"The Queen's Gambit" is a story about a chess prodigy on the surface, sure. But between the lines, this show was all about a woman's incredible life journey, from struggling with alcoholism to playing with the big boys to handling the pressure and celebrity that came with becoming the top player in the world.
Actress Anya Taylor-Joy (she was great in the movie "Split" alongside James McAvoy) plays Beth Harmon with incredible poise, a bit of mystique, and a certain understated moxie when it was called for. She was measured during her matches when she was winning, and she was discombobulated when she was losing. Taylor-Joy also nailed balancing that with the care-free, irresponsible side of the character when she went spiraling. It was fun watching the way Beth's life almost vicariously bled into her playstyle, and Taylor-Joy handled all of that with great finesse.
While watching this show, these chess geniuses made me mad. I love the game of chess, but I couldn't come close to seeing a match play out the way these guys do. It's like I'm staring into one of those 3D pictures while painfully crossing and straining my eyes to see more than one layer of the image while others can visualize how they would reanimate these hidden pictures with different colors and styles. Seriously, how can you plan ahead so precisely when you don't know what your opponent is going to do from move to move? It's really not fair.
Beth is one of these chess geniuses. As an orphan during the 1960s, she learns the rules of the game from an old man working at the orphanage while secluded in the spooky basement. She picks up chess incredibly quickly, the way some famous musicians learn guitar at age 6 or some poets start writing at age 5. Chess seems so hard to master, yet when we watch grown-up Beth compete against the best players in the world, they start talking about the game like it's incredibly boring, routine, and repetitive. I guess when you have so much in-depth knowledge of a game, eventually there are no surprises.
That was part of what made Beth's early matches exciting during her rise to fame. She played loose and a bit reckless. She wasn't too predictable. She went with her gut instinct more than by the book. As a young, somewhat immature woman, it made sense. But when she finally met her match (I admit, I was hoping she would never lose!) and lost a key championship match to a guy named Benny, he breaks down her game and tells her that she doesn't appear to have a full gameplan when playing. Beth wasn't setting up her opponent to lose key pieces or make tough sacrifices later in the game.
Again, for her maturity level as a high schooler or young adult, her philosophy lined up with her lifestyle. She didn't consider the long-term effects alcohol had on her; she just drank whenever she wanted because she had the freedom to do so. It proved costly in her first match against Borgov, the Russian who was ranked No. 1 and became her big rival in the show. During the night before her first big match against him, she was drinking and living it up (sure, she was traveling in a new country and was partially pressured from an acquaintance, but still, as she adamantly told those closest to her, she makes her own choices). She was nearly late to her match against Borgov. Photographers were blinding to her as the spectacle of the moment got too big, and she got destroyed handily.
Speaking of the spectacle of it all, during the episode when a national magazine writer worked on a spread of Beth and asked Beth what it means to be the only top female player in the world, it was cute to see her downplay that idea. It's kind of the catch-22 of it all, right? This show frames the first woman to reach the pinnacle of the chess world as a huge deal; and yet, Beth isn't distracted by any of the rhetoric. She simply wants to play chess and beat everyone. She doesn't turn it into a feminist movement or anything like that, a wise move; if she does turn it into a personal vendetta against men, the point of this "women can play chess, too" paradigm shift gets misunderstood. Still, the media has field days with stories like this, and rightfully so. We need to celebrate those firsts to inspire a new generation of whatever group needs it ("The Queen's Gambit" is a fictional story, but the concept is very relatable).
The side effect of Beth's ascension coupled with her childhood background is not to be missed: isolation. She really didn't have any close friends. She was either mocked by the other girls at school for dressing behind the current fashion trends or mocked because she plays chess and reads chess magazines (an abnormal concept for girls in this era). She lost her parents at a young age. Her adoptive father left her adoptive mother, and her adoptive mother is partially the reason Beth become an alcoholic. Even her colleagues in the chess world didn't really befriend her (at least, not right away), save for Benny, who defeated her multiple times and eventually mentored her to improve her game. Later in the show, her adoptive mother dies, which understandingly shakes her up. Beth fights for sole ownership of their house with the dead-beat adoptive father, but after she gets it, you could sense she didn't like staying in her own home all by herself, which is probably the reason she never wanted to stop traveling to play chess, even after her aforementioned humiliating defeat.
Beth, of course, gets a chance at redemption against Borgov in the season finale, and she handles herself much better. And by this point, the stakes are even higher. It's not just photographers in her face, but nations glued to radios for prehistoric play-by-play shows of the match. It was bigger than just a female being the best in a male-dominated game (no, I won't use the word sport here), but rather, it was the United States v. Russia, which had global implications. But she was able to zone out the spectacle of it all, and she finally learned to take her time and not make too many impulsive moves that would leave her vulnerable. The final match was insanely exciting for me to watch, but it was frustrating that the Russian demanded a break, which led to the match getting suspended overnight to resume the next day. In the meantime, Borgov and his fellow Russian colleagues are conspiring together to figure out the best tactics to win the game (which apparently is not cheating (this whole delay really killed my excitement for the match).
Thankfully, Beth's friends came through for her, too. It was the most touching moment of the season when she realizes she has so much support back home. Benny, her friends, and other people with whom she's crossed paths all lend her support. She began to comprehend the importance of the match - I mean, literally thousands of people were playing along in their own chess games as they heard the moves of each player during the radio broadcast - and she gained her swagger back. Benny, her mentor, knew she had Borgov on the ropes, and they mapped out every possible chain of moves so she would be prepared for anything. It was so much fun to watch, even if it was a little anti-climactic after the delay.
For a show about chess, we really didn't see a whole lot of actual gameplay, at least during the matches. We'd see a short edit of a move here and there, then maybe a reactive move of a player making that "I gotchya" kill move. But those moves should've been more gratifying than they ever actually felt because we didn't really see the progression of any one match.
For an eight-episode show, they covered quite a bit of ground, which can be risky. I didn't like the execution of the time jumps. We see her as a 9-year-old girl in the opening episode, then we jump to her already in high school, yet we still get call-back to moments of her days at the orphanage. To me, you could've just spent more time rounding her childhood experiences first, then let her character moments in high school pay off those dividends later. Instead, it felt a little more like we were given the snippets we needed to see at the convenient moments to give context to some of her character moments, which felt more shallow. A little sloppy, but by no means a deal breaker. It does feel like the Netflix affect, though; shows need to hook you earlier rather than later, so the show couldn't take too long to rev up. I will say, though, that the scene when 9-year-old Beth plays the entire high school chess team all at once and beats all of them (an overused gimmick, but still cool) was a good bridge scene during the transition period.
Great show. I hope they don't make a second season. The story resolved perfectly fine. If they do make a second season, though, I'm absolutely binging it.
Notes:
-I recently watched an episode of The Tonight Show with Jonny Carson when he interviewed a young Bobby Fisher, the world's greatest chess player. He had just defeated a Russian player to win the championship. During that interview (this was decades ago, of course), Carson asks Fisher questions similar to what Beth faced during the fictional show. Fisher's win was monumental because it established the United States as the top competitor to Russia. Back then, of course, everything from the moon landing to the Miracle on Ice was all about the United States proving its supremacy to Russia. Fisher was fun to listen to when he talked about that rivalry, and in classic American fashion, he definitely didn't stay humble about it. But Americans like the cocky attitude, right? If you want to see high-level chess, watch some of Fisher's greatest games (especially the ones when he sacrifices his queen piece) on Youtube. The tricks he pulls off are insanely cool.
-I appreciated the titles of each episode of "The Queen's Gambit." They tied in to chess terminology, but related to Beth's progression in some way, shape, or form.