ABC Closes the Shutter on ‘Selfie’

Nov 8, 2014

The Alphabet Network has effectively pulled the plug on the comedy series Selfie, starring geek culture favorites Karen Gillan (Doctor Who’s Amy Pond) and Henry Cho (Star Trek’s Hikaru Sulu), after rather pathetic ratings and less than stellar reviews for the weekly rom-com. By way of Nielsen’s latest rankings, Selfie was averaging a miniscule 1.5 rating in adults 18-49 and 4.7 million viewers overall in its Tuesday night time slot. It’s likely ABC will somehow air the full thirteen episodes already in the can but Deadline has reported the network has no interest in ordering any future episodes.

I’m a fan of Gillan – who made much of the first half of Doctor Who’s seventh series even watchable in my opinion – and Cho is a fine actor (I love the Harold and Kumar flicks and think Cho provides a nice turn as Sulu) but the idea of an updated retelling of Pygmalion struck me as a really odd choice for a network comedy; female viewers weren’t going to gravitate to show about a woman having to undergo social reimagining by a man and men are certainly tired of being portrayed as buffoons in sitcoms so it wasn’t as if the roles would be flip flopped, so however Selfie played out the deck was stacked against it. Truthfully, I’ll never understand why ABC greenlighted this show in the first place.

Thankfully both Gillan and Cho have plenty of talent so this cancellation is just a bump in the roads of both their careers.

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Jeff McAleer

Founder/Editor-in-chief of The Gaming Gang website and host of The Gaming Gang Dispatch and other TGG media for fifteen years, Jeff takes on any and all sorts of games but is especially ready to tackle roleplaying games and strategy games. He's been involved with the hobby since he was just a wee grade school lad, over four decades ago.