Selfie is one of the funniest, richest, most troubling comedy pilots of the season. It’s a Pygmalion story about a hip, fashionable, vapid sales rep named Eliza Dooley (Karen Gillan) who finds herself in need of re-branding. Enter her company’s uptight whiz kid Henry (John Cho). The problems Henry was enlisted to fix? Well, at first, Eliza tallies her social selfishness, her lack of real friends, and her libertine sensuality. Which extends, he says, to her obsession with social media and her “look at me” ensembles. Later we find out her credit cards are maxed out and her place is a collection of TLC warning signs. That’s a lot to lay at the feet of the “Like” button.
The title has the Girls problem. It’s so general as to suggest a critique of a whole class rather than just the characters on-screen, as if the online culture of sharing pictures of oneself can only lead to Mean Girls. But Selfie isn’t about an entire culture; at most, it’s only about the popularity contest within that culture. A flashback reveals Eliza’s origin story, a woman formed in the cauldron of junior high, chasing the popularity she never had back then. The premise still slightly beggars belief. Eliza’s so confident, put together, and successful in her career that it’s hard to buy her having such poor social fluency. She’s a narcissist, but a clueless one.
More worrisome is the lopsided power dynamic. Eliza has volunteered to do whatever Henry says in order to become a better person. Okay, there are such things as life coaches, but it’d be easier to take if lonely, snobby Henry needed Eliza as much as she needs him. What comes through in the pilot is more condescending than that. And that attitude seeps into other scenes as well, such as when Eliza’s neighbor Bryn (Allyn Rachel) volunteers to help Eliza dress down for a work wedding. “You’re lucky make-unders are my everything.” It’s a funny line out of context, and the delivery is beautiful, but who takes pride in helping people look less than their best? It’s a line meant to raise a character up that subtly slaps her down.
And as for Henry and Eliza, once it’s clear this is a budding romance, it suddenly feels like The Shield when Dutch uses his authority as a cop to get women. There’s also the issue that both Eliza and Henry are so deep in their own heads that they don’t yet show a lot of chemistry. Selfie can iron all this out, but it has a rocky road ahead.