“Having haters online means you’re famous.”
“But having haters in real life means they hate you.”
- Eliza and Henry
So while Jen is away, I’ll be covering “Selfie” this week. Of the new comedy pilots that I’ve seen (admittedly it was only two) I thought Selfie was the stronger performer. It’s not just that Karen Gillan and John Cho have great chemistry, the jokes are actually funny. Maybe it’s because it’s aimed at my generation. Anyway, Eliza and Henry are sort of sharing morning coffee before work and he just doesn’t why Eliza is favoriting a mean tweet about her. She says that having haters online means you’re famous. I have to agree with Henry on this point that it really isn’t such a good thing. It also seems like he’s got a lot of work to do to improve her image around the office. She’s sleeping with a new work guy, Freddie, and the office is talking about it and the fact that her short skirt is not work appropriate attire.
Henry questions Eliza’s relationship with Freddie as we see she’s basically a booty call. While she tries to figure out if it could be move, Henry is lured into joining Facebook after another co-worker wonders how Henry knows who in high school got fat and ugly without it. His mom is his first friend. It’s kind of sad. Predictably, he spends the entire night messing around on the site and looks a tad disheveled and not his usual pristine self in the morning when Eliza comes and tells him that she doesn’t think Freddie is in it for a real relationship. Oh and Henry wants Eliza to stop responding to Freddie’s texts.
Eliza is having trouble following Henry’s directive of ignoring Freddie’s texts and in general not thinking about sex. So he tells her to get a hobby. She thinks the best thing to do is weasel in on Brynn’s book club. They’re reading “The Curious Incident of the dog in the Nighttime” (side note: it’s a very good book told from the point of view of a young autistic boy). Instead of actually reading more than 8 pages, Eliza is worrying over what she’s going to wear whilst reading and is at Good Will. She Facetimes Henry who is obsessively checking out videos and such on Facebook. She is proud to report that she’s ignored all of Freddie’s texts that day and she’s pretty pleased that Henry took her advice and joined Facebook. She warns him not to stalk ex-girlfriends though. Oh and she tells him that there’s an app for Facebook. So now of course he goes and stalks his exes on his phone. While doing so, he accidentally tags himself as an ex-girlfriend’s breastfeeding baby and can’t figure out how to undo it. It’s pretty hilarious. Over at the book club, Eliza is not really doing much to ingratiate herself with the girls. She gets caught not having read the book and then they get upset when Henry barges in looking for her. The girls think he’s in love with her or something (not yet ladies. Maybe one day when they’ve worked through their various issues). He needs her tech savvy-ness to un-tag himself from the photo. Unfortunately, the ex-girlfriend already knows about the tag. That is one thing that Facebook is super annoying with; sends you eight million alerts and stuff, even for stuff that you don’t really care about. In typical Henry fashion, he’s going to try and clear up the confusion face to face instead of using more impersonal communication. Why do I get the feeling Eliza’s lesson is going to turn better this week than Henry’s?
After getting booted from the book club, Eliza ended up at the nearest Cold Stone for some pity ice cream where she runs into Charmonique and her son on “cheat day”. Eliza realizes that she can sleep with Freddie today and that will tide her over for the rest of the week. I’m not sure that’s really the lesson she should get out of it but this is Eliza and baby steps are required. Unfortunately, she learns the very painful way that texting and walking is a bad idea. She gets hit by a smart car and falls down a man hole. Henry’s at the office rather depressed after seeing his ex-girlfriend (it really was awful and awkward and she was kind of mean) when he sees Eliza’s status that she’s at the hospital and injured. He races right over and tries to comfort her. At least he really cares about her. She’s in pretty rough shape though (fractured her pelvis, dislocated her tail bone and a concussion among other minor injuries). What did surprise me (and Henry) was that Freddie showed up and while at first he seemed like a dick, he offers to take Eliza home (aka be seen outside with her without sex involved). I guess it did work out for her after all. And Henry’s hatred for Facebook grows when he again accidentally tags himself in a photo (this time as the bed pan in Eliza’s photo). Some people just shouldn’t be allowed online. Henry decides to delete his Facebook account and he lets Eliza know that if he wants to find out how people are doing, he’ll check up on them personally. Which also includes calling her in an hour to wake her up due to the concussion. That’s definitely not something Freddie would do.
Overall, I thought this was a pretty good episode of “Selfie”. It provides a nice commentary on Facebook and the casual relationship culture of our generation. It was also a nice continuation of the pilot episode and where we left the characters. In looking back at the two versions of the pilot we saw here at More TV Please, I can see that this episode leads more easily from the edited pilot rather than the one ABC put up online. I hope we get to see a lot more of the burgeoning relationship between these two characters.
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