Second Look: 'Selfie'

I'm the first to admit that I'm a tough audience for a TV comedy. I spent more than a decade as a stand-up, I've done a syndicated talk radio show, written lots of hopefully funny articles and even spent some time as a stock-picking sock puppet. It takes a lot to make me laugh.

But weirdly enough, all of that random experience also makes me want to see television comedies succeed. I know first hand how difficult it is to get a laugh. How challenging it can be to find just the right tone for a scene and how hard it can be to walk that line between exaggerated for laughs and over-the-top.

I can't honestly say that I love the ABC comedy "Selfie," but I find myself wanting to love it every time I see it. There are moments of brilliance in every episode, but they're sometimes overlooked in a show that hasn't yet found quite the right tone.

"Selfie" is a modern take on "My Fair Lady," with Karen Gillan playing Eliza, a self-absorbed social media whore who has little in her life except her online image. She's the dark side of the Internet and there are certainly people in the real world just like her.  But after a particularly embarrassing public meltdown, she enlists the straight-laced Henry (played by John Cho) to guide her into being a better person.

The typical episode is split between Eliza's efforts to be a better person and the workplace scenes that include a larger group of co-workers. The show is a balancing act between Eliza's personal and business lives and there are times when it's an uneasy alliance.

This week's episode is entitled "Nugget of Wisdom" and it finds Eliza and Henry challenging each other to shake up their weekend plans. Henry insists that Eliza do something helpful over the weekend and she reluctantly offers to babysit Charmonique’s young son Kevin on a Saturday night. Henry is prohibited from working over the weekend, which turns out to be a problem since his idea of excitement is adding chicken strips to his salad.

The episode has some wonderfully funny moments, including a discussion that had me looking at the song "Working For The Weekend" in an entirely different light. There are some great scenes between Eliza and young Kevin and the way that Henry and Eliza solved the great vitamin problem at work is both funny and believable.

But the things that remain a problem for me in "Selfie" also plague this episode. Eliza's self-absorbed behavior needs to be dialed down a bit, especially early in the episode. In the same way that a insane person can be played that way without exhibiting "crazy" behavior, there is a way to show Eliza's self-absorbed side without resorting to the caricatures that often pop up in her scenes. It's a tonal problem, but it throws off the chemistry of the later scenes.

Another problem is David Harewood's Sam, who plays a boss with the habit of exhibiting vaguely creepy and inappropriate hugging in the office. Harewood's a solid actor and he could do well with the role. But Sam still seems like little more than a two-dimensional punchline and both he and the show deserve better.

I'm smart enough not to make any predictions about the future of any new TV show. But "Selfie" is now four episodes into its first season. And for all of the great moments, it's still an uneven show. It's often very funny and the on-camera chemistry between Gillan and Chow is really spectacular. But it's still unclear whether the show can find its groove before the audience (and the network) give up on the show.

And that would be too bad. There's a funny workplace comedy buried in the DNA of "Selfie" and I believe that the show could become great. The question is whether the show can rise to its potential in time to save it.