Text book genius like behavior associated with self destruction make the base of this Netflix original

All right, so the more movies or TV shows that you see, the more critical you'll become with their content, most likely you've already seen that idea implemented somewhere, the topic was explored a million times, the way the story is told is nothing new, and that's fine, but even with this present thee are still to this day, cinematic and TV material that comes out with brilliant and innovative ideas, and this is the magic of this art form. Now more specifically to the show, Queen's Gambit tells the story of Elizabeth Harmon (Anya Taylor-Joy), an orphaned girl who develops a way above average capacity, genius like ability, to play chess. We watch the evolution of her character, during some very important formative years of her personality, and how a brilliant mind can be as broken as well.

The show as a lot of positives, for starters it's incredibly well directed, from the accurate soundtrack on 1960s America to the hypnotizing camera work that helps us navigate through the environment and beautiful sets, it makes us engaged on the journey, specially when you can make a chess game (from a spectator who doesn't usually follow the game standpoint) interesting to watch. Anya Taylor-Joy also does a good job portraying this damaged individual who is constantly reminded that "she is in the realm of men" and that she won't stand much of chance against such experienced male players. From this perspective it was a good statement brought to the table and seems to play well with the chess theme.

However there are some things that threw me off and make me classify this series as a "hyped" one given the huge amount of positive feedback it is receiving. The plot brings nothing new, damaged genius have been depicted several times in cinema, specifically fictional ones like Sherlock Holmes and all the inspired characters that came from the classic - and depending on how you tell their story, it can dictate the quality of the show itself. This is where Queen Gambit fails from my perspective, she is indeed the classic damaged genius, and the way that the plot depicts her arrogance followed by a slap of humility and her raise, it's predictable, however more important than that (because if you tell a story in an original way this could be overlooked), the consequences of her self destructive habits are given almost no importance. By this I mean that somehow she can always recover fast from the drug abuse which seems to have little to none impact on her health overall as well as her judgement.

Another criticism for me is that although I praise bringing chess as a topic and give it more attention since it does have some science behind, we are given pretty much no knowledge in it if we think about it, they assume that the spectator should simply infer that it's indeed a difficult activity with all the theoretical rules and amount of books written about it, yet if you're not familiar with chess you just have to take their word for it - what does she do differently than the other amazing players that makes her so different? To finalize, I believe that some of supporting characters were underdeveloped and 2 dimensional. I do admit that overall it is engaging and fresh as well, but the hype clashes with the actual content I am afraid.