Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Life Sentence’, A CW Dramedy About A Woman Who Finds Out She’s Not Dying

Lucy Hale was one of the breakout stars of Freeform/ABC Family’s hit Pretty Little Liars, so it’s natural that she’d have her own starring vehicle since that show ended. It would also be fitting that the show would be on The CW. Will Life Sentence be as good as PLL?

LIFE SENTENCE: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: We see a shot of a building that has the writing “Asheville, NC” on it, then a wedding cake topper, and a young woman talking to them: “She’s been dreaming of this day since she was a sapling; he’s got a tiny stick up his butt. But you can’t deny they’re made for each other.”

The Gist: The woman is Stella Abbott (Lucy Hale) and she and her husband Wes (Elliot Knight) are looking for a cake. But not a wedding cake, a funeral cake. When the cake shop attendant looks at them quizzically, she launches into her story.

Stella has been fighting cancer for eight years, and she was sure that she was dying. So her family encouraged her to live life to the fullest, including a trip to Paris. During that trip, she met Wes, and they had day after day of what she calls “Sara Bareilles candle sex.” They get married, rent a dope artist’s cottage, and continue to have epic, long lovemaking sessions.

Then she finds out from her doctor, Helena Chang (Anna Enger), that her experimental treatment worked, and that she’s not only in remission, but cured. Considering she’s been living life like she was dying, Stella has an unexpected reaction: what does she do now?

She comes home with the cake to tell everyone the good news, but then quickly finds out the ugly truth about everyone in her family, who has spent the last eight years trying to keep all of it from her so she can live her final years without extra stress. Her brother Aiden (Jayson Blair) smokes pot in his PJs and lives with their parents; he also sleeps with older married women. Her sister Elizabeth (Brooke Lyons) hates her career and somewhat regrets having children so early in her life. Her college-professor father Paul (Dylan Walsh) went into extreme debt to pay her rent and send her to Paris, and is about to lose the house. And her mother Ida (Gillian Vigman) has decided that she’s “a bi”, leaving Paul for family friend Poppy (Claudia Rocafort).

Worst of all, Wes starts to tell her about all the stuff about their relationship that he really didn’t like, but did anyway because he thought that she was dying. The Sara Bareilles candle sex? He’s OK with fast and hot. Having her head on his chest while they sleep? Great for a minute but annoying the rest of the night. Love Actually? Not his favorite movie by a longshot.

But the biggest problem is that they never talked about kids, as they found out when they babysit Elizabeth’s kids (her niece swallows her engagement ring, natch, because kids are always monsters, right?). He wants them, she’s not sure. After a thank you party for her doctor where all the family issues come to a head, she melts down and finds the hospital room where she used to spend her time watching “sappy cancer movies”, guzzling wine and feeling sorry for herself. After talking to a  current patient named Sadie (Nadej K. Bailey), she realizes her issues are her issues, but at least she’s cancer-free. And she realizes Wes has her back. She is excited to get to know him for real this time.

Our Take: We were surprised to see the Doozer Productions logo pop up at the end of the pilot for Life Sentence. That’s Bill Lawrence’s production company, and while he’s just the overseer and not the showrunner, shows produced by him have a certain quirky but world-weary sensibility. Life Sentence, from Erin Cardillo and Richard Keith (the latter of which wrote for Fuller House), feels like pure CW: lots of stock characters, funny-ish lines crammed in by rapid dialogue, and a title character who is way too sunny to exist in the real world.

The idea of Life Sentence is an intriguing one: If you’ve lived a third of your life like you are going to die, what happens when you find out you won’t? But it feels like, except for maybe Wes, the characters in Stella’s family come from the “quirky family” hall of fame: Ne’er-do-well brother, overworked sister, hapless father. The only character with anything interesting going on is Ida, but that may be because Vigman can make even the lamest of dialogue funny. She’s played all manner of dutiful wives and cougar-tastic moms over the years, so seeing her play a middle-aged woman who’s still trying to figure things out is refreshing.

If you liked Lucy Hale on Pretty Little Liars, you’ll like her here. But Stella, at least for right now, is a character who is a little too positive, a little too hopeful in the face of the circumstances she’s facing. Sure, she’s been given a new lease on life, but after seeing how her family has outright lied to her over the years, all in the service of keeping her a fantasy life, some anger must seep in at some point. Let’s hope we see that in future episodes. Else this might be no better than the “sappy cancer movies” that inspired her family to lie to her in the first place.

Sex and Skin: Didn’t we mention the “Sara Bareilles candle sex”?

Parting Shot: Over scenes where Aiden and his dad contemplate their lives as the house is being shown, and Elizabeth deciding to quit her job, we see Stella and Wes holding hands as they leave the hospital room where they had some quick hot sex, and Stella’s voice over says “I’m really grateful to be alive.”

Sleeper Star: We know that Bailey will be in more episodes as the wise young cancer patient Sadie, and we want to see more of her.

Most Pilot-y Line: Wes brings another bottle of wine to Stella as she is miserable in her old hospital room, showing he had her back. Here’s what we’d like to know: how did they manage to get get all this wine into a hospital?

Our Call: SKIP IT. We like Hale, but this isn’t the vehicle to show us that she’s ready to play grown-up roles.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, VanityFair.com, Playboy.com, Fast Company’s Co.Create and elsewhere.

Watch Life Sentence on The CW