Selfie

It's a charming dance, and Gillan and Cho play it with the proper froth.

Already there’s a wistfulness underneath the light surface. Half the scenes in the pilot are rooted in sadness, and the other half are rooted in Eliza aggressively covering up for her sadness. Eliza may seem vapid, and Selfie may seem broad, but there’s more to this one than meets the eye.

It has real possibilities, but since the “My Fair Lady” climax is repurposed in the pilot, it’s unclear where the relationship will go.

The winner tonight is "Suburgatory" creator Emily Kapnek's "Pygmalion"-inspired Selfie, whose pairing of Gillan and Cho is also inspired.

The pilot of Selfie is imperfect but entertaining.... Gillan and Cho have solid chemistry, as any good Eliza and Henry need to have to make the transformation of both characters complete.

To see its potential, you'll have to grit your teeth through a lot of painful moments early on.

All of the obvious self-awareness jokes are glaring and irritating. But here’s the hope: Both Cho and Gillan are very likable actors and even manage to nail what is asked of them in the pilot, playing Eliza and Henry.

The show starts out annoying and then gets less annoying. ... I don't have great hopes for this, but I had expected it to burn the eyes from my head, and that is not at all the case.

By the end of its premiere, Selfie became a watchable show with actual potential. I'm just not sure most people will be able to hang in there that long to see it unfold.

ABC deserves credit for its diverse casting, but Selfie looks to have the longevity of the average Snapchat pic.

Their [Eliza and Henry's] odd couple liaison occasionally begins clicking from a humor standpoint.

When you suspend disbelief and watch Selfie through a prism where it’s a fantasy-world alternate reality, where people speak in self-aware, carefully crafted maxims and quotables, lines like this are actually really funny--exceptionally astute and observant about today’s culture. But if you look at Selfie as some sort of realistic meditation on a social media-obsessed, narcissistic generation--which it’s tempting to do, especially as some of Eliza’s self-serving transgressions hit closer to home than others--then you’ll likely find writing like this to be maddening.

Selfie needs to be either a little more grounded or a little more campy depending on what it wants to highlight, but this in-between kinda-real-kinda-bubblegum world makes everyone seem slightly out of place.

Maybe ABC’s social media strategy should include posting only the last scene of this episode and pretend the rest of it never happened. That, and changing the title.

The premise still seems shaky, but the final few minutes may earn Selfie a second look.

A cute enough pilot from writer Emily Kapnek (“Suburgatory”). But is there really a weekly TV series to be had here? Time will tell.

There could be a decent show trapped within Selfie.... Too bad the show's cruel sense of humor and reliance on instantly dated references may very well drive away viewers before they can see what Selfie and Eliza become. [3 Oct 2014, p.66]

Selfie’s addiction to topical techie satire tends to get in the way of Gillan and Cho’s attempts to convey an unlikely chemistry that might help the show rise above a concept that already feels like yesterday’s clicks.

There's some charm here, but it's as fleeting as a tweet.

Eliza is such a broad caricature of everything Kapnek finds annoying about social media that she's unbearable--and not just to the other characters on the show.... The Selfie pilot offers glimmers of a show that can work. John Cho is very good: understated and wry and charming. Karen Gillan seems game for anything.

Karen Gillan is a treasure, and it's only by dint of her presence that this comedy works some of the time. Yet in a larger sense, "Selfie" does not really work, because there are a lot of unpleasant and judgmental elements lurking in its premise.

The stars' charisma could help lift Selfie beyond its narrow premise, but at first glance, it seems too inconsequential even to qualify as an epic fail.