The queen’s gambit so far is good after 2 episodes but I have a major gripe wrt
Jolean giving out the drugs as a black woman pissed me off.
I’m enjoying Queen’s Gambit three episodes in. It’s a bit cheesy in spots, but not too bad. I could do without the tortured childhood flashbacks, but maybe this is just a young parent thing. I don’t think the narrative would suffer without them.
I really like all the wall paper. Might have to plaster my place.
Wallpaper WOAT, my wife is always saying she’s going to slap some around the house and she made the same comment as you while we were watching this
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Unpopular opinion time: just finished Queen’s Gambit and thought it was insipid and sort of pointless in the end. There are things to enjoy, the period look is well done, it’s technically well directed and the lead has a captivating quality to her. The chess fell flat for me though, it ended up being the same dramatic sequence of shots for each game and became repetitive. I didn’t think they conveyed things like why people become obsessed with the game or what different playing styles are very effectively.
If the central character had been a male it would just be obviously boring, it relies heavily on this woman in a man’s world, girlboss thing which is just a trope at this point. Godless similarly relies on girl-power tropes at points to create drama. I can’t say it was boring exactly, it held my interest well enough, but at the end my reaction was “that’s it? That’s all you got?” Again, Godless was a bit the same.
Spoiler stuff:
Her saying she was in love with Townes came out of nowhere, I was like wat. It was emblematic of the superficial feel of the show actually, he’s handsome and they shared a look over a photo shoot, therefore she’s in love. Ok…
Also the final scene with her being feted by the old men in the park was incredibly on the nose. Capped things off with the heaviest eye-roll of the whole series.
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Pretty much what I thought, as posted earlier. Beautiful period sets (far too beautiful for the time), well shot, trite storyline and characterisations.
The single word tl;dr is “Hollywood”
I agree, but thats kind of the point. Not everything has to be edgy and realistic etc. Straightforward hero’s journey tales are nice every once in a while. At this point “genre subversion” stuff like The Boys is actually kind of played out, IMO.
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Fair enough, but some character development would have been nice.
The only person I found remotely interesting was probably her adoptive mother, and they bumped her off prematurely imo.
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I would be fine with that but it doesn’t work as a hero’s journey because…
Well to use this definition:
A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.
That bit doesn’t happen. It also functions oddly as a straightforward tale of personal growth and the defeat of personal demons because her arc is that at the start, she’s very good at chess but is using it as an escape from the dysfunction of the rest of her life and at the end… she’s AMAZING at chess. That’s why it felt so empty to me at the conclusion, because there’s no personal growth to speak of. She apparently defeats her addiction, but it’s just because the show says so, it’s not linked to any underlying emotional breakthrough. It’s not like it was even holding her back at chess, in the early days it helped her play and when she loses to Borgov in Paris, she tells Benny that she could have been stone sober and it wouldn’t have helped.
A normal story would involve her overcoming her feelings of worthlessness and rejection because of the actions of her mother, but instead she’s celebrated throughout the series for her chess talent, then she finds out that her janitor coach has been following… her chess talent. And her friend Jolene from the orphanage says yeah I was following your chess career too. And the men in the park at the end love her because she’s great at chess. That’s why that ending scene felt so forced and superficial to me, because the defeat of Borgov is not linked to any underlying progress towards higher ideals. It’s purely that she’s better at chess now. A normal arc would be that she is taught that being lionised for your chess talent is meaningless compared to deeper love and respect for your worth as a person, but that just doesn’t happen. It’s very odd.
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I think you got the ending wrong a little. All this scenes outside the tournament room just showed how much her fame grew. The Russians just have a different attitude towards chess. The moment she left the car I was hoping she would get there and they would recognize her because chess means something for them. Its similar if a unknown just scored the deciding SB touchdown, the goal in the WC final or makes deciding play in the WS. If he showed up the next day at random practice field they would also recognize him or her and want autographs or whatever. Not sure why this should feel “forced”
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This is sort of true but it’s just a matter of degree. She’s on the cover of major magazines throughout the story. And it’s not a comeback story because there’s no low point to speak of. Her low point is that she loses a couple games to the best player in the world.
It’s sort of a rags-to-riches story, but compare it to a classic rags-to-riches story like Rocky. At the end, SPOILER ALERT, Rocky doesn’t even win the pivotal fight, but it doesn’t matter because he has earned the greater prizes of self-respect and the love of a good woman. There’s a subtext of personal growth and the message of the film is that that’s what is really important. There’s no subtext to Queen’s Gambit that I can discern. At the start she is respected for her chess talent, in the middle she’s respected for her chess talent, and in the end she’s respected for her chess talent. Winning the game against Borgov is important because it demonstrates she is great at chess and for no other reason. What the series is telling us is that what is important in life is to be number one in the world at a board game.
Yeah but she worked hard for that shit? How many of us have given up on poker because we didnt want to put in the work anymore or actually never have put in the work to begin with? How many motivational videos tell you you have to work hard if you want to accomplish something. And how often do people actually follow that advice? The world is filled with people who wasted their talent. She has drive. She works on her game. She doesnt get it presented to her. Ofc she also has the talent. I would love to play good chess. I watch the twitch streams sometimes but I dont want to put in the work. I also love AoE2 and would love to be good at that. In the end I settle for streams because you have to work on the basics first and I dont want to put in the time.
I think the idea was that she actually didn’t have to work especially hard because she had a freakish superabundance of natural talent, so the message there isn’t great.
Chess at the highest level is an all-consuming occupation that requires an enormous amount of study and memorisation of lines and games. The books she read are totally standard for a top player, as was playing casual games with her peers.
I forget most of the examples because I found it so uninvolving, but I think the point was made in several scenes that she was some kind of savant at the game who could exert her immense natural talent to overcome even the finest preparation eg the final Borgov game, taken from an actual game Ivanchuk-Wolff, where her analysis team overlook a strong Borgov line prepared by his team of Russian GMs during adjournment, but of course she refutes it over the board (lol) by improving on Ivanchuk’s actual line to win the game.
So your problem with it is that it doesn’t follow your preferred sports movie cliches.
Queen’s Gambit is the perfect pandemic show. I loved it, though the first two episodes are definitely the weakest.
I just finished the first two and am hooked. If it only gets better from here…
TY greg
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Could have done without the ridiculous trope of “chess genius glances at board for 0.5 seconds and immediately knows what the best move is despite 4+ other chess people staring at it” that they went to like 5x+.
And worse she gets destroyed at speed chess 
It’s kinda funny to read Chris and Jal criticism because I see it as kinda the opposite.
They chose, for good or bad, to avoid all the standard Hollywood exaggerations.
She went to orphanage home and they treated her kinda well?
And then she played chess as a girl in the 60s and everyone treated her kinda well?
And then she encountered some objective difficulties (her mom dying, substance abuse, her step dad scenes) but nothing was overly dramatic?
Even the Russian “villains” and the CIA dude were all kinda okay?
The writers explicitly downplayed every possible standard drama angle and kept it all pretty feel-good small story.
I enjoyed it and the decision to focus on the ambient and chess rather than the story which would have been boring and cliché.
It’s not great or anything, a solid B to B+ for the chess effort.
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The boy has hunter eyes that are hooded and deep-set with positive canthal tilt. I learned this from incel wiki. Not sure if he has wide eyes or just slight exotropia that makes it appear that way. The girl has classic Bette Davis eyes. I learned that from listening to Kim Carnes.
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That must have been why the state department thought she might be useful as a spy 