Time for something (mostly) unrelated to current politics and public policy.
I recently watched this series, and it was really good! A few more detailed thoughts (with only minor spoilers, but I can't guarantee none at all):
The series effectively captures the nature of obsession and the desire to win that many highly competitive people have.
It follows the book of the same name by Walter Tevis VERY closely. Probably 80-90% of the dialogue is lifted directly from the book, and the plotline follows the book on all but some relatively minor details. That's generally good, because the book is well plotted. But it does mean that, if you want to read the book, you should probably do so before watching the series rather than after. Otherwise, might be anticlimactic. I myself read the book years ago, and still liked watching the series. But reading the exact same story in print right after watching it on screen might be less interesting than the reverse.
While the heroine is severely dysfunctional in some ways, the series also shows her gradual maturation and emergence from that dysfunction.
It also emphasizes how people from vastly differing backgrounds can come together over a common intellectual interest (here, chess).
A few critics have claimed the series unduly neglects racial and gender issues. I think it actually deals with both extensively. It just does it without hitting you over the head with it. It's pretty clear that Beth deals with an extra burden because she's a woman competing in an overwhelmingly male-dominated arena. Her best friend (an African-American) also deals with racial discrimination. But the message of the story on these issues is that race and gender differences can ultimately be transcended and overcome by focusing on things that cut across such divisions. Not everyone will agree. But it's hardly ignoring the issue!
The obvious historical parallel to Beth Harmon is Bobby Fischer, who became the first Westerner to seriously challenge Soviet dominance of international chess during the period when the story is set (the 1960s). Like Fischer, Harmon came from a broken home, has little formal education, and deals with some serious psychological issues. Unlike, Fischer, she manages to gradually fight down her demons, and is generally a more charismatic and likable person than he was (and, obviously, a woman).
Extending point 6, the book and TV series essentially raise the following historical counterfactual: What if the first American to seriously challenge the post-WWII Soviet chess hegemony was not Fischer, but a woman who was a less dysfunctional and more charismatic person than he was? It's not as big a disjunction as some other alternate history stories (e.g. - the Confederacy winning the Civil War, and the like). But it's interesting nonetheless.
There are rumors that Netflix will do a second season. If so, they will have to develop their own plotlines, as the first season exhausted the plot of the book and the author (Walter Tevis) died in 1984. Hopefully, they'll do a better job than the Game of Thrones screenwriters did with the last 2 seasons of that show, after they got ahead of George R.R. Martin's books.
