The Queen’s Gambit: Openings
Before I dive into the comparison and analysis I want to state that this is by no means a comprehensive list of all of the differences between the first episode and the comparable section of the book. If I took the time to write out every minor difference we would be here forever. Even trying to keep to the major differences my first draft was over ten pages long (I told you I had a lot of opinions!) So, if I don’t talk about the difference that you really care about, or I don’t mention your favorite scene in the book that got cut in the show, I am really sorry and please feel free to rant about it in the comments below. Let’s all get opinionated and nit-picky together! I also want to state that everything here is based on nothing but my opinion. I do not work in the T.V. industry so I can only guess at their motivations and reasoning. Okay, I promise I’ll actually start talking about the Queen’s Gambit now.
Opening Scenes
From the opening scene of The Queen’s Gambit we can see that it’s not planning on staying completely faithful to the book. I don’t mind adaptations cutting some scenes and changing a few things, in fact I encourage it. It would be a truly terrible (and unbelievable long) movie or show that stayed 100% faithful to the original source material.
With that said, the opening of The Queen’s Gambit really pushes the envelope a bit too far for my taste. The book begins chronologically, with a young Beth learning about her mother’s death.
“Beth learned of her mother’s death from a woman with a clipboard.”
Very straightforward and a great hook. We then learn from a newspaper article about the car accident that killed Beth’s mother. The T.V. show takes a different approach. It starts with adult Beth and pulls you into the story in media res – with Beth waking up fully clothed and hungover in a bathtub. She then runs around getting dressed in a hurry and literally runs out the door and through the hotel. We see her enter a room full of reporters and onlookers and sit down at a chessboard. She apologizes for being late to a serious-looking man and the flash-forward ends.
So why did the writers of the show choose to open the show this way? I have a number of theories none of which I’ve done any research to verify because, well, this is a fun blog and it’s late. Behold my opinions:
Option One: It’s just more exciting. Who said a show about chess couldn’t be entertaining? A beautiful woman has just woken up in a bathtub after a presumed night of drunken debauchery. Is this what chess players’ lives are like? If so, sign me the f*ck up! But in all seriousness, it does an excellent job of drawing the audience in from minute one. There are so many questions in that opening scene. Who is this person? Where is she? Why on earth was she in a bathtub? Who is the person in the bed? What are the pills that she just took? And who is the intimidating man she’s playing? Because of all of these questions, a lot of people are going to want to watch until these questions are answered, which is episode six.
Option Two: It’s always good to open with attractive people. In the book, we start with a young Beth who is described as being unattractive. She is in boring clothes and if the show stuck 100% faithfully to the novel it would be about a ten-second scene before abruptly jumping to the orphanage. And let’s all face it, we all enjoyed watching Anya Taylor-Joy much more than we enjoyed watching Isla Johnston, who played young Beth in the Netflix series.
Option Three: The show is about chess. If they followed the pacing of the book, the audience wouldn’t see their first chess game until Beth plays with Mr. Shaibel in the basement. While Beth was enthralled with basement chess, most people are not. If I had to choose between watching a chess match in a basement orphanage or a chess match in a fancy hotel in Paris, I know which one I’d pick. It quickly tells the audience that chess isn’t boring; it’s sexy and fun.
I don’t mind that the show decided to start in media res. For all the reasons mentioned above, I think it’s a really smart choice for the medium. Streaming sites have to capture the audience’s attention from the first moment because it’s so easy to switch to something else. This isn’t as big a concern with theater-released movies or broadcast shows. With Netflix, there’s no sunk cost that compels you to finish what you started.
By now you may be asking yourself, but Eleanor, you just said you thought the show pushed the envelope too far and you’ve just spent all this time complementing the adaptation. What gives? And if you had read the previous post introducing The Queen’s Gambit you would know that it’s because the flash-forward scene is just fully made up and I hate it! I will get into this point in much more detail when I review episode six but the only thing the T.V. show flash-forward scene got correct was that Beth was in Paris and that she was playing against Borgov. Everything else is wrong and I hate it.
Beth’s Mom
Okay, now that I’ve had a moment to calm down from the perfectly rational rage I get every time I think about that scene, we can all just move on and talk about the death of Beth’s mom.
When the T.V. show ends the flashforward-which-shall-not-be-named, we cut to young Beth standing by the side of the road and learn her mom died in a car accident. In the show, Beth is in the car with her mom during the accident and it is heavily implied that her mom was not only trying to commit suicide but was also trying to kill Beth as well. This is a major difference that will impact Beth’s character throughout the show. In the book, we don’t know for sure if Beth’s mom committed suicide, although it’s implied, and there is never any suggestion that she planned to hurt or kill Beth since Beth wasn’t even in the car with her.
I don’t mind this change. It’s certainly darker, but it helps shape Beth’s character and makes some of her life choices down the road more understandable. I’ve never taken tranquilizers or become an alcoholic, but if my mom had tried to kill me while committing suicide when I was eight, I definitely would have turned to something to cope. It also helps explain why older Beth is so hesitant to let people get close to her and to trust the people around her. The person who was supposed to love her unconditionally and take care of her tried to kill her. That would mess anyone up.
Methuen
And now we come to Methuen, everyone’s favorite drug-dealing orphanage. In the show, we get to see Beth come to Methuen and get introduced to the staff. In the book, it just cuts to Beth already at Methuen and explains about the tranquilizers. I like how the show changed this. It’s a great way to quickly and seamlessly introduce a lot of the people at Methuen.
The one major difference is the introduction of Jolene.
No, not that Jolene.
In the show, we hear Jolene call someone a cocksucker off screen and get reprimanded. From her first line we get the sense that Jolene is tough, foul-mouthed, and has very little respect for authority. In the book, while Beth does hear someone yell cocksucker, it’s not Jolene. Our first introduction to Jolene in the book is when she’s in line with Beth to get “vitamins” – they’re just straight up drugs – and asks if Beth is a bastard or an orphan. She’s still a blunt person who is clearly very strong-willed, but she’s definitely not the delinquent the show makes her out to be. The first time Jolene is actually on screen in the show, she asks Beth about last thing her mom said to her, and Beth lies and says she doesn’t remember.
Changing the question Jolene asks Beth is a minor difference but it helps set up the idea that Beth’s mom tried to kill her. I already talked about the impact this has on Beth so I won’t repeat myself. The change makes sense from a story-telling perspective, but I do miss the information we can glean from Jolene’s book question – that Jolene isn’t an orphan but an unwanted bastard. This gives us some additional depth to Jolene’s character. But, it is a minor change and in the grand scheme of things doesn’t make a significant change, so I’m ok with it.
I’m going to time jump a little bit here so I can clump a few more Jolene differences together. One minor change is the lack of the gym class scene. In the book we see Beth in gym class failing horribly at playing volleyball while Jolene excels. At the end of the class Jolene pulls Beth aside and shows her how to properly position her hands and fingers. I really liked this scene and missed it or something similar in the show. In the T.V. show, we don’t really see Beth’s and Jolene’s friendship develops. They have a few interactions, most of them revolving around tranquilizers, and then suddenly we see them as best friends. I understand the time constraints placed on T.V. show adaptations, but I think it would have been easy to fit in a 1-minute scene like the gym scene to show the development of their friendship.
The last major difference I’ll comment on is a scene that took me completely by surprise in the book – the fingering scene. For those who are reading this who only watched the show, yes, you read that correctly. In the book, there’s a scene where Jolene crawls onto Beth’s bed one night and starts touching her. She urges Beth to do the same to her and Beth, feeling extraordinarily uncomfortable, complies. Beth doesn’t find it enjoyable at all and tells Jolene to stop. She raises her voice enough for someone to come in and check on them and Jolene slips back to her bed before they can see her.
Now I fully understand why they chose to cut this from the show.
One: It’s very jarring and uncomfortable to read. It kind of comes out of nowhere and then is never addressed again. It’s an easy scene to cut and any scene that’s easy to discard is a godsend when adapting a novel.
Two: The actresses playing childhood Beth and childhood Jolene are clearly underage. I don’t know all of the laws and rules about sexual content in scenes with minors, but I’m assuming this scene would have been at the very least difficult to shoot.
While I understand why they cut this scene and agree with their decision to do so, I do want to quickly talk about the impact of this scene in the novel and why I think it’s important. This scene helps explain Beth's character later on. She had thought of Jolene as a friend and someone she could trust, and then Jolene made her do something she was uncomfortable with and then got mad at her when she said no. It's a huge betrayal for an eight-year-old orphan who doesn't really have anyone else other than Mr. Shaibel. I think this helps explain why Beth is so hesitant to make and trust friends as she gets older.
It also sets up a recurring theme of Beth not finding sex or sexual acts pleasant or interesting. I’m not at all saying that an 8-year-old not being interested in sexual acts means that they’re asexual, but this is something that pops up throughout the book. In the show, we see Beth not super impressed with sex the first two times but it’s not clear if the guys were just bad at sex or if she just doesn’t like sex. In the book, I think it’s made pretty clear that Beth is asexual and while she doesn’t find sex repulsive, she doesn’t find it interesting either and doesn’t understand the fuss. And as a member of the LGBTQIA+ community, I just really enjoy the representation of a character who I view as asexual. There aren’t a lot of asexual characters out there and I just think it’s neat.
Chess
Beth’s introduction to and relationship with chess are pretty much the same in both the book and T.V. show. Beth learns chess from watching Mr. Shaibel and it quickly becomes the only thing we see her care about. However, I kept feeling like there was something lacking in the show whenever we see young Beth play chess. There’s also this really great connection between the tranquilizers and chess in the book that doesn’t come across in the show.
“Something in her life was solved: she knew about the chess pieces and how they moved and captured, and she knew how to make herself feel good in the stomach and in the tense joints of her arms and legs, with the pills the orphanage gave her.”
It is quickly established in the book that both chess and the tranquilizers give Beth some sort of release of tension. In the show, you see Beth take the pills and learn chess at the same time, but the connection between the two isn't there.
I also feel like Beth’s genuine love for chess doesn’t come across in the first episode. It’s difficult to tell if it’s the writers, the director, or the actress at fault. I haven’t seen Isla (young Beth) in anything else so I don’t know what her acting range is, but we never really see young Beth show any emotion that isn’t sadness, anger, or at best, indifference. I’m inclined to believe this was something that was a conscious choice of the director’s, and that Isla was just following their direction. There’s none of the enjoyable tension that young Beth feels when playing chess in the book. To be fair, I have no idea how you would go about showing this kind of tension in a T.V. show, I just know that it’s not there. In the book, when Beth wins a game we get this release of tension that’s been built up during the match. We don't see that in the show after her first win. She's clearly pleased, but her mannerisms don't change at all. Similarly, we don’t see any of book Beth’s sharpness in the first episode. In scenes where Beth is supposed to seem angry, to me, she came across more as whiney and sad.
Drugs and Withdrawal
In the book, the tranquilizers serve not only to give Beth a nice spaced-out feeling but as a way to release the tension she otherwise pretty much always feels. In the novel, we see Beth consistently having trouble falling asleep. Beth hears voices in the hall and tenses, thinking something bad is going to happen, no matter how gently the male orderly is talking to the woman in the hall. The tranquilizers give Beth an escape from this constant state of anxiety and tension. These scenes also give us a glimpse of what must have happened in Beth’s past. Beth’s kneejerk reaction to hearing a man and woman talk at night is that the man is going to hurt the woman, it’s very telling. These scenes are completely missing from the show. Because in the show the pills just help her play ceiling chess and feel nice, there’s not the same sense of anticipation. It’s harder for the audience to understand why Beth gets so easily addicted and needs the pills. We know Jolene has been taking the pills longer than Beth and she seemed to have no problem at all when they were taken away.
Speaking of the pills being taken away, let’s talk about Beth’s withdrawal. I was pretty disappointed in how Beth’s withdrawal was portrayed in the show, in the sense that it wasn’t really shown at all. There’s the one scene where Beth is sitting on her bed with her head in her lap before going to the high school, but other than that we don’t see how miserable she is without the pills. In the book, because we can be in Beth’s head, the narrator can tell us Beth has a pounding headache, that she is unable to sleep, always feels sick, has the taste of vinegar in her mouth. It seems really awful and so when she makes the decision to steal the pills it makes much more sense and is seen as an act of desperation. In the show, her motivation seems more selfish than anything.
I do think it was a really smart decision to end the episode with Beth passing out after having eaten handfuls of the pills. It made me want to keep watching to find out what happened and had a nice anticipatory symmetry with the opening.
In my next post, you’ll get to read about the show trying to pass a 24-year-old Anya Taylor-Joy off as a 13-year-old Beth Harmon! (Spoiler alert: it really doesn’t work!)