I gather her journey could have been easier with the support of that church group, but those religious types are always playing an angle.
She was almost rooked in the deal.
Yeah I indeed got hung up on the word “move” but completely correct in the observation that a pawn occupies 7 spaces if it finishes a queen and she occupied the spaces of seven episodes. It may have even been intentional!
Playing that out one can attach more significance to the unrealistic last bit of her leaving the car moving in a completely different direction …
‘7 spaces, 7 episodes’ is worthy English Lit 101 level essay shit, seems valid to me. 
Just finished it.
I l;ike the way she visualized the game at the end. Thats sort of how I always played, so I liked it - a good representation of the thought process.
Depsite the accliam for the set design, I see they still used period-incorrect modular phone handsets.
And despite Jolene’s protestations that she wasn’t a Magical Negro, she totally was a Magical Negro. Proclaiming it isn’t so doesn’t make it not so.
I kept looking for signs that she wasn’t, but I’m not really sure what they would have been. An old friend shows up to help when the protagonist is at rock bottom. The friend drops some wisdom that turns things around. That friend happens to be African American.
Story wise it could have been the old janitor coming back to see her one last time before he dies, or some half-sister she never knew she had, or whatever. But the character who does come back is her only African American friend, not one of several African American friends.
I’m still conflicted.
I know it isnt fair to the actors, but the trope is real in Hollywood. If Jolene had been around in even one other adult-era episode for continuity, that pretty much would have eliminated my opinion on her “magicalness”. But she shows up, works her magic, and effectively disappears. She doesnt even get a face to face (or even over the phone) congradulations for Beth at the end.
OK, I finally saw this over the weekend, weeks after everyone else did, and have a few comments, if you’ll indulge me.
Someone mentioned the modular phone handsets and I noticed that as well. Also, I wondered about the chess magazine she stole from that drugstore. It seemed implausible that the store would stock that magazine. (The local high school didn’t even have a chess club, so who’s buying the magazine?) And I also wondered about her trouble funding her Moscow trip. Surely, someone would have put up the money for the trip? If not the US chess federation or the federal government or some random philanthropist, perhaps the newspaper where Townes worked.
And I’d like to think that rather than Magical Negro, Jolene was there as Beth’s oldest friend. (She had an awesome car, by the way.)
A “magical negro” has no real wants and needs of their own, existing only to help the protagonist. Jolene seemed to have her own, complex life - in fact, part of the point of the character as that all in all, she was doing better than Beth. She was Jolene’s oldest friend and the closest thing she had to a sister, and was there for her in her time of need. Nothing magical about it.
Don’t let my wife hear you say that - she HATED my Corvair! (Tho mine was a 62 - early model. Jolene’s was a late model - I think those were seriously sexy cars.)
If you like old cars, Corvairs are likely the cheapest way to get into old cars. You can get a good daily driver for well under $5k. Super easy to maintain and fun to drive. And the “unsafe at any speed” stuff is BS. Sure, Corvairs are more dangerous than ANY modern car, but no more dangerous than any other 60s car. If you are concerned about safety, look for a 69 hardtop with a telescoping steering column, headrests, and shoulder straps.
I was curious about whether you were correct about this last costume, so I Googled. Vogue has an article in which the costume designer explains the costumes. She says, “At the end, Beth wears the white coat with the white pants and cap. The idea, of course, is to convey that she is now the queen on the chessboard and the chessboard itself is the world.”
So good job noticing something that I completely missed.
If I remember correctly, in the final match in Moscow she promotes a pawn to Queen as well.
We just watched this over the past week. I too have some issues with Jolene showing up at the end, but there was really no one else from her past to play that role in her life. It was cliché, but I’m willing to overlook it for the sake of fairly good storytelling. But Jolene’s life really was a bit magical.
My biggest issue with the story was that there really were no consequences to her heavy drinking and drug use. She had some miserable nights, and it may have cost her in her first match with Borgov, but she probably would have lost that game anyway. Her relationship to drugs and alcohol kind of came and went, until she didn’t need it anymore and then magically disappeared.
But that’s a relatively small concern in an otherwise great story. Well acted and captivating.
There are often no consequences to heavy drinking and drug use - at least not in the short term. You hear of all the times that there are. But functional addicts function. And there have been exceptional people who have addiction issues - music and literature is full of them: Keith Richards - the poster boy for functional addict. But Hemingway, Dickens, Freud, Churchill, Grant - even Thomas Edison - were heavy users or addicts. Part of what is seductive about these substances is that you can often ride them to your own ends - until they start riding you.
And Beth’s medication addiction appears to be benzos. You can still get shit done, you can still think, you are just relaxed about it. For me, that means there is a clarity. I can completely see how they would be helpful in a situation like competitive chess for some people. (They also apparently impact the visualization centers in the brain. I’m sure in most cases this is NOT good. But for some people, it probably could allow you to play out a visual scenario like chess) However, I know better, I get a max of ten every six months, and use them WAY sparingly for anxiety that is going to start a spiral that could end in hospitalization - usually only needing another ten after they expire with some still in the bottle. Benzos are reportedly hell to kick. But in the 1950s and 60s, valium was handed out like opiates in more recent times - especially to “hysterical” women - the vast majority of whom functioned fine, just with less “hysteria.”
Almost all promotions in tournament chess are to a queen. (I did see one to a knight once, because it gave check.)
I’m a bit late to the show, but have finally gotten around to watching it and quite enjoyed it (still have the last episode to go). There are a few things that I would change but overall I’m glad the show is as popular as it seems to have been.
I really enjoyed how non-cliche the characters were - there were no real villains in the show, and I like how the show balanced people helping Beth out for neither solely altruistic nor solely selfish reasons, as @monstro described. Beth’s relationship with Alma (the adoptive mother) ended up being way more complex and touching than I expected it to be.
One thing I didn’t like as much is that I found the sheer discrepancy in skill between players to be a bit much - I could buy her cruising her way to the Kentucky state championship, but later on when she was demolishing 3 supposed top players in speed chess without previously having shown any affinity for speed chess (including a grand master and Benny, former US champion), yet was still intimidated by Borgov, it felt a bit Dragonball Z-ish. I don’t really know that much about chess, but is the skill gap between top players and elite players really that extreme?
I quite liked that casting because it added an element of humour - when he was telling the kid interviewing him “oh yeah, you gotta stay in shape” when he’s clearly skinny as a stick himself, it was a great bit of irony. I wonder actually if that is a nod to the fact that current chess #1 Magnus Carlsen stays in excellent physical shape which some say is a contributing factor to his success.
I actually wondered if Beth was meant to be coded as being on the autistic spectrum, as I found many social quirks of hers to be quite peculiar. These two articles (#1, #2) outline a lot of the observations that I made watching the show. While her lack of understanding of social norms and odd mannerisms could possibly be explained by her childhood trauma and being raise in an orphanage, the way that she studies people and the way she reacts to people emotionally certainly made me think she was neurodivergent.
One chess pro in one of the videos on the show noted that that was actually the most unrealistic bit of chess in an otherwise realistic chess show. In his opinion NO ONE could do that against multiple grandmaster-level players in that fashion. Though he did opine he’d love to see Magnus Carlsen try 
.
She absolutely read as very mildly autistic to me.
I finally got around to bingeing this, and would say I was generally delighted with it. I played tournament chess for decades, and loved the scenes of the various matches… it became pretty obvious to me how much time they had put into making the games themselves realistic, which is really unusual. really the only thing missing was waiting 20 minutes for your opponent to move while he blows cigar smoke in your face, but i’m not sure that makes for good drama. among things I like a lot besides the chess…
- Anya Taylor-Joy can pretty much do no wrong. She is terrific at somehow conveying a series of emotions without seeming to move her face at all.
- Her mother was a terrific character, not at all what I expected starting out. She was an interesting character in her own right, not just a facilitator for the plot.
- I have quite enjoyed seeing Dudley Dursley (Harry Melling), having grown up, playing such interesting roles like Harry Beltik. I recently also saw him in a crazy Southern Gothic role as a preachers boy turned murderer, and he was quite good in that as well.
- Someone posted a video of the final game up above…Vassily Ivanchuk was one of my favorite players in the 90s, a bit of a nut, but also a wildly creative player. I loved finding out that that was one of his games (more or less).
There were also some things that didn’t quite work as well for me, but meh…I’m just going to end on a high note for once.
I enjoyed the miniseries very much, and am now listening to an audiobook of the Walter Tevis novel. It’s pretty good. (She’s still in the orphanage at this point, learning chess from the janitor; he just gave her a book of opening moves).
The book is on my to-read list. I will be interested to hear from you how closely the miniseries follows the book.