【Rebekka Armstrong Archives】

Welcome to Fix It,Rebekka Armstrong Archives our weekly series examining projects we love — save for one tiny change we wish we could make.

It's childish to assume that loving something is equal to thinking that thing is perfect. Love can be dynamic, mobile, and accepting of the fact that most good things can and should change.

Selfie,the 2014 ABC sitcom that loosely updated George Bernard Shaw's play Pygmalion(better known by its musical adaptation My Fair Lady), is all about finding love through change. The show as a whole, which failed so magnificently with viewers that it was pulled from its time slot halfway through its first season, could have used a change or two before airing. That doesn't mean the show should not be loved.

The thing about “fixing” Selfieis that nothing about the show needs to change that much. Though Selfie was an unmitigated ratings flop, it had engaging characters, good jokes, a consistent emotional arc, and (cannot emphasize this enough) smoldering hot chemistry between its romantic leads. It excelled particularly in creating sitcom moments that in a better universe would become mid-2010s cultural hallmarks — Karen Gillan’s Eliza singing Sia’s “Chandelier” at karaoke before relapsing into her party girl ways, John Cho’s Henry riding up on a white horse like a storybook hero, and the “Selfiegrab,” a two-second visual reminder that Cho is still one of Hollywood’s most charismatic and underutilized leading men.

Unlike Eliza, Selfienever needed a makeover in the content department. Selfie needed one tweak: a title change.

Consider Lovesick, the well received British sitcom that premiered one month after Selfiein 2014. Lovesickinitially aired on Channel 4 under the funny yet unappealing title Scrotal Recall, but an infusion of Netflix money and a name change kept the show going for two more seasons. Both Scrotal Recalland Lovesickget at the point of their show from different angles, but only one of those titles allowed viewers to move past the initial “ick” factor of watching a show that, by title alone, appeared to be about balls.

Selfiesuffered similarly from its title turning an audience off. It’s hard to fathom now, but in 2014 the word “selfie” had extremely negative connotations. In 2013, Timemagazine named millennials the “me me me generation” in a cover story that connected phone use and youth with narcissism, a lack of empathy, and chronic self-absorption. The article’s cover image was a young white woman taking a selfie. In 2015, The Chainsmokers released their single “Selfie,” a dance track parody of empty-headed (presumably) white women being annoying, making poor choices, and taking, of course, selfies.

Naming a TV show Selfiein the mid-2010s was akin to advertising that show as vapid, trashy, and girly in a way the online discourse machine of 2020 would deconstruct immediately but 2014 was more than happy to let slide. Millennials and their selfies were the butt of every joke, our Instabooks, Tweetgrams, and avocado toast house budgets were the foundational myths previous generations used to cling to their cultural relevance by calling young people stupid. The obvious irony in people associating selfies and Selfiewith youthful mediocrity is that Selfiewas one of the first sitcoms to address social media addiction and influencers with nuance and understanding.

Had selfie-haters actually watched Selfie, they might have learned how to have empathy with a character whose identity was inextricable from her place in an online algorithm. They might have noticed that Eliza Dooley’s attention-grabbing energy was eventually redirected towards being thoughtful and loving, or that Henry Higgs’ luddite pomposity was an overreaction to the changing world. Alternatively, they could have noticed neither of those things and just had a good time watching two hotties give the will-they-won’t-they performance of their lives.

The question remaining is how, given a time machine and appropriate power in ABC’s network television hierarchy, could one “fix” Selfie’s title. Since Selfie was based on Pygmalionand, by cultural diffusion, My Fair Lady, there might be a pun or twist of words that could have clued people in to the show’s source material. Loverly, perhaps, or She’s Got It. Some sitcoms go the easy route and name their shows after their main characters, which normally would not work without previous recognition. In the case of Eliza Dooley/Doolittle, Eliza might have been enough. They could even have played against the 2014 idea that selfies were selfish and gone with Selfless.

They had options, is the point here. They whiffed it and Selfiesuffered for it. The show doesn’t even stream anywhere these days. Eliza and Henry deserved a second chance, a continued rebrand, and most importantly — a better title.