YMMV / Girlboss

• Audience-Alienating Premise: The series is about a snarky young hipster named Sophia who starts her own company after being fired from her job. The problem is, Sophia is portrayed as extremely smug, rude and generally unlikable, which made it hard to root for her. If that wasn't enough, Sophia Amoruso - the real person the show was based on - got herself mired in serious legal trouble over mistreatment of her employees shortly before it was released. The series also tried to appeal to the feminist public by selling its protagonist as an example of "Girl Power", but Sophia's unpleasantness and the fact that in real life Amoruso was alleged to have fired workers for getting pregnant made it look hypocritical. It ended up being cancelled after just one season - which stuck out due to Netflix's at-the-time lenient standards on renewal - with low viewership vs high production costs being cited as a reason.
• Base-Breaking Character: Sophia Marlowe. Many viewers found her extremely irritating and obnoxious, while others argued that her character wasn't supposed to be perfect and still found her funny and likable in spite of her flaws. Some have even argued that criticizing Sophia for being a flawed protagonist comes off as sexist, as there are many flawed male protagonists who don't get similar criticisms thrown their way (Kay Cannon herself stated she wrote Sophia this way because of an expectation for female protagonists to always be likable). Others would counter that the problem is that Sophia is often a jerkass to everyone for no reason, yet the audience is still intended to root for her and she was promoted as a feminist anti-heroine (as opposed to her being an Unsympathetic Comedy Protagonist or Villain Protagonist).
• Critical Dissonance: In a bizarre reversal from how movies and shows with "female empowerment" themes are usually received, critics generally had a low opinion of the show, but audience views were more positive. Case in point, on Rotten Tomatoes the audience score is 74%, while the critic score is only 35%.
• Uncertain Audience: The show was primarily geared towards Millennials, revolving around a rebellious 22-year old in 2006 who defies the odds and naysayers to start up her own business. However, as pointed out by some reviews, the show's protagonist and a few other characters (intentionally or not) tend to display all the worst stereotypes about Millennials: that they're lazy, spoilt, immature, and expect everyone to cater to their whims (yet it also does little to critique or call out this behavior, even presenting it as Sophia just being 'quirky' or 'headstrong'). A lot of people in the target demographic understandably weren't too impressed by this. People outside this demographic were either too young to watch the show due to the more mature content, or had little interest in the story and characters for similar reasons Millennials weren't into it (it's also been noted that Generation Z — the generation immediately succeding Millennials — generally don't find the 'girlboss' schtick all that empowering or inspirational, so even the youngsters who were closer to the show's target audience didn't find it that appealing). Considering this and other issues, it's not too surprising the show didn't last long.
• Unintentional Period Piece: The show itself is set in 2006, over a decade before its 2017 airdate, but interestingly it ends up feeling unintentionally dated to the The New '10s due to its glorification of the "girlboss" as a feminist icon. The term was popularized in the early 2010s, with Sophia Amoruso herself greatly contributing to this thanks to the success of her memoir #Girlboss and the launching of Girlboss Media. However, by the early 2020s the term and the ideology behind it had widely fallen out of favor; some came to see it as infantalizing or demeaning to women in management positions, and it's also been criticized due to the perception that "girlboss culture" encourages entrepreneurial women to use a veneer of female empowerment to sell products and promote themselves, as opposed to making real systemic changes (Amoruso herself was hit with allegations of fostering a toxic work environment and gaining success at the expense of her employees shortly before the show's debut).
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: One thing commonly criticized about the show was that Sophia, the main protagonist, could come across as this. She was intentionally written to be a flawed yet still interesting character, with her idiosyncrasies intended to be amusing or endearing. However, many viewers found her so-called quirks irritating or off-putting instead; they also felt her flaws tended to outweigh her positive traits or were so glaring, she came across as very entitled, self-absorbed and generally out-of-touch with reality, making it difficult for viewers to root for her or even tolerate her character. Nor does it help that many of her hardships are more her own fault than due to factors outside her control (e.g. she gets fired for turning up nearly half an hour late, spending her shift messing around on her phone and even eating her employer's food). The controversy surrounding her real-life counterpart did not exactly help endear Sophia to some viewers.

---