Early 2000s nostalgia is all over Netflix’s new series “Girlboss.” Razor phones, Canon cameras and eBay stores make the show fun to watch for those who remember a time when phones weren’t “smart.” Other than that, the show is very hard to like.
The series is based off of real-life Sophia Amoruso’s memoir “#Girlboss.” Amoruso is the founder of the fashion site Nasty Gal, which filed for bankruptcy last year, so maybe following Amoruso’s life is not the best idea.
The series follows Amoruso as she tries to handle this thing called “adulthood.” She deals with it by diving into dumpsters to get day-old bagels, stealing clothes and getting into fights with coworkers and boyfriends.
The show basically glorifies people living hand-to-mouth during their early 20s; it shows this way of life as a party instead of the headache that it really is.
Britt Robertson plays Amoruso in the series, but she is hard to believe as a strong, independent woman.
Robertson is too naive-looking and when she says some lines it just seems like a white girl trying to be cool. To be fair, each episode features the line, “What follows is a loose telling of true events … real loose.” I guess making the lead character unbelievable is the “real loose” part?
Not only is Robertson unbelievable in the part, but Amoruso as a character is just too hard to root for.
Unlikable female characters are hard to write well. Kay Cannon, a writer for the show, is good at writing strong, female characters – as seen by her work in “Pitch Perfect” – but it is hard to get behind a narcissist who gets in her own way, no matter what their gender is.
There are funny characters, like Rick (Norm MacDonald), Sophia’s security guard coworker, Mobias (Jim Rash), the owner of a vintage store and Gail (Melanie Lynskey), another vintage eBay store owner hell-bent on getting Amoruso off the site. The problem is that they are only minor characters who can’t hold the show up.
For fans of the book, it is a letdown; the book was praised for its feminism, but the show doesn’t offer feminism.
Sure, she starts her own business as a young 25-year-old woman and builds it from nothing, but she is selfish. She wants the company all to herself, and ironically one of the reasons for Nasty Gal’s downfall was that Amoruso was only concerned about her image and not the company as a whole.
If you want to watch the show, watch it for the music, fashion and, of course, RuPaul as Sophia’s sassy TSA neighbor.
Truth is – to quote one of the most popular songs of the early 2000s – the show is “too little, too late.”
All I can say, is thank God for RuPaul for making the show slightly more watchable.