'Selfie' might be worth a second look

If there's one thing we can use, it's a little Selfie-improvement.

After all, with the very happy exception of ABC's Black-ish, this has been a disappointing fall for new sitcoms. Manhattan Love Story has already vanished; Bad Judge and A to Z soon will; and Mulaney is certain to follow suit.


Indeed, Love Story's relatively swift conclusion is why, Tuesday night, you're getting two episodes of its former lead-in Selfie (ABC, 8 ET/PT) — a show that's facing its own uphill ratings climb. But here's the difference: Where those dead or dying comedies all lived down to the lack of promise in their pilots, Selfie has quietly transformed into a much better show. Or maybe it's just following the path set in that very first episode, which started horribly and ended in a way that made you think there might be a better comedy lurking in there than the first few scenes led you to believe.
Created by Emily Kapnek as a kind of modern-romance twist on Pygmalion, Selfie stars Karen Gillan as the self- and social-media-obsessed Eliza Dooley, who turns to John Cho's repressed marketing genius Henry Higgs in hopes he can fix her "brand." That the stars had chemistry and comic skills was never much in doubt. The question was whether the show could push past the problems inherent in trying to stretch a romantic comedy out over the length of a series, compounded by a My Fair Lady premise that seemed too restrictive.

The show's response has been to strengthen the give and take of the main characters' teacher/student relationship, making it clearer that the uptight Henry has as much to learn as Eliza does while dialing Eliza's self-absorption back to more sustainable levels. In the process, Selfie has begun to establish them as friends, allowing hints of romance to surface, but not pushing the relationship too far or too fast. In essence, what had seemed like yet another certain-to-fail romantic comedy now plays more like a workplace spoof mixed in with a satire on social-media manners.

The change is most apparent in the first of tonight's episodes, with Eliza as Henry's unhappy "plus one" at a weekend at the estate of their boss (David Harewood). You might think the outing would hinge on Eliza's dismay at being out of cellphone range (and in part it does) — but in a nicely played twist, it's Henry who is out of place and headed for out of work.

The second episode shifts to a more familiar Selfie theme: Henry's inability to have fun. When they realize that Henry can neither flirt nor recognize flirting, Eliza and Charmonique (Da'Vine Joy Randolph, who gets funnier each week as new facets of her character appear) decide to take charge of his personal life themselves.

What you'll get from both episodes are increasingly appealing star turns on a show taking better advantage of Gillan's gift for scatterbrained charm and Cho's talent for slow-burn exasperation. You'll also find a show that's growing from the center out, as it makes more room for Harewood, Randolph and Samm Levine in the ensemble.
Like even the best new series, Selfie is still very much a work in progress: the social-media spoofs can feel heavy-handed, and Eliza can bounce too erratically from goofy to sexy to selfish. But progress is being made — enough to earn Selfie a second look.