Selfie
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Hi, I'm Colin Whiting. And I'm Dave Wagner. And this is My Mother the Podcast. Today, we're talking about 2014's Selfie to find out what happened there. Welcome to Season 2!

Season 2, Colin. It's great to be here. You know, when you make your first season 6 episodes, it's a lot easier to get to season 2. You know what happened is, you know, we had this trial balloon with the network. A trial balloon, a dirigible, if you will. And was that trial balloon piloted? No, sir. Nope, nope. And the network liked what they heard.

Yeah, I kind of think of this as the British style of doing something. You do six episodes at a time, and you just pick it up whenever you want to again. You know, everything's different now with season two, I feel like. We have literally dozens of listeners. There's a third person here. Jesus. There's no third person here. It's still just me and you fucking around. Oh, okay. That sounds okay, though.

So, uh, speaking of fucking around, what are we talking about today? Yeah, so this week we're looking at the ABC Romantic Comedy Sitcom. Romantic Comedy Sitcom? Yeah, yeah, it's a romantic comedy situational comedy. Selfie, which ran for the epic length of September to December 2014. It's got a stellar cast, a quirky but manageable central concept, some snappy writing, and a whole bunch of dashing John Cho bowties.

Oh boy, does it. Is that enough to make it worth watching? The answer, I think we agree, is complicated. Much like the relationship between John Cho and Karen Gillan. So complicated. Did the world need a show that's Sex and the City meets My Fair Lady? It got one. It sure did. Does the world need anything?

I'll tell you what I need. I need Jon Cho in more things. He's great. He's really good. Let's just talk about how this got greenlit in the first place. Who's asking for a romantic comedy sitcomedy in 2014? Yeah. Just about everybody. Well, it was a different time, right? Yeah. Well, people had hope then. Yeah, they did.

Nobody has hope anymore, Dave. Things are getting better. Things are getting better now. I know. If you heard our episode on Mick Mulvaney, you'll understand why. No, this was an ABC show. This is coming off the heels of a couple of the sort of what we would think of as these sort of great romantic comedy sitcoms of the mid-2000s and How I Met Your Mother had just finished in 2014. The Office had just finished in 2013. Yeah.

And this was part of that sort of second wave that was trying to pick up on those same vibes. You had New Girl started the year before this show. Which it's a lot like. It's a lot like New Girl. Yeah. They're even kind of poking fun at New Girl in this, I think. Oh, for sure. Oh, boy. The quirky roommates are definitely just the quirky roommates from New Girl. Yeah. There's this ancillary character, Bryn, who's played by Alan Rachel. Yeah.

Yes. And, yeah, she's basically Zooey Deschanel. Yes. It's really fun. They've got, yeah, I mean, they've got, like, pastel everywhere, and they're playing ukulele, and they're wearing polka dot skirts. I mean, it is, it's a lot. There, in the pilot, there is a spontaneous Lady Gaga sing-along. That was kind of fun, actually. It was.

Yeah, you're going to get the feeling listening to this that we're a little frustrated with this show, and I think that's accurate.

So this show came out at the same time as a lot of other shows in the same vein. In the same fall story, we got Manhattan Love Story, A to Z, and Marry Me. Those are three other single season romantic comedy shows for the 2014-15 season. Netflix had Love pretty soon after, which is like a little more serious, I think. But really, what we're saying is that Love was in the air, and people wanted a little dash of humor with their Love.

You know what? We've got some things handled, and we're ready to look at love. It's where we were at in 2014. That's right. So the main producer of the show is Emily Katnick, who had several shows under her belt that were quite popular, mainly as told by Ginger. Suburgatory was a very popular show. Was it? Well, popular enough. Okay. I'll take your word for it. And same with HBO's Hung, again, three seasons. Oh, sure.

She also had a couple single season shows, Aliens in America, about a family that adopts, I think, a Pakistani kid, or he's an exchange student. This sounds rife with possible pitfalls. Yeah. Kind of like another show that she would later make. Which was? Selfie. Yeah. Yeah.

So, you know, we've got a popular ABC producer. She's got a little cachet. People want a romantic situational comedy. And we end up with Selfie, which, as Dave alluded to, is sort of a Sex and the City My Fair Lady crossover. Yeah, it's, I mean, the connection to My Fair Lady is obviously very overt. Yes. Yeah, they're not hiding this. Yes. The character names are Eliza Dooley. Ha ha.

Instead of too little. And Henry Higgs. Instead of Higgins. You know, I guess to make it a little less upper-crossed British. And the central concept is that we have an uncouth young woman who...

wants to join or is being more aptly is being told she needs to join a higher level of society. Whatever that is. She kind of, she kind of wants to, I mean, she has a sort of breakdown in the pilot episode, which we'll talk about in a bit, but she kind of has a breakdown and thinks that she needs to be a better person because she's what we would now call an influencer. She's one of these people on Instagram that has, uh,

tons of followers and people who like all of her posts, but she's not actually, doesn't really have any friends. Yeah, she's got 260,000 followers or something like that. Something like that, yeah. But everyone's laughing at her behind her back in this pilot and in her face. Yeah, but she knows, she's got an actual skill, though. Yeah, which they kind of, like, weirdly tap into once or twice, because Henry Higgs doesn't work as a...

what a phonologist or whatever uh professor higgins was yeah he's a he's a marketing rep yeah i mean so you got an advertising exec that's got 260 000 followers on this lady's account and they mentioned that like twice that those two might be connected she they do mention that she's the uh top performing sales rep at this pharma company that they both work at but it's like

This is a serious skill that you'd think they'd be valuing. Like, she is their brand if she has that many followers. She should be in charge of marketing if she's that good at getting people to pay attention to her. But no, we have... Henry Higgs has the higher position in this company, and that dynamic kind of makes a few things uncomfortable, in my opinion. Yeah, so just so we can get these characters out of the way, our main characters are...

As Dave said, Henry Higgs. Henry Higgs is played by John Cho, who I dearly love. John Cho is probably most famous for playing Sulu in the new Star Trek movies and Harold in the Harold and Kumar films. Although he's been in a million things since. One of his first roles was in American Pie. He's just one of the guys talking about MILFs.

He's gone on a journey, hasn't he? Boy, and it just develops so well as an actor, too, from sort of goofy, psychic guy to this role where he's actually... Here's my thing about John Cho in this. Tell me about John Cho. He is so effortlessly charming when he's just kind of being a goofball and smiling and laughing. And he's cast in this role where he's not smiling and laughing. He's a straight-laced, uptight guy, and it's perfect.

Almost like beyond the point where I think they wanted it to be. I think like John Cho as a person, just in the way Karen Gillan does, which we'll talk about in a second, kind of subverts the intended role that he was cast in. Yeah. Like,

He's so clearly not this person. Yeah. That it's like he makes the character likable despite the writing. Yes. And that's where you had mentioned the frustration with this show. And that's one part for me where this comes in, which is I wanted John Cho to loosen up a little, but that was against character. But that was with John Cho. And it's a very it hurt my brain at times. My brain's been hurting. Brain's been hurting.

And then, yeah, likewise, the flip side of this duo is Eliza Dooley, as you said, played by Karen Gillan, and she's most famous for being Amy Pond, one of the Doctor's companions in Doctor Who. Right. At a certain point, she got tired of being gaslit by Matt Smith on Doctor Who, and...

She's quietly become one of the better young actresses, I think, of the 2010s. She's finally getting some stardom now, but she also made a horror movie called Oculus, I think, around the time this came out, which was actually very, very good. And she's pretty terrific in those Guardians of the Galaxy movies as well. Yeah, she plays Nebula, Gamera's sister. I think she's in Jumanji now.

She is. She is in the new Jumanji movie, and I think the sequel, too, that they're making. And I'm sure she's great in that, too. Yeah, although I wouldn't know. Yeah, I'm not going to see that movie. But again, she's kind of, she's playing this kind of airhead, ditzy, like, just wants to party and have fun kind of character. But she has a hard time playing that ditzy. No, no, she's got, you can see the depth in her all the time. Like, so, it really hurts what they're trying to do in the pilot, which we'll get to. Right. Right.

So other than those two main characters, we've got a host of side characters. This show is really built around a central couple and then maybe a dozen side characters. I mean, we don't, it's not like a cast of six, like friends. It's really two and then et cetera. And then a universe that revolves around them. And they're all, I mean, they're universally universe. They're universally really good. The supporting cast. Yes.

This is a great supporting cast. So some of the highlights we've got, let's see, who do we got? David Harewood plays the boss, Sam Saberstein. You'll know him from Homeland and Supergirl and sort of a million British TV shows. Oh, he is just fantastic in this show. He's so much fun. He kills every scene he's in. He is kind of your stereotypical really straight-laced boss. Who's up for karaoke? Exactly. He's really like...

disturbingly enthusiastic and just has like this supernatural layer of calm on top of that that is very unsettling and it's awesome. Yes, that's a great way of putting it. I love that.

We've also got Charmoneique, played by Divine Joy Randolph. She's mostly a Broadway actress. She plays in a lot of Broadway roles. She's been nominated for a Tony. And again, it kind of shows that she's both playing a stereotype as kind of your sassy black receptionist, and yet so much better than that stereotype. I want to see her in a lot of other things at this point because she was phenomenal in this role.

Which again, is such a stereotypical role, and yet she's so good in it. Whoever cast this show was incredible. Yeah, I don't know, but they did a really good job of finding big-name stars like John Cho, and of finding relatively small stars, Broadway actresses. Brynn, who we mentioned, is played by Alan Rachel, who's done a couple TV things, but mostly does stand-up comedy and improv.

Yeah, I've never seen her, but she nails it, too. And the other sort of big character, at least in the episodes I watched, was Eliza's boyfriend, Freddy, who's played by Giacomo Giannotti. And, like, in a very unlikable character, like, he makes that more than it's supposed to be, too. Yes. He's supposed to be the doofy boyfriend who's, like, only good for sex, but he's so likable.

You just like watching these people interact. It doesn't even matter what they're doing. Yeah, at one point, Eliza breaks up with Freddy, and I felt bad for Freddy, man. Absolutely. And he's played by, like I said, he's played by Giacomo Gianniotti, who's most famous for After This, going on to Grey's Anatomy, and he's in something like 60 or 70 episodes of that. So that show's still going. Good for him. I guess. You know, I want these people to succeed. I do. It's really good. I really do.

Um, structure. This is where we get a lot of the sex in the city comparisons, at least from my end. Um,

It has an opening narration, which is done by Eliza, Karen Gillan. She usually has a problem caused by her inability to relate to people on an emotional level. Then her friend slash mentor, Henry, sets up a task for her to learn from. Like, for instance, she has to learn patience by having him install a landline in her house for a week, which actually happens.

Henry, in the course of this, also finds that his own perspective is limited and that really he has something to learn from Eliza too. In my opinion, that's the least developed part of the show and it needs to be more developed. Yeah, I'd say I had one episode where that was developed really well and then in the rest, it's sort of a toss-off. It's...

Hey, buddy, you gotta loosen up. Oh, I don't know about loosening up. And then at the end, he loosens up. Oh, okay, fine. Yeah, it's where the show falls into its worst tendency, which is just to spout social media buzzwords and make jokes about social media. Ooh, boy. And by 2014, that ship has sailed, my friends. While we're talking about the green lighting and the structure, yes, the show's name is Selfie.

How that happened, I have no idea. I don't either. The other big ABC shows at this time were Cougar Town and Trophy Wife, so I think it was... That is exactly how this happened. I actually have a quote from one of the writers who did an interview with the Onions AV Club and said, and I quote, there was nothing we could do about that title and marketing and stuff like that. Wow. ABC is like, nope, this is what you got. It is called Selfie.

It's Selfie or Nothing, people. Look, you want a job? You write for Selfie. I love that they're so bizarrely attached to this terrible name. Like, they're throwing this awesome cast at them and talking about all these things they're doing and the network execs are like, the only thing they want to talk about is that it's called Selfie and that that's going to be a huge hit. No, guys, trust me. Selfie is the wave of the future. There's no way this will be dated as soon as we make a single episode.

At the end of every episode, everything sort of comes together. Lessons are learned. There's an ending narration. Usually there's like a little hint of romance between the leads that doesn't then get developed.

Yeah, that's the sort of general arc of each individual episode. And then over the course of the 13 episodes, seven of which aired and six of which moved to Hulu afterwards, the overarching arc is the sort of will-they-won't-they between Eliza and Henry. At first, Eliza sort of falls for Henry, and he pushes her away, and then he's starting to fall for her, and then the show ends. Yeah. Yeah.

Are we back in Manimal? Oh man, if only. So this is a romantic comedy. Everything moves pretty quickly. The dialogue is structured around having some good lines. It's like they're just line delivery service, basically, is the dialogue here. This is very much a single camera show. We're not doing interactions between characters. We're doing camera on the person speaking and they give their funny line and you laugh at it, you son of a bitch.

Everything is well put together. There's no laugh track. Thank God. Thank God, because it's the kind of show that I was worried there would be a laugh track. That's interesting to look at how important not having a laugh track is, because this show would be dead on arrival with me. Oh, if I heard a single canned audience laugh reaction, I would have just turned it off and lied to you about watching it.

The first episode, like the pilot, is already a difficult enough watch that if that laugh track had been in there, I would not have been able to make it through. This would have been a much different episode where we complained a lot more about this show, even if it was the same everything else. Yep.

Who is this for? Who do you think this is for? I think this is for people like us, honestly. This is for people in their 30s that are sort of entering this working world but are still young. I mean, the bulk of this cast is young people working in an office environment and dealing with sort of relationships and friendships and growing up. Yeah, I think it's important to note that it really is like that

Zenial term, I think like it's for people that can sort of look from the outside at both Gen Xers inability to have to like adapt to new technology relatively and millennials comfort with it, perhaps over comfort with it. So, yeah, it's important that you can see both sides of it.

Rather than thinking the audience is supposed to be part of either group. Yeah, I think if you're 18 and you're watching this show, it sucks. And I think if you're 55 and you're watching this show, it sucks. Exactly. And I think part of the problem that this show had in finding an audience is by calling it selfie, by having the pilot so clearly...

direct disdain at the character of Eliza, it sort of feels like it's going for an audience of like Gen Xers who just want to shake their fists at those damn millennials and their Insta books and their face chats. Yeah, it really can't quite make up its mind which of those two it's for, but honestly it kind of comes off okay because you can identify, at least I can identify, partially with Jon Cho's character and partially with Karen Gillan's character. Sure, because we are this audience. Let's talk about the pilot.

Oh, it's a rough pilot, folks. Quit making pilots. Yeah, people need to stop making bad pilots, is my opinion, because we have seen an awful lot of bad pilots by episode seven of this podcast. Episode seven, I think we've gotten at least five terrible pilot episodes. Take some time with the pilot, is what I want people to do. What are some of your biggest problems with this pilot? Okay, it relates to my problems with this show in general, but...

The way we start out in this pilot is we are introduced to Eliza on an airplane. They're on like a business trip or something. This whole airplane cabin is filled with people. Filled with pharma reps. Apparently. Oh, that sounds awful. Doesn't it? She is presented as the worst person you have ever seen in your life.

You loathe her in the first place. Well, you're definitely supposed to. Sure. The show has utter contempt for this character. And what bothers me about that from the get-go is we're not given a lot of reason objectively to think that she's a terrible person who deserves a comeuppance. She's just walking down the aisle looking at her phone, which is treated as, you know what? Fuck this girl.

And then, you know, the big reveal is that she's been sleeping with this guy that's also in their business, and he's married and didn't tell her. And she's kind of blamed for that. Yeah, she's blamed for it, while also telling us that, like, him being married is a deal-breaker for her. And this guy is a real problem. Right, so then what ends up happening... Okay, this is happening concurrently with Henry Chow talking to...

to his piece of shit friend. I don't, what, what's his, what's his piece of shit friend's job? I don't remember his piece of shit friend's job or name, but he's just an unlikable guy. And Henry Cho is like, uh, I like that you call him Henry Cho. Yeah. It's either Henry Higgs or John Cho. Oh, God damn it. What have I done? Yeah. And, um, he's like, he sees Eliza. He is just like, who is that?

Like she like this is a horrible affront to his sensibilities to see this to see this 20 something young woman walking down the aisle of a plane and his friends like, oh, that's our top performing sales rep. And first of all, you should you're an ad guy at this company. You should fucking know who that is. You should know your top performing sales rep if you're an advertising at a company.

And Henry's like, huh? And he's like, yeah, no one can resist the power of the miniskirt. So we're not starting out well to begin with here. So we're supposed to hate this character because she is white. She's on Instagram a lot instead of wearing long skirts.

Instead of judging random people in an airplane. To be fair, that's pretty in line with My Fair Lady just walking down the street and going, ugh, common people. Yeah, but there's a very crucial difference there, and that's why I think the creators of this show do not understand My Fair Lady. Go on. The idea of My Fair Lady is not that Eliza is a piece of shit who needs to change and Higgins can save her, right? No, it's the opposite.

The idea is that Higgins is a flawed man who cynically believes that society values the performance of like, of the trappings of decency rather than, than that decency itself. Right.

So his agenda is to prove that even this dirty piece of shit flower girl can be valued by this dumb society if she can talk and act like a decent person. So while Eliza's mannerisms are definitely played for laughs, we're not supposed to be looking at Eliza in My Fair Lady and going, asshole, she can't even talk right. No, we're supposed to be thinking, like, doesn't this asshole understand that her heart is gold?

Right, like the story is his journey. It's not really Eliza's journey in that sense. Yes, and like you said earlier, in this show they really sort of shortchanged the Henry Higgs journey. Right, we're supposed to start out hating Eliza from scene one, and we're supposed to judge her for prioritizing social media and for being uncouth. Like, the whole scene is just...

it rests upon you thinking that this character deserves a comeuppance, and then she gets it, because she starts getting travel sickness, and, like, the crux of this scene is she starts throwing up all over herself. Let's just pause. This looks vile. I mean, she is covered in vomit, and she's vomiting in these bags, and she's vomiting, like, the bag spills on her or something, and she's dripping in vomit. She's covered in vomit. It is gross-looking. It's not funny in the least.

Selfie thinks this is the funniest thing we've ever seen. Oh my god, we think it's so funny that she's covered in vomit, and I'm sitting there just squirming in my chair. When, like, so like, the tone of this whole scene is that this is a hilarious comeuppance for her, and you just like are, you're just feeling bad for her. And can I just say that the other thing that this pilot thinks is really funny is a lot of sort of sexual puns that don't really make a huge reappearance in the rest of the series. Yup.

You get a couple here and there, but boy, in this one, they're leaning heavily on the, could you move your hot nuts off my seat? Or my hot nuts in your way? And you're just like, ugh. Yeah, the pilot makes you think this is a very different show than what it actually is. The pilot has a lot more, as bad as the title selfie is, the pilot has a lot more sort of puns based around internet speak than the rest of the show has also. The problem that we're presented with then is that

It's clear from this first scene that Selfie is going to be her journey and her journey alone. So it's about Eliza learning that she's not prioritizing the right things and there's a whole world going on outside of her head, right? Yes. But the big problem with that is it sets up the show to be structurally very flawed because it puts a huge burden on this one character. She's serving the role of My Fair Lady's Eliza and Higgins,

To an extent. So she's the narrator, she's the protagonist, meaning that Higgins, who is supposed to be the co-lead, has no essential role in this story. Yeah, he is a sort of sidekick character when he's also a main character at the same time. His role is to contribute to her story. We're not left with a lot to work with there when one lead is supposed to journey and grow and the other is just there to contribute to that.

Agreed. And as much as I did enjoy parts of the remainder of this show, and I'm glad that it fixed a lot of the stuff in the pilot that was problematic, that's the sort of structural thing that this show can't really get around. The important thing to remember about this show, more than anything, is that

This concept has a lot of pitfalls and it falls into most of them. It's fair to say, but, but it's somehow is still like after this pilot, it's still pretty watchable and likable. Like, and at times it gets very good.

And so it's such a total shame that it's burdened by this albatross of a concept that it doesn't really seem interested in exploring. And shouldn't be interested in exploring. No, because it's not good. Yeah. What are some of your favorite things about the show? What's good about it? There are some legit fantastic lines here. Okay. And the cast delivers them really well. And I think that...

everyone gets a chance to shine at some point or another. Um, like Eliza very early on, I think an episode two, uh, gets the line of social media can be confusing if you're old and dumb and it's like, and that's fair. There's a great sequence in, um, I think it's episode seven when she has this puzzling rivalry with, um,

Henry's girlfriend? Yeah, Henry's girlfriend, by the way, is also a very super uptight, straight-laced woman. Yeah. Super, like, she's short, she's very skinny, she's got short hair, she's very sort of a tiny person. Eliza, immediately upon meeting her, says, You're dating this tiny woman? Which was great.

That one had another one of my favorite exchanges, which he's just, she's trying to get into Henry's office and Henry's got this sort of assistant who's keeping her out because he's got someone in there. And she goes, is it Obama? No. Is it Tobey Maguire? No. Is it Tobey Maguire, you little witch? And Eliza, this girlfriend is a urologist. Yeah. And who Eliza keeps referring to as...

What was it? Dr. Urine Peen HD. Yes, Peen HD. Dr. Baby Peen. She's a child. Yeah, Dr. Baby. She's a child. Yeah.

And she later offers to write the girlfriend a review from the urineversity of Southern Blatterfordia. I should note, too, that her way of making up... She acts in terrible ways towards this woman, of course. And her way of making it up to her is to make a cake that's also the urinary tract. It's kind of great. We only get one really brief look at the cake, and I really wanted to freeze frame it because it's such a great cake. And there's...

Henry's struggle to be like an actual human being throughout too. At one point he's arguing with, I think it's the last episode. He's arguing with Eliza's boyfriend, Freddie. And Freddie says that your hair dreams of being as great as mine. And Henry's like, hair is not sentient and thus cannot dream. Or again, Eliza at one point says, you know,

I'm doing this because I want to, bitches. And Henry goes, it's bitch. There's only one of me. It's singular. It's really great delivery. There's a whole sequence where Henry learns about Facebook and they're criticizing him for not being on Facebook. And he says, I'm on LinkedIn. Did you tell them I'm on LinkedIn?

That's a little close to home. Yeah, and then he spends the whole night reading up on his high school acquaintances and what they're doing now, and he says, smelly Terry from camp really turned things around.

There's a lot of, again, there's a lot of kind of looking back to high school in this, because Eliza was constantly looking back to high school where she was voted most butt. And that's the kind of one-off joke that's not very good, right? Oh, she was voted most butt. But they bring this up. They bring this up every two or three episodes, and it's kind of funny because it repeats itself. And you're kind of like, no, this is a running gag now that she's been voted most butt. Yeah, you get the sense throughout that there is...

actual intelligence involved in writing this show um much more so than like other sitcoms we've done where there's a very very faint flash of intelligence but here it's under you know it's um undergirding almost every episode yes and and again we mentioned the strength of the side characters but they get a lot of funny moments in tune um john show's girlfriend for instance he's you know

Eliza's been making fun of her for being this tiny sort of elfin-like woman. And at one point, Jojo's girlfriend says, oh, her, the giantess. Yes. The jolly giantess. The jolly giantess. That's right. I like when their boss compares Eliza to Harriet Tubman because they both have a lot of followers. Yes.

Oh, it was also because they didn't do what people expected them to do or something. Yeah, and he asks Eliza how many followers she has, and she says 300,000, so this number is changing a lot. And the boss is like, hmm, that's a lot more than Tubman. Yeah.

They also have a, one of my favorite moments was just between Charmonique and Brynn, of all people, who are these, again, they get maybe two minutes of screen time total. I didn't see this, so I want to know about it. This was in episode 10, I believe, and they've been arguing, and they've got different advice for Eliza for how to handle her attraction to Harry Higgs. And Charmonique is yelling at Brynn, Brynn is yelling back at Charmonique, and Charmonique just kind of gives her a look.

And then we cut to the next scene and Brynn is bringing in a tray of macaroons and she's got a bloody nose with tissue up both nostrils. It's a nice visual gag. You know what happened. You don't need to see it. Again, that's, I think that's a sign of confident writing. They thought this was funny. So they did it. They didn't have to explain to me that she punched her head butter or whatever. Do you have more reasons why you like that show? Because that is essentially it for me. And it's a good reason to like this show. That is,

These exchanges are often very funny and the actors are great. See, this is where it gets hard for me and where it becomes a very frustrating show because there are parts of the main sort of plot angle, the romance between the two characters, there are parts that I really like and there are parts that I really don't like. And it's hard to talk about it as a reason to or to not watch the show. Did you find their relationship between Eliza and Henry, did you find that compelling?

It was, again, it was so hard. And here's my problem. I've been thinking about this a lot this week. And the people making this show are so good at what they do. And so we get these moments. At the end of episode 10, I thought it was a really strong episode for their relationship.

Eliza has sort of confessed to Henry that she is in love with him. He is kind of pushing her away and trying to sort of back off of that. We get a lot of really touching, tender moments and really sort of stressful moments. Moments where she is legitimately sort of hurt by the way he is acting towards her.

and moments where he is trying to express how bad he is at handling his emotions. And at the end, she sort of breaks down. They're doing this karaoke thing. She goes back with Freddy, even though she doesn't want to. And it's a really kind of hard thing to watch. And the episode ends with Jon Cho singing karaoke by himself with just the boss, Sam Saberstein, watching. And he's singing Ooh Baby, It's a Wild World. And there's no backing track whatsoever. And it's this really soft, sad moment where

I don't think these characters belong together at all, but the people making the show know how to craft that scene so well that it still kind of affected me. I find that idea very compelling, and the way you frame it, I find very interesting. I don't think they nailed that. I think the idea that, okay, most relationships don't work, and there are usually...

compatibility problems that explain that and I find that concept very interesting as to why these two attractive people just can't fucking get together that's very interesting I feel like the show wants them to be together so much that they inevitably would have been that's a big problem I had with this show was it felt very rushed it felt very much like they were trying to be like Eliza loves Henry Henry loves Eliza fucking slow the fuck down people we don't need to rush into this

Before we move on, though, I do want to mention one more thing that I really like because it's important. In the episode where Henry is learning about Facebook, he accidentally tags himself in his ex-girlfriend's picture of her breastfeeding a baby. He tags himself as the baby, and that is legitimately terrifying. Yeah, go on. If you had done that, that was... Holy shit. That was traumatizing.

That's a closure account situation. Absolutely, yeah. You block her, and you never deal with her ever again. No, you're done now. There's nothing you can do. So the only... I mean, there are other reasons to watch this show. Again, it's a well-made show. We've watched a lot of shows that are sort of terribly made. This is well-produced, it's well-lit, it's well-acted, blah, blah, blah. We talked about how great the actors are. I thought it actually had a really nice...

subtle but funny sort of approach to race very very subtle well it's not like a it's not a show about race but it has a very multiracial cast and it was famous at the time for being one of the few shows ever that had an Asian male as its lead and

And you only get a couple cracks here and there about it, but they're usually really funny. In the karaoke episode, for instance, Sam Saberstein says something like, I thought all Koreans loved karaoke. JoJo is like, that is a stereotype, sir. But it is true. Yeah, and it's, um, you never find yourself thinking about race being an issue in this either, which, um, you know, is refreshing, definitely. It's nice. It's, yeah, they could have made a big deal out of it, and I think that would have taken away from the high points of the show. Yeah.

I mean, we all know that every show should go the direction of Caveman and try to put a giant lampshade on race at every opportunity. But not every show can be so fortunate to have that writing step. Okay, so why not? Stuff that might not. We've talked a lot about that, but... It's the same reasons. They push the romance so fast, and that's the most frustrating thing about this show. Yeah.

You get plenty of other office drama comedies, not dramas, comedies, that have these romantic elements that last for five or ten seasons before characters get together. How long were Jim and Pam in the office making eyes at each other? Oh, like, and then they were in different offices but somehow still making eyes at each other. Because it sure felt like about 80 years.

And this show, they want to get through all of that development in the first 13 episodes, and it feels rushed. Characters are acting the way they're acting because they have to, not because it's the natural outcome of whatever they've been doing. And when you push it that hard, it just makes you feel like, okay, so what's the problem then? Because you're not, yeah, so why aren't they together when there's, like, when you're not giving them time to explore the obstacles? In episode 10, she's confessing her love to Henry. In episode...

In episode 13, he's thinking about how much he loves her. Holy shit, guys. Yeah, so when a big part of your show is will they or won't they, that is way too fast. Way too fast. And, yeah, we're just not exploring the obstacles enough. My biggest problem with this show is way too often the show is trying to dress up a bland and unfunny product with shiny packaging.

So, like, rather than just write a funny situation, they commit to a boring one and try to convince us that, yeah, well, actually, this is, in fact, very funny. Yeah, a lot of the plot lines in the show, like you said, are very stock sitcom plots, and they're not really doing anything unique with them. Oh, they sort of maybe love each other, but don't, and the boss is making them do karaoke. Okie dokie, got it. As good as the episode is, where there's the rivalry between Eliza and Henry's girlfriend, it's...

That is a feather-light premise that your friend and your girlfriend aren't necessarily getting along. It's been done. It's almost as bad as those Keiko subplots in Next Generation.

Oh, man. Keiko's parents are coming over and O'Brien doesn't like them. But we're making this the main part of our show instead of like a C plot in a sci-fi show. Also, there's an alien invasion, but that's off over there. Just another example of that, too. I watched an episode called Even Hell Has Two Bars, and it's where they have to go to the bosses. I guess it's in Santa Barbara. It's like a rancho retreat kind of place. And they're going to have like a spa weekend, basically.

And guess what? Henry's uptight and has everything scheduled, but Eliza just wants to free wheel it. And it turns out the boss wants to free wheel it too. And Henry has a hard time adjusting. I think they did not have enough grasp of where they wanted to go with this show. They, um, they had this concept and they didn't even really like this concept that much, but they wanted to get these actors together. They wanted to make this show without having any idea of what happens if it's successful and,

and where they even want these characters to go, because they wouldn't have been able to just keep this going forever. And a lot of reviewers mentioned that in their preliminary reviews, like, of the pilot. They're all, where... What are you going to do once they either get together or don't get together? And I don't think they knew. I don't think so. Let's... I don't want to rush this, but, like, let's get into that. Like, how do you... Why do you think this show didn't get greenlit? How do you fix it? I mean, what's... I think that...

Reviews were okay, and particularly near the end, it was picking up something of a cult following. I remember the AV Club was doing a recap of each episode near the end there. Mm-hmm. But those ratings, though. Not good. The ratings were absolutely terrible. This did not find an audience that was of enough size to keep it on the air.

And I think it's because of a lot of what you're saying. I think it's the show, it didn't have enough of a sense of self. Like the title. Oh, God, I'm just hanging myself. You know, the title did it no favors in trying to get an audience in the first place. And really, canceled after seven episodes is pretty rough. Okay, so some unanswered questions I have about this, one of which we've gone over. How would this have gone on once we get past the will-they-won't-they episode?

That's my biggest question, though, is, like, what was the long-term forecast for the show? If you're thinking, can the show last 10 seasons? No. Not the way it's set up. I think they would have to introduce some kind of ridiculous curveball. Like, they crash land on an island, and that's our show now. So, like, seasons 6 through 8 of Archer or whatever. Yes.

Or what they needed to do was by the end of that first season, they need to make it very clear that they are just friends. Yeah. In the same way, that first season of Seinfeld, I mean, Jerry and Elaine, sometimes they're into each other, sometimes they're not. By the end of that season, just friends. I don't know if episode 14 was intended to be the end of the first season or if it was just what they had produced when they were canceled, but they did not signpost where it was going at all.

No, I had no idea what to expect with what was unproduced. You need to do that if you want to create an audience that rolls forward with your show.

Again, if you're coming off the heels of How I Met Your Mother, I get How I Met Your Mother. This guy is going to keep dating people until he finds the mother of these kids, and he's looking for this lady that was a slutty pumpkin one Halloween. And, you know, like I've got a thing to grab onto there. The other question I have is how do the social media scandals of 2016-2017 affect Eliza's follower base?

or not even follower-based, but just the tone of the show in general. This show is pretty up on things like Facebook and Instagram. It's using them as jokes. So, for instance, the boss goes drinking at one point in that resort episode, and his private areas are covered by a giant smiley that's kind of winking. It's a funny gag. I think that plays a lot differently after the whole Me Too movement. What percentage of Eliza's followers are bots? Ha ha ha!

The prov de love Eliza. Yeah, like she suddenly gets these – all these MAGA people just like posting memes under every one of her posts. You know what? You weren't worried about that when Obama was president, Eliza. So what would make this work?

One idea I thought would be interesting because, I mean, we didn't talk about this much, but I have a big problem with one, the power dynamic that's going on here. Higgins is not only her mentor, but he's older than her. He's the man in a very male firm. He is more highly ranked than her. He's her boss, essentially. She doesn't work directly for him, but he's in an office with an assistant keeping her out. She's in a cubicle.

Yeah, so that makes the relationship feel kind of icky to me. It is a little awkward, so maybe change that around if you want this one. So, yeah, I was thinking, what if you did a gender reversal? I was thinking the exact same thing. Right? Because that's kind of the hip thing to do anyway, is that you've already got My Fair Lady, where the older man is trying to change the younger woman.

Yeah, if she is the... I mean, I don't know if you'd have to recast this or what, and that would pretty much ruin it. But if she's the fastidious mentor and he's the narcissistic goof. And, you know, we've seen plenty of TV and movies that have...

sort of fastidious girlfriends and goofball stoner boyfriends it would be interesting to see one of those however where the man was wrong yes exactly to change because usually it's like a forgetting Sarah forgetting Sarah Silverman type thing where it's the bitchy girlfriend the cool dude who can't hang out anymore oh forgetting Sarah Marshall no yeah no what's the Sarah Silverman one is it there I'm not thinking of forgetting Sarah Marshall I'm thinking of a different movie

I want there to be a movie called Forgetting Sarah Silverman. And if we don't do that, I have an idea for an even more comprehensive fix. Okay. So looking at the top shows of 2014-2015, at the head of the pack is Empire. Okay. Now, I've never seen Empire. I've not either. But my understanding is that it's basically a show – I mean a soap about the hip-hop industry –

We don't have anything as sexy as that to work with for selfie. But what we do have is the pharmaceutical industry. What if the show were about the cutthroat world of big pharma? I actually, in my notes, I had either have more jokes and better jokes just to make it more of a comedy or fewer jokes to make it more of a...

More of a drama. What if it's not like the kind of the, the silly arrangement that they have in selfie as it exists? What if it's like they form a dark alliance to take over the industry? Yeah.

That would actually be kind of interesting. She's got all the Instagram followers and the sort of hook on the social media. He's got the good ideas for the business. We've clarified that in a few episodes. I mean, these actors can hang with it. And we don't have... Thank you for standing up for them. Yeah, we don't have big-name rappers to guest star, but maybe we could have the stars of the pharmaceutical industry to be guest stars. The CEO of Pfizer, come on down. Martin Shkreli. Martin Shkreli.

Oh, God. Can you imagine? Right. And, I mean, didn't Arnold Palmer and Kevin Nealon do, like, a Jansen Pharmaceuticals ad? Maybe. They could come on. And how about Cory Booker? Let's have a recurring role. Oh, Pillman himself. From up here where I live. Okay. I have another radical solution. Yeah? Let's say you do want to make this a romance where they do end up together.

And you do want to have John Cho and Karen Gillan. But you're worried, like, how do you get this many seasons out of this romance, right? That's what we're worried about. I mean, make a movie out of this, man. Like, instead of doing a TV show. I would love to see a remake of My Fair Lady in a modern setting with these actors. That could definitely work. I mean, seriously, like, does it have to be a TV show? Because the whole problem with this show... That might be the central problem here.

The whole problem is that, right? Like, this isn't set up to be a TV show, and the main problem is that it's a TV show. Selfie the movie. Let's make it happen. Is this a recommend or a not recommend? God, this is the question I've been struggling with since that first non-pilot episode. There's so much to like about this show, and yet it's kind of, it's not so bad, it's good, and it's definitely not so good that it's great, and we're not dealing with a Briscoe County here, and we're not dealing with something where I'm laughing at it.

It's kind of, is it worth your time? Maybe? Are we allowed to say maybe on this show? Yeah, it's not... Okay, it's not...

and it's not bad, and it's not great. So it's somewhere between those. I mean, there's so much TV out there that I'm tempted to say no because you can find something better. But on the other hand, it's kind of a good show. Yeah, at the same time, you were telling me about episodes you watched that I hadn't before, and now I kind of want to go back and watch them. And I have to say that's probably what constitutes...

I recommend is that we're watching these shows outside of what we are contractually obligated to do for this show. Yes. I, this is the first show where before we recorded, Oh no, I guess Briscoe was the first, but before we recorded, I watched six, not the required five episodes because I was kind of interested in seeing what happened in another one of the episodes. And that's,

I guess that's a recommend. I mean, if it was good enough for me to try to seek out an additional 20 minutes. I gotta say, these breeze by. They sure do. They're 22 minutes and they feel like 12. Every time they're ending, I'm like, oh god, it's okay. Yeah, these keep things moving pretty well. I mean, at the end of the day, you're talking about less than five hours of TV total. I'd say go for it. A John Cho and Karen Gillan are good enough.

Agreed. This is a light recommend for me. This is a very light recommend, but I guess it's more of a recommend than a not recommend. Okay, and that is Selfie, which Colin and Dave say, watch it? Question mark? So, thanks for listening to My Mother the Podcast, Season 2, Episode 1. Yeah, we'll be back next week with a show that you should not sniff.

Oh, he's throwing those hints out. So yeah, follow us on Twitter at My Mother Podcast. We have a page on Facebook, which is just My Mother the Podcast. Or you can write us at mymotherthepodcast at gmail.com. Please rate and review us on iTunes.

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