Series Review: The Queen’s Gambit
Beth Harmon stares at the ceiling in “Endgame.” Google Images
By Otto Do
“The strongest person is the person who isn’t scared to be alone,” Alice, the mother of protagonist Beth Harmon, advised. Netflix’s new mini-series The Queen’s Gambit, based on Scott Frank’s novel of the same name, tracks the life of an incredible woman named Beth Harmon who goes on to become the chess champion of the world after struggling with substance abuse.
We meet Beth as an eight-year-old when her mother deliberately crashes their car, committing suicide. Miraculously, Beth emerges unharmed physically, but she is left with a great deal of emotional trauma. Each episode, she cycles back to a few words from her ill mother through a series of flashbacks.
Beth’s father was never involved in her life. After her mother’s death, she finds herself in an orphanage, Methuen School for Christian Girls. There, she develops three relationships that stay with her: a friendship with a black girl named Jolene, a passion for chess, and an addiction to tranquilizers. However, it is her love of chess that drives her addiction to substances: the tranquilizers provided her the ability to visualize and calculate chess strategies.
Perhaps the uncertainty of her formative years—the suicide of her mother, the lack of a father figure—turned her to the game. “Chess isn’t always competitive,” she said. “Chess can also be beautiful. It was the board I noticed first. It’s an entire world of just sixty-four squares. I feel safe in it. I can control it. I can dominate it. And it’s predictable, so if I get hurt, I only have myself to blame.”
She learns to play chess from the orphanage custodian, Mr. Schaibel. However, she is only able to play chess when she sneaks down to the basement to see him. To practice, she takes pills at night. She believes that they magically grant her the ability to project a chess board onto the ceiling as she lay awake.
Nonetheless, Beth is talented even without the drugs; her natural intuition and unparalleled ability to memorize theory allows her to surpass almost all of the top players in the country. Her genius—her gentile and calculative demeanor—is admirable.
Only when she grows frustrated does Beth ever falter. On those occasions, she sneaks away to take the opiate, washing them down with alcohol when available. As a result, her countenance changes immediately—regaining her calm—but the drugs in the end aren’t enough to make her infallible.
It is difficult to watch Beth succumb to her addictions, and while she has one of the greatest chess minds in the world, her trust in drugs to bring her to victory, in the end, cripples her.
On her rise, however, Beth encounters many friends. Chess is a predominantly male sport, so her friends were mostly men. Perhaps they were like me—fascinated by her beautiful mind. They see that she is hurting, hurting herself, and so they attempt to help her. They drill and play, and she begins to see that she is able to refine her skill in this way more than she could through reliance on the drugs.
The final episode “End Game” marks Beth’s ultimate success following a painful loss in an earlier episode. This time, she is sober. Her match with chessmaster Borgov is intense, and neither of them make any missteps. The game goes on so long that they have to adjourn and continue the next day. During the break, her friends help her play out every possible scenario and methods of overcoming each one.
When the game resumes, she has already played through all the possibilities, but Borgov makes an unexpected move. Her friends panic, but she stays calm—she looks up at the ceiling, and sure enough, there was her imaginary chess board. She played through the rest of the game in her head and charted her victory.
This ending proves emotional for multiple reasons. It is intriguing to see, more or less, an addict’s mind without the creative embellishment lending to their struggle with a visceral energy that many stories of addiction tend to either take for granted or overplay. For Beth, her love of chess drives her addiction; however, she does not need anyone to tell her that drugs are ruining her life, or that she needs help. Instead, Beth needs someone to show her that her lucid mind is more capable than her drugged one.
And this healing takes time. When Beth was nearing victory, some misfortunate event always makes drugs look like the only option for her, but her friends persist in helping her find another path. Her friends are not perfect: Jolene tells her, “I’m not your Guardian Angel. I’m not here to save you. Hell, I can barely save me.” All her friends can is support her and make her feel loved—there’s no simple, one-step solution to addiction.
When Beth’s mother says, “The strongest person is the person who isn’t scared to be alone,” she may be partially right. However, we also should recognize that the strongest people are also those who are willing to be loved and to receive help when they need it.