SELFIE: Insta-famous or Insta-awkward? {Recap}

Selfie, ABC’s new comedy updates the class tale of Pygmalion (or My Fair Lady) for the Twenty-First Century. Rather than a woman who’s low-born who wants to be a shopgirl – going one step above her station – Eliza’s a self-absorbed young woman who’s trying to overcome years of being unpopular as a tween. But that doesn’t change what’s wrong with Eliza: she’s actually alone in a world where she has scores of followers on all forms of social media.

To overcome her humiliation on a flight (vomit and a failed relationship in front of most of her co-workers), Eliza looks to Henry (John Cho), to help make her over. She does need a full-scale life change, having gone from ugly to beautiful without changing her true self.

While the world might not need another story of a man trying to get a woman to change, this time it’s Eliza’s thoughts that she needs to be something other than herself so right now, the conceit gets a pass.

Henry needs Eliza’s trust and for Eliza to actually know the people who work with her. It starts with the receptionist, Charmonique, and goes from there. Also included in her first transition is looking at more than just her phone and thinking about more than just herself.

The last part of this first transition is to look appropriate at a wedding. She enlists the help of her neighbor Bryn, who brings over her friends into a make-under and she looks wonderful after it.

Of course she couldn’t go the whole wedding without doing something for herself, her phone’s sound went off as she was playing a game to pass the time. But only then can Eliza and Henry have their first fight and realize that they are both pig-headed and stubborn.

The next day, Eliza does a good thing and talks to Charmonique’s son, and then realizing that she did something that wasn’t for her, she goes to to Henry’s house and confesses some of her flaws (only having friends with at-symbols and never served her jury duty). Outside Henry’s house, their moment is nearly perfect, but then they spill back into their routine of banter and chastising each other.

For an episode that lays the unresolved sexual tension on as thick as jam on toast, I’m really waiting for the day when Eliza and Henry work out both of their issues and realize they actually might be good for each other. Only this time, maybe the love story won’t end so poorly for both of them together…