IT HAS 7 EPISODES and it's INCREDIBLE: The Queen's Gambit

What makes The Queen's Gambit the most talked about series, the most watched series in your platform's catalog in such a short time, that makes it so close to the public, because it feels so close to home at the same time that it is exotic for presenting such a captivating and interesting premise? How is it that its protagonist, being exceptionally outstanding and uncommon, feels as human and fragile as the viewer himself, who decides to open up and violate himself with her on this journey? Ambition, obsession, overcoming, conflict, falls, curves, dependence, independence and evolution are the themes that the story of The Queen's Gambit touches, a whole life, a whole structure of multiple layers, a whole psychological trace explored in a 7-hour narrative that presents us with the prodigious chess player Beth Harmon as one of the best molded and composed characters of recent television times, merit that is given because in just a block of 7 episodes with a clear and definitive beginning and end they develop it as much as in other series of years duration, not only the script of the series is spectacular, exciting, round and emotional, its precision in the cinematographic direction supports at all times the purposes of the story, The light, camera movements and composition are very clearly subordinated to the script itself, to the feelings of the characters, to the character that predominates in the scene or the sentimental state and self-perception on their part. Within the vococentrism that predominates the series, The Queen's Gambit stands out for presenting its best sequences, inflections, dramatic conclusions or triggers of conflict without mentioning a single word, everything that is communicated will be done through the camera and the internal language in the series that is very well established and quite robust. Michael Hoffman gave us an invaluable essay where he analyzes in particular the composition at the service of the narrative of the series, an unmissable work if you enjoyed it and want to learn more about the work behind it, which in Michael's words "is the Chernobyl of the year" that I not only agree, but I would take it further by saying that The Queen's Gambit "is the Chernobyl of all of Netflix".

What we will do today is to make an analysis of the series in general, I want to comment on the fascinating character of Beth, I want to comment on her character arc, the movements within the series that make her evolve through curves of ascent and descent, the semblance that the evolutionary structure has with a chess set, the arc of her wardrobe and why not? A bit of cinematic analysis in a couple of exemplary scenes and clear symbols that the series presents to synthesize ideas and psychological processes in its characters in a brilliant way.

To begin with, the series is made up of 7 episodes that, as its name suggests, refer to the development of a chess game, but also function as naming of the dramatic points and intensities that the series will present in its structure:

Episode 1 - Openings

Episode 2 - Exchanges

Episode 3 - Doubled Pawns

Episode 4 - Middle Game

Episode 5 - Fork

Episode 6 - Adjournment

Episode 7 - End Game

With these names it would seem to be a statement that indicates the values that are played in each episode, the opening of the first act will indicate the nature of the game, the initial positions, the proposals of each player for their future strategic development, as well as the opening of a story will indicate the nature of it by introducing us to its characters, their world and their needs. The exchanges refer to the action of capturing the other player's pieces, a move that would be subsequent to the corresponding opening of each one, this would indicate the beginning of the conflict in the game as allegorically series the beginning of the conflict or trigger of the story, when Beth discovers her passion for chess professionally channeled to tournaments. Doubled pawns refers to the point at which two pawns of the same color or both are in the same file, just as that episode builds the relationship between Beth and her mother by proposing them as the only thing they have with each other, they have each other because they don't really have anything else in the world. The Middle Game would be the first climax, the first result that would indicate who has the advantage, who has made mistakes, who has had results to obtain a check and in the case of the dramatic allegory it would be the first great inflection in history after having played an important dramatic value, in this case the first confrontation against Borgov was played what is already stipulated by this moment is Beth's true tangible need, it is her goal in this story, to defeat him. The inflection that occurs is that the game is lost and Beth's mother dies, with this it would start a second act or movement in the story represented as an offensive fork movement, a movement to recover the ground, to advance. For the script it would be an upward movement on Beth's part so that the story continues to advance and gets closer to its objective, this second act like a game is extended with a postponement where the result that will be seen in the End Game is expected, the stability of the story and especially of the character falters in this prior to the climax being the most vulnerable point in Beth and where it seems that nothing is going to save her because not even she herself can and finally the final phase of the game, the End Game arrives in the form of a third act to which we are introduced with another important inflection, the return of an old friendship that reactivates hope and trust in Beth on a journey to her origins, a psychological and spiritual introspection in the character as if he were studying the game that has been played throughout this story to make the best decisions in the end. And so with that narrative roundness the great End Game is played, the climax and the game is won by Beth fulfilling her dramatic objective of defeating Borgov and overcoming his internal conflicts finding peace instead of obsession making peace with his addiction in every possible way, his addiction to perfection, to win, to chess.

I wanted to open the analysis with this review of structure to highlight how well written it is from the skeleton and from here to delve into the study of Beth and her arch having understood its structure and its ups and downs roughly.

Starting with the basics it is appreciated that Beth is not a Mary Sue having all the characteristics of one, she is an exceptionally brilliant character, with an innate talent and intelligence, with skills proportionate to those of her environment, a few more pinches and it would seem a divine ability, but the difference between a mediocre Mary Sue and this character is that Beth it has mistakes, it has weaknesses, it has fears, it has vices, it is imperfect as a consequence of this disproportion of ability, that makes it human and consequently makes it complex and interesting. It is curious why the line that is drawn based on her mistakes or her personality vices is quite fine, the most obvious and external are her addictions which are totally attached to her ability to play chess well, it is part of her arc separates vice from skill, but in a deeper sense the best thing about Beth is the stroke that is built in her personality and her character, that is, the decisions he makes and how they affect his relationship with the rest of the characters, including his mother, his friends and partner. Beth's character can be traced very clearly to her childhood and the relationship she has with her mother, which during the development of the series shows us little by little through very short flashbacks that in a short time and through a few dialogues of her mother and her actions we can understand the context in which she lived, It is ingenious how we can later drag the emotional detachment of the character and his antipathy to human relationships to this trauma, astutely at first these flashbacks seem to want to generate some empathy to the death of the mother and it would seem that the contributions in dialogue that her daughter told her were useful advice? But as the end approaches, they reveal the mother as the unstable person she was in some ways if she treated her badly in life and makes bad decisions, but it does not exempt her from having wanted to commit suicide shared with her daughter just so as not to worry about what would happen to her. It is just when she sees what her mother did to her involuntarily (if you want to see it that way) that they can let her go that she finally decides not to become her mother because that's where she was going. Now the complexity is interconnected by her other mother who was of a practically equal profile, repression, depression and frustration of what it meant about her own life contemplating it as a failure and wasted opportunities led her to death, as well as Alice's biological mother and without realizing it she was fulfilling the same pattern, the discrepancy that makes Beth mediate herself out of the cycle of behaviors is that her chess ability and her cunning itself, give her a bit of resilience to fall into that spiral into darkness at least for most of the plot, her goal of being the world champion gives her clarity despite being equally dependent on substances to function. In addition to that is the loneliness that we can notice from the opening episode, Beth as a method of defense adopts solitude, she even builds her own personal narrative of superiority from there that will hatch in future episodes with conflicts related to her ego.

Chess and praise increase by a lot this Beth feels better than those around her, although she does not show it by being conceited, at least not all the time, this is the most normal human behavior of all and much more in an environment as competitive as chess, an art or a physical sport. Now imagine being prodigies, I'm not saying that she's a monster because of this, on the contrary, this only makes her real and it's a great achievement of the script that they notice this aspect of her personality so successfully, that is, they touch it with subtlety, but enough to generate conflicts in the plot that also if they teach us something is that chess is a field of conceited at some time or another.

There are specific moments, especially in how she relates to the other characters, in which it is seen that Beth's lack of social attachment is detonated with a demonstration of superiority, this is clear from episodes 3 or 4, first she shows it with her mother and then with her partners and allies whom she distances from her, If we combine these personality vices generated by her childhood trauma and her experience of rejection in a world as hostile as the one she lived both personally and professionally, we have an active bomb that hangs by a thread and that thread is her goal to be a champion, that is why she becomes obsessed with being the best because in her way of seeing things is the only thing she has. it is the only thing that gives meaning to her existence, all that detonates in inflection when she is defeated for the second time in Paris and her reason for living is questioned, that spectacular sequence where she allows herself to be consumed by the darkness and by her instincts, obsessions, fears and anxieties is the result of a construction that begins here with a Beth 9 years old, there she shows how the layers of complexity of the character are perfectly connected and before reaching the exciting resolution of her conflicts, I would like to comment on the secondary characters.

When we say that this script is absolutely

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• IT HAS 7 EPISODES and it's INCREDIBLE: The Queen's Gambit