disease head-on. If her time is limited—and it very well may be—she’s got to make the most of the moments she has.
Chasing Life is a soap-riven drama that tries to stuff every possible crisis in every episode. When Beth, April’s best friend, mentions that there’s a “weird energy” in the Carver house one snowy evening, Brenna responds, “There’s a weird energy in this house every night.” And, yeah, that’s pretty much true.
Still, the series offers up some very nice messages about family and getting one’s priorities right. Quirky though they may be, April’s relatives are loving and supportive. April, at 24, is the clan’s stabilizing rock—a calming presence for her kinda flaky mom and a surrogate mother to the teenage (and bisexual-minded) Brenna. April sometimes sacrifices her own happiness and even well-being to make sure everyone else is doing OK. And you gotta like that, right?
But while April’s motives are in the right place, her morals can stray. She slept around a bit before she got married, and went out for the occasional boozy night on the town, too. She’s been known to lie, both off and on her old journalism job. She’ll string together some terribly inappropriate and sometimes crass jokes (a trait she says she got from her father).
And remember, April’s thought of as the familial good girl here. While Brenna has certainly stabilized, she nearly flunked out of school the year before April got sick. She drank heavily, flirted with boys with no honorable intention and generally fell under whatever bad influence might walk past the house.
Then there’s one other element that I’m not quite sure what to do with: Chasing Life’s potential to romanticize a deeply unromantic disease.
The series premiered on the heels of the hit movie The Fault in Our Stars, another story of young, pretty people stricken with a terrible sickness. Fault is a deeply touching tale that has, according to ABC News, even spawned something like cancer envy. Matthew Zachary, who founded a group called Stupid Cancer, said he overheard people leaving the theater wishing that they could get sick in order to find love.
It’s an interesting reaction. While Fault is indeed a romance, it goes out of its way to make the disease itself seem pretty much the antithesis of romantic. The lead character is tethered to nose tubes the entire movie. She can’t run or jump for joy. People get sick and they die. In the movie, as in real life, cancer is horrible.
Chasing Life gives us, for the most part, a more picturesque vision of the disease. Certainly it’s no walk in the park, and April talks often about the possibility of dying. She’s already lost a husband, too. But I can clearly see how an ongoing show like Chasing Life might make some viewers think of cancer as a tragic yet vaguely romantic illness. It reminds me a little of what we hear happened in Victorian England, when consumption (tuberculosis) was the heartbreaking malady all the hip youngsters wanted to die from—a phenomenon mocked at times by Charles Dickens.
I don’t think Chasing Life will make hordes of young fans want leukemia. Still, I wonder whether it might be healthier for us all to spend more time chasing our own lives rather than the ones on TV.
During a huge snowstorm, April and her half-sister try to uncover the secrets that their dad, Thomas—who died in a car crash years earlier—tried so hard to keep hidden.
The two women proceed to speculate about such things as secret families and alcoholism. They do learn that he wanted to kill himself after discovering he has ALS and that his car crash was a suicide attempt of sorts. Thomas’ brother, George (a man with whom April’s mom had been lovers in the past) talks about letting Thomas die after the crash, then falsifying evidence to cover up the “mercy killing.”
George and his current girlfriend, May, spend the night together. Discussions revolve around love lives and affairs. May’s arm is hurt when a tree crashes through a window. (George picks shards of glass out of the wound.) Characters drink wine and, when that runs out, tequila. May calls it anesthetic and finishes hers off in a gulp. Beth gets drunk. April talks about death. People say “h—” and “d–n” a few times, and misuse God’s name. A Ouija board is mentioned.
“Pilot”
Right out of the gate, April learns she has cancer. With her mother preoccupied with a date, her sister too untrustworthy to tell and her friend to boy-crazy to listen, April at first admits the sad news only to her dead-and-buried father. “Maybe you already know,” she says. “I don’t know how this all works.”
April twice kisses a guy she knows from work. When she worries that the relationship is going south, her friend Beth suggests picking up another beau for the night. April declines. And Beth says, “If you change your mind, come and dance with me. Guys love lesbians.” Other lesbian-oriented quips are made as well, along with crass remarks about dating habits and sexual desires. Brenna’s preference for bad boys winds up getting her into a bit of a sexually threatening situation inside an alcohol-filled flophouse. And her predicament is reinforced with base sexual comments.
Somebody thinks April’s doing cocaine when her nose starts to bleed. People are shown with beer and other drinks, and April interviews an athlete suspected of having a drug habit. Mom takes sleeping pills. Brenna guzzles tequila before April finds her passed out (while people take mocking pictures of her). April promises to keep Brenna’s exploits between them, and she lies frequently elsewhere.
Jokes are made about illegitimate kids, STDs and suicide. April’s grandmother plays online roulette. Characters say “b‑‑ch” and “h‑‑‑” a time or two each, and they misuse God’s name a half-dozen times.
Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.
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