S01.E07: End Game

[kieyra]

30 minutes ago, chocolatine said:

then immediately realized it was a rude question and told Beth not to answer.

I think he actually says “Don’t answer that, it’ll just depress me”, or words to that effect. Meaning, less about the question being rude and more about him not even wanting to know because she was already so much better than him.

But the great thing about this show is that there’s a lot of room for interpretation by the viewer.

[chocolatine]

7 minutes ago, kieyra said:

I think he actually says “Don’t answer that, it’ll just depress me”, or words to that effect. Meaning, less about the question being rude and more about him not even wanting to know because she was already so much better than him.

But the great thing about this show is that there’s a lot of room for interpretation by the viewer.

I think you're right, because Beth's joke-answer makes more sense in that context.

[rmontro]

On 3/16/2021 at 11:10 PM, magdalene said:

I liked that too.  I watched this show with a friend and the first thing she said about young Beth'  initial meeting with Mr. Sheibel was,  "I hope he doesn't molest her".  We really have been conditioned to expect the worst of people.

It's really true,  The Queen's Gambit book came out in 1983, and since then it seems like we've been trained to expect a huge amount of negativity in our fiction, especially on television.  There are so many moments where you expect things to get really dark, but it never really happens.  It says a lot about our culture, I think.  Anyway, the positivity was such a breath of fresh air.

 

On 3/16/2021 at 11:10 PM, magdalene said:

As to most of the male characters being attracted to Beth, she is a beautiful young  woman with a great sense of style and a chess genius.  Only realistic that men would swarm around her.

I so appreciated that they didn't fall into the cliche of making her main Soviet opponent a mustache twirling villain.

Anna Taylor-Joy has said she didn't think she was beautiful enough to be a leading actress, but I think she's selling herself short.  She does have a quirky face.  But especially in such a male dominated world like chess, just the fact that she was such a novelty would have gotten her a lot of attention for sure.  Plus there was that somewhat odd fashion subplot through the whole thing, where she was continually improving her look.  She was stunning at certain points.  

[Calamity Jane]

I resisted watching this until now, not sure why. It turned out to be the best show I’ve watched in ages. Anya Taylor-Joy is an amazing actress, watch Emma to see how completely different she is in that role. And wow, they sure found someone who resembled her to play young Beth. 
 

So much to love, but for someone my ancient age, the music was such a journey to the past. It encompassed my high school years and the beginning of college, just a lovely stroll through those years. 
 

I was initially just sure the janitor was sinister, then very afraid that the adoptive father was a molester. What a relief that one was entirely benign and the other “just” a jerk. 

I’m trying to get my chess-playing son to watch it, but he’s afraid they rush over the chess too much. I don’t play, so I can’t judge, but it seemed to me there was enough of it to hold his interest. 

[kieyra]

22 hours ago, Calamity Jane said:

I’m trying to get my chess-playing son to watch it, but he’s afraid they rush over the chess too much. I don’t play, so I can’t judge, but it seemed to me there was enough of it to hold his interest. 

From an early article on the show:

Quote

Not that anyone short of a professional chess player would be able to tell, but every game in the seven-episode series—and there are a lot of them—was designed by chess coach Bruce Pandolfini and Garry Kasparaov, probably the best-known chess player in the world.

I would say they do the best they can for both audiences--they don't bore non-chess-players to death, partly by making sure we're fully anchored in the characters, their faces and subtext. The actors are good enough that we can tell how the game is going by their expressions. But they also had the matches mapped out by experts (see above) so that people who know chess wouldn't be throwing things at the tv. 

Even when Beth and someone like Harry or Benny are talking about chess theory that I don't care about, I care because I care about the characters, and they care. Or they've given it some context, like this or that chess player who went crazy in the end. 

[RedbirdNelly]

My son and I just got around to finishing this and we just loved the ending. I expected her to win but would not have been surprised if it had happened in a sadder way or some negative thing happening right after. I didn't realize until I saw it how nice it was to have a happy ending. It made me feel good to realize Benny and the whole gang had come together to help. It was nice. It's nice to just have nice once in a while, in a show that still was gritty.

I'm also now a fan of Anya. I saw her host SNL and it took me a while to figure out it was the same person. 

[shapeshifter]

On 1/23/2021 at 8:31 AM, Set1 said:

She removes herself from the car, knowing the area hosts what she has already passed through uncrowned – a real life chess board with living pieces who she has vivified and invigorated by her battles and final victory – pieces seated in squares within a larger square

On 1/23/2021 at 8:31 AM, Set1 said:

The old man gestures in a polite yet commanding sweep of his arm for her to take a seat,

I just now happened to read through this lengthy post (perhaps an essay for a class??) and these bits made me notice things I had missed when I watched the last episode: 

• --how the square where she engages the Russians in chess games is a kind of chess board with the the players as pieces
• --that the old man she sits down to play with is reminiscent of Mr. Shaibel--almost a resurrection of him who she has a second chance to interact with
  --although I might have noticed this at the time; I don't recall

 

Edited August 23, 2021 by shapeshifter

[rmontro]

On 8/22/2021 at 10:33 PM, shapeshifter said:

--that the old man she sits down to play with is reminiscent of Mr. Shaibel--almost a resurrection of him who she has a second chance to interact with
--although I might have noticed this at the time; I don't recall

I thought that also.  He represented a kind of pure joy, because these guys weren't playing as a career, they played for love of the game.

When you think about it, it's kind of interesting that she got so broken up after visiting the school and seeing mementos of him.  He was kind of a father figure to her, even though he kept her at an emotional distance.  He did what he could to help further her chess though.

[Butless]

This series got so much praise, and the only thing good about it was the set design.

It was laughingly horrible. Did a fan fiction writer write the screenplay? Because it was like watching a marysue come to life. A boring, emo marysue. I loved this actress in The VVitch, but the acting in this was so one note, and the actual progression of the plot so unbearably, excessively  boring.

This poor, put upon orphan who has a crazy mother, a la every southern emo story of a girl, is put in an orphanage, has a black bf (but not for life, since she forgets about her after she's adopted), who surprises her later when she's an adult with an afro and who says, "Im gonna be a radical!," as if anyone in the history of ever has uttered those words. But it's the 60s, so that obviously has to be her only role to portray...oh jesus, how trite...

In fact, all the people around our marysue are one note, too. I lost count of all the times a character told her she was extraordinary, as if that would need to be said over and over for people not to get that, even though the whole thing is about her being a chess champion.  Such bad writing throughout the whole thing,I'm kind of surprised. If at the end, it was revealed that everyone else in this movie was a figment of her mind, like in A Beautiful Mind, it would have made more sense that the other characters were so cardboard. And maybe explained those grotesque chess bunny twins who followed her around.

And frankly, that's another beef of mine. You can all but expect that in any of these 'serious dramas' like this, that the female lead will be model worthy in looks, but the male romantic interests will be gross. To a one! All ugly af! And not just ugly, but aggressively ugly. That harry potter guy was in Devil All the Time on Netflix too, and he is horrible looking in every way.  The first man she sleeps with who is in her Russian language class looks like Dane Cook does, now. I mean who casts these movies? And why is it always like this?

Even Thomas Brody Sangster, who was so good in Netflix's Godless, was badly miscast in this. First he looks like he could be Ana's brother. They both has a weirdly peculiar look to them. Whoever cast this, didn't notice that?  And casting him as 'cool guy' love machine was hilariously off. When Ana's  sighs and says, 'So that's how its supposed to be,' after sleeping with him, I actually lol; it was just too much to accept.  I don't know who they thought they were selling that to. The fact that they shot his scrawny chest deep in shadow, says it all. Also, again, who would says to themselves, "So that's how its supposed to feel," after sex? Not only is that absurdly fake, it also couldn't hit the audience over the head any harder to make its point.  So let me amend that. Not just bad writing, horrendous writing.

But  we need to understand and empathize with this sad, horny, emo marysue ... that everyone praises as wonderful, but no one wants to sleep with...except french models of course.

At first, I thought they cast Anya, a beautiful model-worthy looking woman, to be perceived by the audience as homely, because this is what Hollywood loves to do. Portray homely women by model standards. But nope. True to form of the marysue this actually is, they want the audience to think the character is beautiful. And even more to Hollywood standards, they want us first to think she is plain, but that when she puts on a more flattering dress and makeup, THEN she turns into the swan. You know, this absurdity was parodied in Not Another Teen Movie --nearly 20 years ago. And yet here we are.

They made a character actually say it to her, too.  A cardboard, cliched french model, of all people. Who she has sex with. Because this whole thing could have been written on Tumblr, for all it seems. If this particular Tumblr author also had a momentary lapse in wokeness, and so made the 'french model' also say such offensive things as, "models are all vapid," "empty vessels for other to fill up," etc...they really did not stint on giving this character some misogynist crap to say. But I am sure that they thought it would get a pass because, hey, the heroine showed how cool and empowered she was by sleeping with her.

I'm going in on the ridiculous characterizations in this series because they were so appalling. If you bungle this as badly as they did, then the plot holds scant interest. And unfortunately, chess is boring. And they did not succeed in making it even the tiniest bit more exciting. At all. This entire series should probably not have run  past 3hrs. It was hellishly repetitive, tedious and a mess.

Edited November 6, 2021 by Butless

[SunnyBeBe]

On 11/6/2021 at 3:35 AM, Butless said:

This series got so much praise, and the only thing good about it was the set design.

It was laughingly horrible. Did a fan fiction writer write the screenplay? Because it was like watching a marysue come to life. A boring, emo marysue. I loved this actress in The VVitch, but the acting in this was so one note, and the actual progression of the plot so unbearably, excessively  boring.

This poor, put upon orphan who has a crazy mother, a la every southern emo story of a girl, is put in an orphanage, has a black bf (but not for life, since she forgets about her after she's adopted), who surprises her later when she's an adult with an afro and who says, "Im gonna be a radical!," as if anyone in the history of ever has uttered those words. But it's the 60s, so that obviously has to be her only role to portray...oh jesus, how trite...

In fact, all the people around our marysue are one note, too. I lost count of all the times a character told her she was extraordinary, as if that would need to be said over and over for people not to get that, even though the whole thing is about her being a chess champion.  Such bad writing throughout the whole thing,I'm kind of surprised. If at the end, it was revealed that everyone else in this movie was a figment of her mind, like in A Beautiful Mind, it would have made more sense that the other characters were so cardboard. And maybe explained those grotesque chess bunny twins who followed her around.

And frankly, that's another beef of mine. You can all but expect that in any of these 'serious dramas' like this, that the female lead will be model worthy in looks, but the male romantic interests will be gross. To a one! All ugly af! And not just ugly, but aggressively ugly. That harry potter guy was in Devil All the Time on Netflix too, and he is horrible looking in every way.  The first man she sleeps with who is in her Russian language class looks like Dane Cook does, now. I mean who casts these movies? And why is it always like this?

Even Thomas Brody Sangster, who was so good in Netflix's Godless, was badly miscast in this. First he looks like he could be Ana's brother. They both has a weirdly peculiar look to them. Whoever cast this, didn't notice that?  And casting him as 'cool guy' love machine was hilariously off. When Ana's  sighs and says, 'So that's how its supposed to be,' after sleeping with him, I actually lol; it was just too much to accept.  I don't know who they thought they were selling that to. The fact that they shot his scrawny chest deep in shadow, says it all. Also, again, who would says to themselves, "So that's how its supposed to feel," after sex? Not only is that absurdly fake, it also couldn't hit the audience over the head any harder to make its point.  So let me amend that. Not just bad writing, horrendous writing.

But  we need to understand and empathize with this sad, horny, emo marysue ... that everyone praises as wonderful, but no one wants to sleep with...except french models of course.

At first, I thought they cast Anya, a beautiful model-worthy looking woman, to be perceived by the audience as homely, because this is what Hollywood loves to do. Portray homely women by model standards. But nope. True to form of the marysue this actually is, they want the audience to think the character is beautiful. And even more to Hollywood standards, they want us first to think she is plain, but that when she puts on a more flattering dress and makeup, THEN she turns into the swan. You know, this absurdity was parodied in Not Another Teen Movie --nearly 20 years ago. And yet here we are.

They made a character actually say it to her, too.  A cardboard, cliched french model, of all people. Who she has sex with. Because this whole thing could have been written on Tumblr, for all it seems. If this particular Tumblr author also had a momentary lapse in wokeness, and so made the 'french model' also say such offensive things as, "models are all vapid," "empty vessels for other to fill up," etc...they really did not stint on giving this character some misogynist crap to say. But I am sure that they thought it would get a pass because, hey, the heroine showed how cool and empowered she was by sleeping with her.

I'm going in on the ridiculous characterizations in this series because they were so appalling. If you bungle this as badly as they did, then the plot holds scant interest. And unfortunately, chess is boring. And they did not succeed in making it even the tiniest bit more exciting. At all. This entire series should probably not have run  past 3hrs. It was hellishly repetitive, tedious and a mess.

I think I liked it more than you did, but it did have issues. Lol.  It’s been a while since I watched it.  I may take another look regarding some of the stumbles you mention.