In this auteurist era of television, the likability question has become a litmus test for enlightened viewing. Wanting protagonists to be likable signals a lack of sophistication. Making protagonists “difficult” is a sign of authenticity.
I’m fine with that, as far as it goes. But Sophia Amoruso, the heroine of the new Netflix series “Girlboss, ” demonstrates that the question isn’t that simple.
The show, whose 13 episodes will be available Friday, is based on the memoir “#GIRLBOSS” by the real-life Sophia Amoruso, a digital entrepreneur who founded the fashion e-commerce site Nasty Gal. The show was created and partly written by Kay Cannon, screenwriter of the “Pitch Perfect” movies.
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The fictional Sophia — each episode begins with a note that the show is a “real loose” version of Ms. Amoruso’s story — is at the far end of the TV scale of difficulty. And she’s all the more realistic for that. If you don’t know a woman whom you love despite her characteristic anger, obsessiveness, insensitivity and refusal to listen to others, you may dismiss Sophia as a caricature. If you do, one moment after another in “Girlboss” will ring surprisingly true.
But truth doesn’t necessarily equal drama, or in this case half-hour inspirational dramedy. It’s fine that the Sophia of “Girlboss” isn’t likable. The problem is that she isn’t particularly interesting.
It’s a big problem, because for the show to work, we need to see what the other characters — like Sophia’s best friend, Annie (Ellie Reed), and her maybe-boyfriend, Shane (Johnny Simmons) — see in her. Neither Ms. Cannon nor Britt Robertson, who plays Sophia, is able to make it apparent.
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Ms. Cannon’s strategy appears to be to foreground Sophia’s vulnerability and self-hatred — after episodes of boorishness or violent anger, she’s liable to loudly ask herself why she’s such a jerk. It’s another realistic touch, but it doesn’t make us care any more about her. Ms. Robertson convincingly portrays Sophia’s defensiveness and irritating energy, but there’s a pinched, limited quality to her performance. Sophia needs charisma, and Ms. Robertson hasn’t found it.
The bigger issue may be the disconnect between the part of “Girlboss” that wants to be a character study and the part that needs to be a conventionally entertaining series. The roots of Sophia’s personality are addressed briefly, in vague and heavily clichéd terms (blame the parents). Otherwise her thorniness sits uncomfortably inside a stylized comedy that’s equal parts oddball and striving for the outrageous.
(The tech-business side of the story, in which a series of epiphanies takes Sophia from unemployed boho to eBay seller to e-commerce mogul, feels about as savvy as the copy of “Starting an eBay Business for Dummies” that Sophia shoplifts.)
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As she demonstrated in “Pitch Perfect, ” Ms. Cannon can write a funny line and sketch in an appealing character, and a number of performers benefit from this in small, spiky roles: Jim Rash as a vintage-clothing store owner, Norm MacDonald as a security guard, Melanie Lynskey as an eBay rival, Louise Fletcher as a curmudgeonly neighbor. They’re all likable, and there’s nothing wrong with that.
A version of this article appears in print on , Section C, Page 16 of the New York edition with the headline: Likable’s O.K., but Nasty’s Chic. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | SubscribeIt’s meant to be a funny tale of a woman hustling her way to the top of the fashion business – but you’ll never side with the overindulged star of this Netflix drama
Why you’ll love it: If you watch Girlboss and love it, I want you to get help. It is a “comedy” loosely based on the autobiography of startup millionaire Sophia Amoruso who made her fortune a decade ago (when this is set) with her vintage fashion brand, Nasty Gal. They have since filed for bankruptcy.
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It all starts with a girl in a bedroom in San Francisco, wishing she could opt out of adulthood and just please herself all day. We meet her pushing a clapped-out car up a hill while wearing an outfit barely covering her butt-cheeks. If real Sophia is anything like fictional Sophia (played by the otherwise excellent Britt Robertson, the spunky teen from Tomorrowland) then she deserves none of her success and should immediately hand over every cent to charity for crimes against humanity.
Fictional Sophia is a walking selfie, whining about having to work for a living. She says “love you in case I die!” whenever she bids farewell to her best friend. And she inexplicably steals food out of dumpsters despite having a dad who offers to help her out financially. It’s a show which fully mistakes being an overindulged horror-show for being an assertive millennial role model.
According to show creator and writer Kay Cannon, a Girlboss is “opinionated, confident, feisty” and, you know, strong or something. She and her co-producers (of whom Charlize Theron is one) are trying to make Girlboss the new Girl Power: the same vapid, non-specific, something-to-do-with-feminism-in-hot pants fluff but with added narcissism and less of a sense of humour.
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Girlboss is so unrelentingly tone-deaf to the human condition it’s hard to know where to start. It purports to be not only Sophia’s story but a rallying cry to dyspeptic, wasteful goons everywhere who think the world owes them a lovely time with zero input or effort expended.
The cry is: do what you like and figure it all out as you go along because you’re probably fabulous. Sophia’s epiphany here isn’t one of self-knowledge. She just finds an expensive jacket going cheap in a thrift store, sells it on eBay for hundreds, and cries. Money makes her cry. It’s everything wrong with the world today, distilled into a single, selfish tear.
She has no romance in her heart because all that’s at stake is her success. Trying to drag a romantic subplot over the top of it only serves to highlight her dreadfulness further, rather than showing her vulnerability. When Sophia has a sleepover with a boy and he remarks afterwards that he doesn’t know why, but he likes her, she smirks back, “You’ll figure it out, ” before forcing him to make ocean sounds to help her sleep. She is unrootable-for.
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An impressive supporting cast including RuPaul Charles as Sophia’s pot-smoking neighbour and Dean Norris from Breaking Bad as her concerned dad, cannot help this hammeringly unfunny script.
“Adulthood is where dreams go to die, ” whinges Sophia to a random old woman on a park bench who she sometimes uses as a sounding board. Girlboss is a show that could do with a grown-up in charge, because these kids have made a real mess of it.
Stand-out episode: Watch the tension headache that is episode one and tell me if you made it any further. I liked episode 13 best when it ended.
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