I have been in remission for almost two years yet I have other health issues that overlap my recovery and is forming a new sense of life and help me reflect how cancer has changed it. Chasing Life is simply attempting to help us understand that you can't understand fully what it's like to have cancer, and those who have cancer are able to relate in ways no show has demonstrated in an entertainment narrative.
There are many simple non verbal queues this shows uses to tell its story, but unfortunately it pays more attention to "keeping secrets" to keep the anticipation going. The subplot of the father's secrets was brilliant, and helped the character understand the missing pieces in her life, but also why cancer was in her life.
How we live our lives is sometimes misunderstood. Cancer helps you face your fears of the choices you've made and how you use of time. Time being your most valuable commodity, the show attempts to use a terminal character to make that impact.
It's unfortunate, that with my personality, it's hard for me to understand things such as these until I have to face them myself in these dark cavernous chapters in my life. This show hit home in ways like no other show in any context. You feel foolish when you have cancer. You feel like your life has been lived in folly, because you miss the whole point. April Carver was heading down that road as success and achievement was more important than living and caring. That was her lesson and its ours as well.
Italia played the "That Girl" archetype well. She used no acting devices to convey the character's misses and home runs. A lot of montage and music accompanied this which often became annoying but may have been necessary for emotional moments.
For those who haven't had cancer, you need it to understand. It changes how you think and think of this show. I found this show assisting me in my anguish about my life's choices and even though the show ended after two seasons, and the ending was tethered, the character grew from the experience, and that is the purpose of cancer.
You learn compassion, sensitivity, pain, discomfort, foolishness, humility, you feel death coming closer. Most importantly its to help us understand to treat others better.
This was an ambitious project. The tone was all well in good. The side stories were unnecessary and better choices could have been made rather than socio-political ones. I loved the second family and father betrayal of trust. Life is complicated and those around us also make choices and sometimes they affect us. Life is tragic, no doubt.
Life is what we live, chasing it is a concept we form in our minds. Cancer helps us understand what "chasing" really means. This show's concept could continue with other characters, and even pushed her to survive and change her life in a direction nobody would think possible. We want to believe and feel that life continues. Chasing Life can seem fleeting as a thought, because it is. We can't stop time so chasing it seems foolish. That is the tinge in the meaning of the title if you get it.
The tone was this show's greatest strength and denying the idea of cancer from an entertainment platform could have been easy. People don't like the topic and with good reason but the show managed to keep it entertaining. Yes, secrets were used as a device and other devices could have made the show more thought out, but its strength was in the realization from how other characters changed her life.
I still felt she was a foolish woman. Her biggest flaw was the over caring of The Self. It was displayed in how she married a terminal man even knowing that the operation could eventually kill him when she wanted a future. She turned away a perfectly good relationship because "he couldn't understand" like Leo could. That was the biggest mistake she made in rooting for her change. She never realized her miss in life because she remained concerned about The Self even till the last scene, where she noted she had done everything. That was a miss, but it was the end and that was okay.
For my cancer is about confession. It's a part of your life where you stop your routine thought process and realize what you've been doing wrong and acknowledge it. April needed to acknowledge her lifeless ambitions were fraught in futility, and she needed to spend more time thinking of others. That action and decision would have arc'd the character more and helped all of us feel and understand that putting others first is our mission in life and we chase life each day to understand and feel that.
Hope this helps.
