I was hooked on binging this Netflix mini-series, "The Queen's Gambit," at the end of the second episode, when Beth Harmon's (Anya Taylor-Joy) adoptive mother (Marielle Heller) begins supporting her daughter's playing in chess tournaments. With the colorful 1950s-1960s settings, it became like a less-moody "Mad Men" romp across the country and, then, the world. Socio-political issues of the times are sometimes superficially addressed and there's the drug-addiction throughline, but none of it, fortunately, is treated too melodramatically. What I especially came to appreciate about the show, however, is some of the ways it treats its protagonist's gifted mind.

Sure, there's the usual trope of genius bordering on madness and the mommy and daddy issues, and she's naturally exceptional. But, Harmon also reads a lot, and we see her reading. She studies and plans her moves away from the board, and we see her doing that. Heck, it's a game where players take notes during professional matches. She learns from talking over the game with experts and friends. She's passionate and intellectually curious; that's what led her to learn chess from a janitor in the first place. It's what led her to take classes to learn Russian. To compare "The Queen's Gambit" to another picture of a troubled savant emerging from custodial work, we don't merely see Harmon doodling nonsense equations on a mirror or chalkboard as in "Good Will Hunting" (1997) and speed reading books at night only to spend days employing that knowledge to humiliate antagonists in between performing manual labor and drinking with buddies. It surely helps, too, that "The Queen's Gambit" is adapted from a book and that they hired a grandmaster to design the chess moves. Taylor-Joy, reportedly, related the chess matches to her experience with dance, and there's indeed a rhythm to these scenes that works even for someone like me who doesn't play chess.