Series Logline

An autistic Chess player wants to teach Chess to people in his town, but his plans to generate interest in the game don’t work as expected. By hiring an actress, he succeeds at inspiring others to play Chess, but his social awkwardness and the prejudice of society may cause him to lose both his Chess business and the woman who fell in love with him.

Overview

This show follows Chuck as he tries to come out of his introverted shell in order to teach people Chess. He fears people, but he also wants to bring back his favorite game, even if it means going in public. This story turns into a Romantic Drama because Chuck gets the idea to hire a woman from a dating app to help him teach Chess. It starts as a business relationship but then turns into something else. Through this experience, Chuck overcomes some of his social inability but also shows he eventually succeeds in getting people excited about Chess.

Concept

This show stands out because to my knowledge, there isn’t anything like it because it is meant to teach people the rules of Chess but also show why it is enjoyable from a psychological point of view. The idea is that Chuck is a master of navigating pieces on a chessboard but that navigating the real world proves to be more challenging than any game of Chess. The show is meant to inspire introverted autistic people to share their passions while also showing neurotypicals an inside look at how an autistic person thinks. If the series fails to do that, the second hope is that it may inspire people to play Chess in a similar way that the Queen’s Gambit series on Netflix did. However, this is not based on that series because I have not watched it.

Characters

Chuck

Chuck is a lonely single man who does not have much of a social life outside of playing Chess online and occasionally other multiplayer online role playing games. Because he seeks connection with real people, he tries to teach Chess to people. However, his social awkwardness and autistic brain cause most people to be suspicious of him, and they assume Chuck is dangerous. Chuck needs someone else to help him appear more normal in society.

Chuck is afraid of people and, therefore, limits going out of his apartment in most cases. His world is entirely the internet. He is a computer programmer who has made several applications and games that provide him with a constant income. He works for himself because no company will hire him. Unfortunately, Chuck never even got his high school diploma because he was homeless in his teen years after being kicked out of his parent’s house.

An unfortunate rumor spread by the boys at school resulted in his parents and teachers finding out he was gay. Therefore, he was expelled from school and disowned by his parents when he was 14 years old. He lived by himself in the woods until he was 18 and then managed to get a job as a janitor and live in a homeless shelter. Over the years, he used the internet to teach himself everything he wanted to know about computers, games, and religion.

At the beginning of the story, he is 40 years old and has no friends or family. He thinks he will never have a family because Chuck has no relationship with his parents, and he doesn’t try to find a partner because he is too afraid of human contact because of the rejection of his parents and school. He is incredibly smart at Chess and Shogi and writes blog posts about strategies for winning these games. The comments he receives on his writing and videos help him to interact with people socially, but only from the safety of his computer in his studio apartment.

Laura

Laura is a hopeless romantic who has joined Tinder, hoping to find a future husband and live happily ever after. She has received many unwanted messages from men she is not interested in. However, Chuck’s message catches her attention because he is offering her a paid role as an actress to pretend to be interested in learning Chess. Thrilled at the idea of having the closest thing to a date so far and not being required to have sex with someone, she accepts.

Laura is quite surprised that Chuck seems only interested in Chess and computer programming. Chuck is the first man she has met who does not make comments about the appearance of her body or request to have sex with her.

Laura was raised in a “Christian” home until the age of 12 when her father raped her. She took this as a sign that her father was too hypocritical to be a follower of Jesus. Laura ran away from home and became rebellious and anti-religious. She survived by stealing food, lying, and later became a prostitute because she had no means to get a job or even finish high school. Laura used every means to obtain money regardless of morality. She had no identification documents, such as a birth certificate or social security card, because obtaining them would require parental consent. She refused to risk being raped by her father, so she never made any attempt to contact her family.

When she turned 18, she contacted the police and Social Security Administration about obtaining her birth certificate and social security card. As a legal adult, she was able to get them without parental consent. She applied to various jobs but was always rejected because she was homeless and had no address. She lived on the streets and eventually got a job at a pizza shop. She was trained to make pizzas and take orders from customers. The owner understood her situation and let her work regardless of her homeless status. After some time of holding this job and having a stable income, she was able to rent a cheap studio apartment.

Laura still wants to know what it would be like to have a family. She is still a member of Tinder from when she used to date men only for financial advantage, but she is looking for a future husband without much luck. That is why Laura was quite surprised when Chuck messaged her about Chess. Though she wasn’t sure where this would lead, this man was clearly different.

Simon

Simon is a young boy who does not fit in with other children. He usually talks about Minecraft, Pokemon, Final Fantasy, and other games to kids his age who would rather play in the dirt or play sports that he is not physically adept at performing. However, Simon likes to learn games requiring strategy and complex tactics using his mind rather than his body. For this reason, when he sees Chuck and Laura with a Chessboard, he wants to know what this game is about because he has never seen it.

Simon is socially very awkward and has a habit of talking to strangers about video games, cartoons, his favorite stuffed animals, or whatever he is thinking about at the time. Children get annoyed by him, and adults tell his parents to get him checked for autism. He is only 9 years old, but he reads a lot of books and strategy guides for completing video games. His parents love him and tend to be very protective of him because he must be watched so he does not wander off with strangers and get kidnapped.

His favorite place is the park because he likes to swing on the swing set and climb on the monkey bars. Most of the time, his mother or father stays at the park while reading a book and lets him play at the park for an hour or two after school. His life changes when he meets Chuck and Laura because they seem as trustworthy as his parents, and he wants to know what game they are playing. For some odd reason, Chuck explains the game to him in a way that he understands without trying to dumb it down and assume he can’t understand because he is a kid. This kind of respect is what Simon has wanted all his life.

As much as Simon loves his parents, he does not always get along with them because the truth is that he is so intelligent at math and games that they never seem to know what he is talking about. His parents love him but don’t know what he is because it seems like he is from another world. What they don’t know is that Simon is an autistic savant who cannot perceive other people’s emotions. Simon can predict what his opponents will do in games because he has a photographic memory and can play movies in his head of anything he has seen before. He knows humans are quite predictable and expects them to behave the same way they have in the past.

Locations

Two main locations in this series are of interest. The first is Chuck’s studio apartment where he works on his computer programming projects and plays online Chess. Chuck has very few possessions, so he has a lot of space even though his apartment is small. The second location which we will see a lot is a local park where he goes to play Chess with Laura. The exact details of the park are mostly irrelevant but it must have a table where it is possible to place a chessboard. For shooting purposes, the audience would not even notice if the different episodes were shot at different parks as long as the design of the tables was similar.

Episode Guide/Springboards

1. Over the Board

We see Chuck in his apartment with a chessboard and notebook. He has his chessboard set up nicely, but he has no one to play with. He walks around the table and plays each side as best as he can. He is notating the moves on paper so he can later replay them back. He becomes frustrated at the fact that he finds no challenge because he knows all of his moves and wants someone to play with. He packs up his chessboard and pieces into his backpack and sets on a quest to find someone in his town who knows how to play Chess.

2. Nobody cares about Chess

Chuck walks around town with only his large checkerboard-styled backpack, which also contains his real Chess set inside. He tries talking to people at the mall, grocery stores, the library, and even the local high schools and elementary schools. Much to his surprise, nobody knows how to play Chess. If they have heard of it at all, they say that they heard it was hard to learn. Chuck offers to teach everyone he meets, but people dismiss him because he just looks like a creepy 40-year-old man walking around with a backpack.

3. Resignation and New Idea

Chuck is frustrated trying to find someone to play Chess with and goes back home to play Chess online as he usually does every night. He wins all his games and yet finds that the experience is lacking. The most social interaction he gets is the occasional chat message saying, “Good Game”. He has a list of friends on chess.com and lichess.org, but they are usually far away, and he wants to play people over the real chessboard as he sees in the official tournament videos or friendly games between the famous YouTubers he watches. Finally, he gets the idea that if he wants to find someone local, he could try a dating app because they are designed for people to meet in the same area.

4. Chuck joins Tinder

Chuck had never used any dating apps before, so he downloaded Tinder because he had heard it was popular. He sets up a profile and scrolls through lots of people. Finally, he notices the profile of a woman named Laura, who says she loves walking in nature and reading books. He considers her as someone smart enough to be perhaps interested in Chess, so he messages her. Laura is surprised to receive a message from a stranger asking if she would like to play Chess at the park. At first, she declines because she has put her dating life on hold and prefers to be alone unless there is money involved. When Chuck replies and offers her 50 dollars if she can just meet him at the local park, she accepts because she needs the money.

5. Why do you play Chess?

Chuck and Laura are at the park. Chuck teaches Laura all the rules of Chess in less than 30 minutes. Surprised by how simple it is to learn, she asks Chuck why he has an interest in such a simple game. Chuck explains that Chess is the perfect board game because it is less complicated to learn but that the competition of two minds trying to outsmart each other is where all the challenge comes from. Chuck does not play games of chance and explains that he prefers to play a game where he wins not by getting lucky but by making the right moves. This information inspires philosophical discussions about video games, card games, and board games.

6. The Beginning of Romance

On multiple occasions, Chuck and Laura go to the park and sometimes shop at the mall. They talk for hours about books, games, movies, and music. Laura is continually surprised how no matter what the topic is, he somehow manages to turn it into a comparison to a Chess game he has played. She starts to see his point of view that life really is like a game of Chess because each move affects the next. During one of their Chess games at the park, some children come over to the table and ask about the game Chuck and Laura are playing. Chuck explains how the pieces move and what it means to checkmate the king. Laura sees that Chuck likes to teach children and wonders what he would be like as a father. She really likes Chuck now that she has known him for some time.

7. The First Fight

Laura asks Chuck if he has ever had children or any past relationships. He does not want to tell her the truth about his struggles in life and being a closeted gay person. Instead, he tells her that he is better off alone and that he was never looking for a romantic relationship but a way to springboard his business of teaching Chess. Laura does not take the news as well as he expected. She yells at him for leading her on all this time, and yet he is clueless because he had to pay her to even meet him the first time, and so he did not expect her to actually be interested in a relationship. Laura storms off and leaves Chuck alone with his autistic brain and Chess set wondering what he has done wrong to upset Laura.

8. The Accusation

Chuck still goes to the park with his chess set, cell phone, and book most days of the week. A boy named Simon, who is used to seeing Chuck with Laura, asks where Laura is. Chuck tells him that he and Laura fought, but he doesn’t know what he did wrong. Simon asks to play Chess with Chuck, and they have a lot of fun until Simon’s father, Dirk, comes along and tells Simon to get away from the stranger. Not knowing the context, Dirk reports to the police about a suspicious man at the park. The police also jump to false conclusions because of the high crime rate in the area. This results in the brief arrest of Chuck until someone comes along to prove that he is not a danger to children.

Contact Information

chastitywhiterose@gmail.com

(816) 844-2077

https://chastitychesschallenge.wordpress.com/