SELFIE: Would You Follow Eliza?

NOTE: I wrote this a couple of weeks ago, then LIFE happened and I didn’t have a chance to get back to it before Selfie premiered tonight. So herewith, my initial thoughts on the show and your chance to chime in!

As I work my way through screeners for the new shows hoping to be The Next Big Thing, I sometimes find myself at odds with critical buzz surrounding a project. Case in point: ABC’s Selfie.

The sitcom stars Karen Gillan (Doctor Who) and John Cho (Sleepy Hollow) in a modern take on Pygmalion. The classic story of a man helping a young woman reinvent herself has been adapted countless times, perhaps most memorably in the Audrey Hepburn/Rex Harrision musical My Fair Lady.

In this contemporary reimagining of the story, Gillan is Eliza Dooley, a former ugly duckling who transformed herself into a beautiful-on-the-outside swan with a lot of Instagram followers and no real life connections. Following a humbling (and gross) vomiting experience on a plane in front of her colleagues, Eliza decides it’s time to “rebrand” herself, and goes to her co-worker and company marketing genius, Cho’s Henry, for help. He is reluctant at first, then decides to take pity on Eliza. Yes, it’s a slightly sexist start, but wait! there’s more!

The twist with Selfie is that Henry also has no real life connections because he’s a workaholic and a cranky dude. As he helps Eliza tone down her self-obsession, she helps Henry see the joy in adding a little frivolity to his life. That’s not enough in and of itself to redeem the series from falling into the misogyny trap, but it looks like the writers are trying to avoid what makes My Fair Lady hard to watch in the 21st century.

Now you know the premise, so why are critics putting this show on their “worst” lists? The pilot isn’t great. It was good enough to get me to watch at least one more episode, but it’s not amazing and I think because of who’s involved, that’s a bit of a letdown. Gillan is a cult favorite after playing one of the most popular companions ever on Doctor Who, and Cho has been on the verge of hitting major star status for a while. The two of them have some great chemistry bubbling in the pilot, which is good because individually, their characters are one-note. Eliza is over the top self-obsessed and borderline shrill. Henry is so curmudgeonly, if I couldn’t see that he’s a hottie in his early 30’s, I’d think he was A Grumpy Old Man. Their respective personalities are painted in broad strokes to make sure we see just how different they are, and that might be rubbing some viewers the wrong way.

But you know what? I didn’t expect much more than a quick, easy to digest outline of their characters given that we have 22 minutes to meet them both, establish their universe, and get them from random colleagues to partners in a very personal project. Now that I have the sketch, I’m ready to start filling it in with details and colors and textures and more art terms that advance my metaphor.

The pilot is not completely without nuance, however. The final scene is sweet without being saccharine, and we are given just a glimpse of Eliza’s motivation for reinventing herself, as well as Henry’s often hidden compassionate side and his own struggle to connect with others.

In the end, it will take more than Eliza toning down her makeup and cleavage to make the experiment work, but I see potential in the storyline and undeniable chemistry between the leads. Give it a couple of episodes, and let’s see where we stand.

Selfie premieres Tuesday, September 30 at 8/7c on ABC.