To help take her mind off of Dominic and to start facing the reality of her symptoms, April volunteers for an assignment at work about a supposed cancer-curing miracle juice and finds a confidant and support in the juice maker. Sara makes a surprise connection with one of her patients and hosts an awkward dinner for her new boyfriend to meet the family.
Chasing Life is setting up April telling each person about her cancer as an emotional big moment. So they are being wise not to go to that well to soon while also giving it the most weight and importance in these early episodes. While I could understand why she wouldn't tell them in the pilot, it's also getting more and more difficult for the show to explain why she's not telling her family. Even in this episode, she's much more concerned with whether or not to tell Dominic than telling her own family. That's an odd situation to create for the main character. The only reason it doesn't read as blatantly transparent is because the show has her interacting with her family only when absolutely necessary. And when she is with them, the focus is almost always about the struggles her mom or sister are going through. She's the stable rock in the family - which will make the ultimate reveal that much more potent. Her relationship with Beth became much more interesting once she was let in on the secret and I can imagine Chasing Life become much more special and unique once all the important players are made aware as well.So if April's not with her family, she has to be kept busy elsewhere in her life. In "Blood Cancer Sex Carrots," her time is spent either dealing with Dominic or learning more about her cancer thanks to an assignment she volunteers for. On the Dominic side of things, he really is coming off as quite charming and sweet. He's a great guy and she's slowly messing it up because she can't give her undivided attention to him. Rightfully, she has her health concerns to worry about. So I'm not saying April is a jerk towards him when he's only being nice to her. This fake crisis of him being a player felt tacked on and unlike everything we've seen from him so far. It lead to an April freakout which was only justifiable once Beth started calling her out on her behavior. The best friend dynamics are the ones where you can openly tell the other how destructive they are and then having the courage to respect them for saying it afterwards. That's what exists between April and Beth. And I love it.
But more importantly April finds a person that she can actually confide in about her cancer and truly understand what she's feeling. Of course, in the end, it's merely to reestablish the life and death stakes of cancer which I really don't think we needed to be reminded of. It would have been great if Sam Anderson was in a handful of episodes to be a friend to April. But they killed him off and now she's going to support group. It's there that she runs into Scott Michael Foster again. After a rocky start, I'm expecting them to bound over common ground. Which will likely turn into a love triangle between her and the guy she's been chasing at work and the guy that she can open herself up to about her disease. I'm not especially looking forward to that aspect but I'm really excited to be getting into more of the medical world and how people cope with this.
Some more thoughts:
- "Blood Cancer Sex Carrots" was written by Patrick Sean Smith and directed by Joanna Kerns.
- When Vondie Curtis-Hall isn't available as the boss, The Big Bang Theory's Kripke is in charge.
- I have no clue what the Scott Michael Foster character's name is so I'm just gonna keep calling him Scott Michael Foster.
- Yeah still don't care for the Brenna-Kiernan romance. She was using him and yet he's the one who ends up apologizing? That makes no sense.
- The new dynamic between Sara, her boyfriend and her new patient is perhaps one soapish antic too many.
