Chasing Life

Chasing Life walks a line itself, staying away from sad, but stopping short of sentimental. Ricci makes the balance work, reminding us that a story of a girl with cancer can also be the story of a girl.

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.

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

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 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.

What Chasing Life mainly raises, though, is eyebrows, for being so laughably bad.