· A 2014 romantic sit-com that can foresee the situation in the 2019 world
· Selfie, another tv-show ABC should regret for cutting it short #saveselfie
John Cho (left) and Karen Gillan (right) are playing as Henry Higgs and Eliza Dooley respectively in Selfie, which is a romantic sit-com released in late 2014 (Photo: John Fleenor/ABC via Getty Images)
Struggling to look for the perfect romantic sit-com to binge after realising Modern Family is about to end soon? Don’t worry. You have come to the right place.
The year 2014 was known as the rise of romantic sit-com. While plenty of tv shows were produced, most of them were scrapped. TV shows including the Manhattan Love Story, A to Zand Selfiewere cut to run short with only a few episodes aired[1]. Even though Selfiewas axed due to its low ratings, with netizens’ power of trending “#save selfie” in social media and its campaign in change.org that have attracted more than 48,000 signatures[2], the remaining six episodes were released online in hulu.com.
Selfieis a remaking of the classic play Pygmalion(which is also known as the musical My Fair Lady), featured with modern music and current social problems[3]. It chronicles Eliza Dooley, a social media-obsessed, shallow, narcissist, finding her way to take her eyes off the social media platforms and start to show sympathy to those in need. Henry Higgs, an uptight, marketing expert, agreed to offer her a hand to improve her social status by considering this as a rebranding opportunity. As scripted in the Pygmalion(My fair lady), Henry will then end up falling in with his “creations”.
Eliza happened to be the ugly duckling in her high school, was voted to be the “Most Butt” and have no friends to celebrate with on her birthday. So, she groomed herself years later according to the most popular girl in her senior year, and have become “Insta-famous”, with zillions of friends and followers across her social media platforms.
Eliza has lost her sense of reality until the public humiliation happened on her during a flight back from her business trip, which has made her the laughingstock of her colleagues again. She finally realised the difference between “being friended” in social media and “being friends” in the real world when she found out that no one cares about her when she was in her most vulnerable condition.
With John Cho starring as Henry Higgs, and Karen Gillan as Eliza Dolley[4], audiences enjoy the spark between the two leads, especially when Henry said “A little bit of me, a little bit of you, that seems the one in combination” to Eliza. Some audience even exclaimed that they are a match made in heaven. The charm of Karen Gillan has pulled off John Cho’s character of being stiff, which later could be seen in the show that Eliza was actually also helping Henry out.
Even though many audiences are fond of the tv-show, the title of the tv show has become the primary cause of the low hit-rate. It is believed to be the reason that leads the number of viewers dramatically dropped from five million to three million, while the rating falls from 1.6 to 1.0 mark[5]. It is not the first time that excellent sit-coms created by “The Alphabet Network” are poorly named. Although showrunners of the Cougar Townand Trophy Wifeonce publicly admitted that the show titles are not related to the content[6], the title of the tv-show has already made audiences turned their heads away without even trying to watch the first episode.
Despite the title of the tv-show is named as “Selfie”, the content of the show was nonetheless trying to rectify the public’s wrongdoings. “Social media is this giant fingernail scratching this woman’s itch for constant attention. Look at me, something good happened! #blessed. Oh look at me, something bad happened. #still blessed…”, Henry exclaimed. As a matter of fact, the show Selfieis actually “anti-selfie”[7].
The decision to bring up the current major issue has made the show stand out from the crowd. Since research paper conducted by the All-Party Parliamentary Group[8]shows that 27% of children who spend more than 3 hours online every day appeared to have mental illness symptoms, internet addiction was recently proposed to be classified as a disease. Meanwhile, the WHO also suggested to include gaming disorder as a kind of mental illness to the next revision of its International Classification of Diseases manual[9].
With most of the audiences are teenagers, they could realise the drawback caused by their obsession with their phones and social media platform through watching this show. We may not all have a “Henry Higg” next to us all the time. But perhaps we can remind ourselves and keep track of our time spent with apps and websites with the “Screen Time” function in the IOS 12.0 upgrade.
True, it is such a pity that there are only 13 episodes, but you will definitely find the lines in the show timeless while the content is enjoyable and relatable with the humorous, yet sometimes cringy, Eliza Dooley.
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[1]Ihnat, G., & Ihnat, G. (2018, September 14). Saddled with a terrible title, Selfie was cut down just as it was coming into its own. Retrieved April 1, 2019, from https://www.avclub.com/saddled-with-a-terrible-title-selfie-was-cut-down-just-1820106515
[2]Sign the Petition. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.change.org/p/netflix-please-renew-selfie-for-a-second-season
[3]Fallon, K. (2014, September 30). 'Selfie' Is Both a Brilliant and Terrible TV Show. Retrieved April 1, 2019, from https://www.thedailybeast.com/selfie-is-both-a-brilliant-and-terrible-tv-show?ref=scroll
[4]Selfie. (2014, August 19). Retrieved April 1, 2019, from https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3549044/
[5]Ihnat, G., & Ihnat, G. (2018, September 14). Saddled with a terrible title, Selfie was cut down just as it was coming into its own. Retrieved from https://www.avclub.com/saddled-with-a-terrible-title-selfie-was-cut-down-just-1820106515
[6]Fallon, K. (2014, September 30). 'Selfie' Is Both a Brilliant and Terrible TV Show. Retrieved from https://www.thedailybeast.com/selfie-is-both-a-brilliant-and-terrible-tv-show
[7]The Confident 'Selfie' Finale Sets Up A Promising Future That We'll Never See. (2015, January 02). Retrieved April 1, 2019, from http://flavorwire.com/496734/the-confident-selfie-finale-sets-up-a-promising-future-that-well-never-see
[8]NewFilters to manage the impact of social media on young people’s mental health and wellbeing(pp. 5-7, Rep.). (n.d.). He Royal Society for Public Health. Retrieved from https://www.rsph.org.uk/uploads/assets/uploaded/8c1612c4-54aa-4b8d-8b61281f19fb6d86.pdf.
[9]Gaming disorder. (2018, September 14). Retrieved from https://www.who.int/features/qa/gaming-disorder/en/
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