Doubled Pawns

4 out of 5 stars.

Third episode continues to be good. Great performances. Script and direction. Harmon travelling in tournaments until she meets an american champion player who may be her challenge.

The first two episodes were more focused on developing Beth's character and creating drama but this episode was quite the opposite. This episode is more focused on the chess while drama is subtle. What I found surprising was, how Beth's character kept developing during a chess game and the two main reasons for that are the acting and the delicacy in the writing. Anya Taylor is incredible as Beth. This episode stood out to me because it was fast-paced early on and continued with the pace. Such a well-made episode overall.

Greetings from Lithuania.

"Doubled Pawns", 3rd episode "The Queen's Gambit" was a very good one. This show in general kinda restored my fate in a good TV series, were characters and character building is at center, were story progresses slowly and craftsmanship is top notch. I don't watch many TV series (don't have time for those) and prefer movies, but "The Queen's Gambit" reminds me of a very long and very good movie, cause everything here is on a top of its game. Great series so far.

I'm not saying that this episode is bad but it's the weakest link so far. I get the idea about winning and losing but how it was built wasn't enough for me. I just wanted more drama and action. This episode was going in straight line and it was just to easy to guess what's going to happen next. I'm not disappointed but two previous episodes were so great that it just raises your expectations for next one.

For everything that gets better in every episode of this show, something else starts dragging it back down for me.

I think Anya Taylor-Joy is starting to feel a lot more comfortable in the role, and the character is certainly less awkward and confusing now, but what was the point of the party scene? What was the point of the flashback at the start?

I like that she is finally shown to have flaws in her strategies, but whose bloody idea was it to have the US chess champion dress like a post-apocalyptic cowboy straight out of the Fallout universe?

And yeah, the mother's dialogue is still weirdly off-putting.

And I still think it's fairly well directed and shot, but I really can't stress enough just how rampantly predictable and cliche I find this whole show up until now. Nothing happens that I didn't expect just from reading the premise, and it sucks because for as great as the acting and production design is, and as...competently directed as it is, I really can't get past how much I don't care about anything going on.

If anyone hasn't assumed this already, I do plan on finishing this, because it's only 7 episodes, so I might as well, but at this point I'd be surprised if it does manage to turn it around.