The Queen's and Other Gambits A Critique

    At such times I miss Rex Reed and others.

  The Netflix series has received rave reviews. You may consider them well deserved because the show is different and compelling in strange ways. It is compelling as a modern-day fairy tale if the viewer attempts to trust the story.  The heroine, if you will, is a young orphan girl blessed, or cursed as the case may be argued, with a genius and obsession for chess strategy. Most of her young life is consumed by the strictures imposed on her by the societal norms  of the 1960's, which include sexism in the form of a male dominated society as well as the lure of tranquilizer drugs, alcohol, and the smoking of cigarettes and illegal drugs.

   Some may posit that this  ideology which exists in a capitalist culture can be overcome by a person's exertion of individual freedom. Having gone through the extremes of what society had to offer at the time, and descending into the dark depths, Beth was able to surmount her problems on her own, without any collective action from society. A utopian view, if there ever was one.

 Others  would say the portrayal of Beth's life and the odds she overcame is a distortion of social reality. She was orphaned under gruesome circumstances; she said it did not bother her. Her passion was chess, and the world of chess was a man's world; she was unfazed. She faced the addictions of drugs and alcohol; she overcame them by will power. She even had to contend with  an unloving  stepfather, and an uncaring banker. Zounds.

  So a story worth telling, with a lesson to be learned from either point of view---social reality or utopia.

   I'm fine with either analysis, but I'm  confounded by the more mundane aspects of the story. In the first 6 episodes, I don't think Beth spoke more than 100 words, and then in the most detached manner possible. Yet people, mostly male chess players, were drawn to her in the most caring manner, offering to help her even after she trounced their game. There were several who kept showing up in her life, offering their advice and suggestions, even after she had rejected them. Beth had transformed from  a rather plain and dowdy schoolgirl into a beautiful and chic woman, even through her addictive years. Only in the later episode did she apply her makeup with a too-heavy hand, but her body remained that of a model. 

   Beth is the protagonist of the story, so naturally it revolves around her circumstances. But as a viewer willing to opt in to the suspension of disbelief necessary for any fiction, I can't help opting out long enough to feel a little envious of a person who is detached and unwilling to reach out yet is pursued by any number of interested would-be friends.

Afterthought:  It seems in the early episodes the chain-smoking stepmother was  being set up to be a victim of lung cancer. She had developed a troubling cough, but that apparently disappeared, and several episodes later she succumbed to hepatitis; she drank a lot too.