Was this a dry joke? Does she read all unequivocally negative or positive reviews?
I get it. She doesn’t want to expose herself to someone without a strong objection to her show sitting around and nitpicking it in public. I find the nitpicky reviews to be the worst.
OK, if you flat-out hate the show for some major reason, or think it has huge problems, that’s something a writer can evaluate. Ditto for why a show works. But wishy-washy mixed reviews where the reviewer lacks a strong opinion either way but still needs to talk about it? It’s a waste of time for everyone involved, the reviewer included.
Huh. I would think a truly honest, nuanced review would inherently be mixed.
I experience a similar confusion when I watch her show. “Huh. Was that supposed to be funny?”
I love the show and nearly everything about it. Her writing, directing, acting, the supporting cast, etc. I think it’s a really smart and hilarious series.
That said, I don’t get her statement. I know she reads negative reviews, and takes criticism to heart (there were some meta references to the reception of Girls at the start of season 2), but I think **SweetiePotato **nails it.
Just FTR, I do love the show. I just don’t understand her statement.
And I find it immensely overrated, irritating and cloying to a degree that’s difficult to put into words, but hey… how boring would these threads be if all of us were right all the time? 
The more surprising thing I learned in that article is that Kareem Abdul-Jabbar has a strong opinion about Girls. Surely, he must have better things to do with his time.
Maybe that’s just a polite way of saying, “I don’t give a fuck what Kareem Abdul-Jabbar thinks about my show”?
I recently got to read feedback from ~100 anonymous people about a production of mine. It was both the best thing people have ever seen, and the worst thing people have seen. Some wanted their money back, and others thought it was better than their Broadway experiences.
While it was entertaining to read, I couldn’t take any of it too seriously, good or bad. An opinion on your art carries only as much importance as you give to the opining person.
My guess is she gives no importance to Abdul-Jabbar’s opinion, but didn’t want to insult him in public.
I find the opposite of her statement to be true. If I’m looking for random Joe Q. Public’s opinion of a movie, I skip over everything that’s explicitly effusive or downright hateful. Only those in between mean anything.
I think “mixed review” might actually be being used as an ironic euphemism for “bad review”.
Otherwise, I agree with those who are saying that actual “mixed” reviews are the ones that an artist ought to find most useful.
Maybe she reads the bad reviews and laughs at the hyperbole and reads the good reviews and enjoys the praise. Or maybe she’s being sarcastic and calling a bad review a mixed review. Either way, she’s not obliged to read or think about any reviews. Here’s what Kareem wrote, by the way.
Cloying? Huh, that’s never a word I would have associated with the show. I’m a fan, but I can certainly see how other people find it irritating. But overly sweet or sentimental? That surprises me.
I’m just bumping this to express my dismay that you all just let my “Surely” just sit there un-replied to after I set it up so perfectly. I’m disappointed in all of you.
Much to my surprise, I love this show. I hated Sex and the City so I avoided watching Girls for a while because I had so often heard it called the SATC for a new generation. The whole first season and a few episodes of the second season sat on my DVR until I finally got around to it. SATC took themselves so seriously and thought that they were doing groundbreaking social commentary when it was nothing but shallow pap. Girls is just fun with much sharper writing. So this 49 year old straight man is a big fan.
Dunham is really missing out by not reading Kareem’s review. His review completely hits the nail on the head. It’s very well written and thoughtful.
Surely you’ve been in a Turkish prison?
How can you know it’s mixed if you haven’t read it?