kieyra

I’m having a hard time placing this scene. When did Townes wake Beth up in a hotel room?

Interesting about difficulties finding it. You’d think they’d time a new edition. Maybe they didn’t expect #1 on Netflix.

I have to admit, I kept noticing it as well and being distracted. Not to be shallow, I just don't remember ever noticing it during the actress's role in HHH. That may even be why I was distracted by it. I've rewatched HHH many, many times. I remember wondering at one point if they had put her in some kind of prosthetic so she'd look different for the new series. But now I wonder if it's just a matter of the way she was styled/made up and what angles they shot her from between the different series.

Why The Queen’s Gambit Is the No. 1 Netflix Show Right Now Found this interesting:

I've been rewatching it and paying a little more attention to the 'romances'. I remember being surprised, the first time through, by the end reveal that Beth apparently had feelings for Townes. I always found him extremely creepy, including what seemed like a large, visible age difference. I had a hard time taking Benny seriously, mostly because of wardrobe issues. I never got over his weird cowboy getup. The actor was fantastic but he was absolutely swimming in those clothes, and it made him look like a little kid playing dress-up with a false moustache. Suspension of disbelief issues for me. I did think he and Beth had the most 'chemistry', at least on paper, though. But yeah, overall I liked that she could take or leave romance as any kind of goal.

Spoiler tagging until I figure out if this happened in episode 2 or 3:

This is kind of a head-scratcher. It seemed like they went out of their way not to cast a younger Jolene (same actress throughout), but I think we were supposed to believe she was younger than fifteen.

Yes, I felt the same way. I loved the series overall, and I expect I will rewatch it many times, but something about the finale was a little bit ... pedestrian? compared to earlier episodes. I expected a win v Borgov, just not in such a heartwarming way. I’ve also been pacing myself on the series (because I’ve been enjoying it so much), and it had the effect of Jolene’s appearance seeming a little discordant, and it implied a closeness between them that I don’t really remember the show showing me. I mean, as far as we know, they never spoke again after Beth was adopted out. But then Jolene shows up to rescue her from everything from alcoholism to her money problems to facing her past. It’s tiptoeing around trope. I also really loved Alma/Mrs Wheatley’s dialogue, and losing her also seemed to mean we lost some of the stylized/minimalist dialogue in favor of more straightforward television dialogue. Performances remained stellar throughout, and the show is uniformly lovely to look at.

This was the first one that was hard to watch. I knew there was no way she was going to beat Borgov the first time around. I also knew Mom was a goner as soon as we saw her playing the piano. (Although obviously the character has had an air of doom about her from the beginning.) Then when Mom wasn’t at the match and Beth was losing and they then used the TV trope of someone in a room chattering away at someone who will obviously turn out to be dead ... it was a low point for me so far both in terms of predictability, and because now we probably begin the downward spiral. The show has been oddly relaxing for me until now. Still engrossed, though.

Shallow note: I don’t know the actress who plays Beth, but she looks like a child of Natalie Dormer and Bjork, and the camera loves her.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess_prodigy

I can relate in one way: as a person with generalized anxiety disorder, I can think much more clearly when the Xanax kicks in and the volume of the background freakout gets turned way down. (Especially in 2020.) But we’ve seen zero indication that Beth experiences anxiety, or at least not in an obvious, television way. She’s all stone cold with nerves of steel, in a way that makes me jealous.

Addiction isn’t my favorite story element (unless it’s like ... Dr House), but I do think they set us up for it starting with Beth’s pill dependency in the orphanage. But at least so far (I’m still only midway through the series) it doesn’t dominate the episodes. I wonder if the pills are even still around. She was stealing adoptive mom’s pills for a while there.

Anyone know if they were really drugging orphanage kids like that back in the fifties?

The bad news is, the wig is still with us (although I haven’t finished the episode). But I feel like this show, if it doesn’t get buried due to the interesting times we live in and the week it was released, will be up for some serious awards. I can’t play chess to save my life, but man could I relate to feeling like my teen peers were all alien creatures (at the girls’ party). Edit, the terrible wig is gone. But I’m not so sure about Jojen Reed’s black leather cowboy look. I can’t believe I’m somehow only three episodes in. They’re not unusually long but somehow each one has the depth of a whole movie.

Sat down with no real intention of watching TV, Netflix trailer for this grabbed me, and I didn’t come up for air until the end of the second episode. It’s been a long time since I’ve been utterly transfixed by such a quiet show. (In general it takes a lot to pull 100% of my very short attention span.) And I don’t even like chess. Great performances, minimalist dialogue that works really well, and what looks to my eye like really good set design, costuming, etc. I just got sucked right into the world. It’s interesting how there’s a sense of dread hanging over the first two episodes—you assume something really bad is going to happen to her at the orphanage, or with the adopted father, but the sexual assault threat never materializes. Or not yet. (And maybe I just imagined it, since so much fiction is beginning to reflect the true percentage of women who experience some sort of assault at some point in their lives.) Sole complaint: that wig has GOT to go.

Shibden Hall now closed for filming of Gentleman Jack series 2

FWIW, I believe they date the wedding as 2007 in episode one. (I agree with the rest of your objections.)

I ended up watching the whole thing, albeit out of order. I liked them all a lot more a lot more than I expected, even the second (funeral) episode that I went back and finished after losing interest the first time (large bickering family dynamics usually just bug me). Glad I did, or I wouldn’t have seen the later twist. The one with the mom with COVID19 was heartbreaking. The actor playing her husband was killing it. He was so clearly just hanging on by a thread. The nurse and professor trying to juggle caring for each other’s families was fantastic and a window into a completely foreign world for me. I loved Earnestine’s interjections and observations (I didn’t catch what communication device she was using). The retired couple felt way too real, as did the gay couple. Both their situations resonated with me, for different reasons. The finale, argued from two perspectives of Black Americans on the murder of George Floyd, was eye opening for me. They had to keep reminding us subtly that the pandemic was happening, but the (literal) framing device of the remote A/V setup work was a nice change. Speaking of that, I appreciated the way they used different kinds of technology to showcase each episode. I guess there was some product placement in there, but at the same time these devices are becoming as ubiquitous as toasters.

This one was hilarious. And very touching.

I liked episode one. I thought the tech was decently used and not too distracting. We saw the juxtaposition of isolation and the not-quite-real interaction of social media, and how the latter can turn into poison on a dime.

I liked episode one with Mike Colter, but ep 2 wasn’t working for me, so I skipped ahead to this one. Some of the teen speak seemed a little ... forced ... and I laughed at their Overwatch skills, but it was a gut punch at the end when she saw his real instagram account. Then they doubled down with George Floyd. (Actually, I’m not sure they needed to do that—her story of casual, quieter racism and heartbreak stood on its own.)

Wow, I really had to dig to find this on Netflix. I expected it to be plastered on the front page. I’ve watched every Jenji Kohan show they have multiple times, so you’d think their algorithms would have put it in front of me. I wonder if they’re not promoting it because of some behind the scenes split with Kohan (they’ve cancelled all her shows (GLOW, Teenage Bounty Hunter, etc).