On how Cleo and women were written in The Queen’s Gambit
tl;dr: Of all the characters in the show, I struggle the most with Cleo. In my most sympathetic view, she is a victim of really meh and Beth-centric screenwriting, as in the writers tried to do a thing and failed.
(Written by me, with quotes from runningscissors)
runningscissors: Cleo is like their hamfisted human personification of addiction.
Cleo is inspired by a book character, Jenny Baynes. She only appears during the speed chess scene, not in Paris and not French. In the last sentence about her in the book, we're just told Jenny is "beautiful and intelligent.”
So the screenwriters had to pull out "Jenny is supposed to be this woman that Beth finds alluring and admires so much, who is also anti-chauvinist and makes Beth feel proud when she wins at speed chess" -- they deepened Cleo's character as a representation of Beth's worst interests in this way.
[Caption: Cleo giggling at one of Beth’s victories]
Additionally, they wanted bisexuality representation in the show so they also made Jenny a love interest. They also turned Jenny into Cleo because they find the whole queen Elizabeth-pharoah Cleopatra comparison ~interesting~ and feminist and empowering or a way to make them equal.
Cleo is the screenwriter's idea of what an "interesting attractive tempting woman who brings out Beth's worst side" would be like, with her hatred of her modeling career and her "very sad story" and confident sexuality ("to stupid men!" "did you like fucking benny?" "let's see how many lies they tell") and ex-fling with Benny.
Cleo acts as essentially Beth's id/her worst self, in contrast to Benny, who (I argue) brings out the best of Beth in NYC.
Cleo represents all Beth's temptations and urges (smoking, drinking, etc). She asks Beth if she wants a drink when going over the puzzle with Wexler ("quit distracting her!"), and she's smoking a cigarette and and drinking in the background while Beth ignores her to wreck three boys in speed chess.
[Counterargument: chess is NOT everything to Beth, and Cleo COULD represent Beth's other interests besides chess, but career comes first, and studying is important, and Cleo was disrupting that.]
Overall, Cleo as a character suffers for being forced into this role in Beth's story.
runningscissors: Cleo has a bit of hurt feelings over Benny not being into her the way she was him, and is equal parts fascinated and jealous of Beth, but plays it all off as being water under the bridge, but that's not a great look-- having a jilted ex in a show that has so few women already, so I can see wanting to rewrite the narrative so to speak.
I could also buy that nothing really happened between Cleo and Benny, but she wanted there to be something and is hurt by that.
Neither interpretation puts Cleo in the best of lights.
Relationship with Beth
[Caption: Beth being proud she impressed Cleo!]
It’s a marginally better look if Cleo is a parallel to Beth - Beth never intends to hurt people but she is always very centered on herself and inevitably does. Cleo does that, too, with Beth - is drawn to her like Harry/Townes/Benny/Jolene were, gets Beth to open up, but is ultimately not a considerate/healthy presence for Beth. [I think she coerces Beth to come downstairs to Paris, and the line between teasing and guilting her about how Cleo is lonely and forgotten is blurred in the show.]
Or like, Cleo is Beth's vision of an alternate reality, an aspirational what-if, a version of Beth if Beth never had chess - no Benny, lots of modeling and lots of clothes, lots of alcohol, but ultimately emptiness.
Kind of like how Margaret is used when Beth is with Harry - a possible alternate future for herself that she doesn't want.
But that isn't really explored in the show in a way that makes sense?
Parallel with Jolene (and Annette)
On the topic of parallels: in a marginally more positive way, Jolene is a version of Beth if Beth weren't a prodigy and hadn't gotten addicted to tranquilizers. Jolene is figuring her way out but ultimately is not totally unhappy with who she is as a person. With Beth's story the chess genius/addiction is written to be intertwined (though it's not and that's another issue I take with the show).
Beth would've gone back to the orphanage after Allston left if she hadn't had the chess tournament winnings, and she would've had to age out of the system and figure out life the hard way like Jolene.
And that makes Jolene the perfect foil/figure for Beth at the time of her life where she needs it - Beth needs to recognize how lucky she is to have her gift and to have people around her.
Even Annette is a somewhat positive foil to Beth, since she leaves the chess world but works hard like Jolene to excel in the medical field. Annette is a side character that isn't set up to fail from the start -- she's a painful reminder to Beth post-Paris of her potential and the game she loves and her youth. Beth can't cope with that, but Annette ends the scene okay.
Similarities to other women
On a more general note, my instinct is Cleo is suffering too, the way Margaret and Alma and Alice and Jolene are constrained by gender roles...she feels like she has nothing herself.
We don't get to see enough of her in order to determine if that's the case.
But an optimistic future would be Cleo realizes she does have substance and worth. Either she's meant to be more than a model, or modeling isn't as bad as she thinks it is.
Beth's interactions with female characters are mostly positive and just complex! Beth struggles to cope with Alma's death and turns to alcohol as a way to remember her, but overall Alma does love Beth and vice versa. Alice gives truly awful lessons and Beth spends the show realizing they're not true, but the dress Alice embroidered for Beth is still an important part of her identity, and her final dress in the Borgov game is meant to represent that.
Most characters will have some sort of fatal flaw. Alice and Alma were restrained by things out of their control: mental health, societal expectations of women, marriages. But we see Alma grow out of that, just a bit, gain agency and freedom and happiness in her relationship with Beth!
The fandom temptation to defend Cleo
She's basically the only example of female queer representation. Also, we see Beth have ONE female friend as an adult, and Beth ALREADY has so many allies who may not have had ill intentions but bad effects (e.g., Townes in Las Vegas pushed Beth to start drinking) and so there's some revisionist history to make Cleo an ally of Beth's.
But there aren't really any consequences for what Cleo does, no reflection by Beth on what happened (just like Beth versus every other character), and that's another thing missing from the canon story. HOWEVER, every other side character eventually winds their way back to Beth and get some sort of follow-up. We never have that with Cleo. I would've been more likely to forgive Cleo and give her the benefit of the doubt if she'd turned up later in the story, or she'd turned up in the final phone call just to cheer Beth on (to show her as a well-meaning friend)? But we don't.
Maybe her character was too rushed for anyone to conclude definitively in defense or censure of Cleo.
“No representation is better than misrepresentation”
It’s not great that the only example of female queer representation is so closely connected with one of Beth’s lowest moments in the show, as if inherently equating queerness with a downward spiral.
Townes is the only other explicitly coded queer character. Unfortunately, both characters’ queerness cause conflict in Beth’s life. Townes being gay is used to prop up Beth’s feelings of inferiority and Cleo is used as some femme fatale to ensnare Beth into giving into her vices.
Intentional or not, it is irresponsible.
Final thoughts
I don't know if I could ever believe the "Hilton and Arthur arguing over a chessboard stopped Cleo from killing herself" narrative if I tried, and I try to write that out as her exaggerating for show or straight-up lying. "That's how they tell it, anyway" gives me enough canon evidence to pretend this wasn't a thing. Is she a spy, as the popular fan theory goes? Is she someone who just likes to lie and enjoys when other people lie, too, because it’s one way she adds “color” to life, like a camera?
