Welcome to Girl Culture’s weekly reheat of Heated Rivalry. To get the full experience, as well as access to my rom-com column and my Disney princess series, become a paid subscriber.
Of all the kinds of writing I do as a critic, my absolute favorite are deep dives into individual episodes of TV. So even though I wrote about Heated Rivalry quite a bit at the start of the year, I’ve been longing for a chance to analyze what makes the show so captivating on an episode-by-episode basis too. And with season two filming officially underway and the show still taking home top prizes from the likes of the Television Critics Association Awards, this felt like the right moment to make that dream a reality with weekly “reheat” recaps that will run every Sunday from now through September 27th. (This first one is free to all and the next five will be available only to paid subscribers.)
The fervor over Heated Rivalry started right from the show’s buzzy debut in late November, but really broke through with the premiere of the beloved fifth episode in mid-December. From there, the hype only got bigger and bigger as Connor Storrie and Hudson Williams appeared either separately or together at the Golden Globes and the Olympic torch relay in January, Saturday Night Live in February, and the Oscars in March—with their joint Vanity Fair after party appearance marking a crest of that initial wave of obsession. Apart from a brief rekindling at the Met Gala in May, things have mostly slowed down since then. The series is still beloved and the actors are still megastars, but the “psychosis” we all joked about has mostly lifted (at least for now).
That’s part of why I wanted to write about the show in this calm before the next hype cycle. Heated Rivalry is fun to talk about as a sexy, obsessive phenomenon, but it’s also an incredibly rich piece of storytelling made with such thoughtful love and care by creator Jacob Tierney, adapting Rachel Reid’s 2019 novel of the same name. Though shows like Bridgerton, Off Campus, and Sterling Point are compelling in their own ways, there’s an artistry to Heated Rivalry that elevates it above its genre peers. And that artistry is worth analyzing separate from all the cultural zeitgeist stuff around the series.
That starts with an episode I really underestimated during my initial watch. When Heated Rivalry premiered, there was a general consensus that it front-loads the sex and only really gains nuance in the back half of the season. But I’d argue that’s largely because we hadn’t learned how to watch it yet. Every show has to teach its audience what tools and tones it will be using to tell its story and it’s only once you understand that language that you can truly appreciate what it’s doing. While Heated Rivalry features a lot of sex, I don’t actually think it’s first and foremost about sex, like the “gay hockey smut” label implies. More than anything, Heated Rivalry is a show about communication. Sex just happens to be one of the central ways that Canada’s Shane Hollander and Russia’s Ilya Rozanov communicate.
We don’t start with the sex though. We start with two teenage boys trying and failing to have a conversation on a cold, grey sidewalk. For Shane, it’s a genuine attempt at camaraderie. He offers a friendly handshake and some warm words to a fellow hockey player he knows will likely emerge as a “rival” in their future Major League Hockey careers. For Ilya, however, it’s a baffling gesture. He doesn’t come from a culture that does small talk or that would compliment a member of an opposing team as “an awesome player to watch.” All he can do is toss back some trash talk. Arguably they’re both flirting, if only on a subconscious level. (Ilya certainly seems to notice that Shane finds an excuse to shake his hand twice within a 50-second conversation.) But, more importantly, they’re very much not on the same page about how to interact with each other yet.
“Rookies” takes Shane and Ilya from their first meeting at the International Prospect Cup final in December 2008 to the end of their rookie year in 2011, but they never entirely lose their way of miscommunicating. The physical attraction between them is palpable, it’s everything else that’s kind of a mess. As Tierney makes incredibly clear in his direction, a lot of that is tied up in the reality of being in the closet. Though Shane and Ilya have wildly different levels of comfort with their sexualities on a personal level, they both exist in a world where openly saying what they want is a danger to their careers. Of course that colors how they communicate everything else in life too.
Take the late-night gym scene that follows the MLH draft. There’s a whole second conversation unfolding under their discussion of their respective new teams of Boston and Montreal. The competitive bike riding is a statement of mutual interest. Shane’s wandering eyes are a first move. Ilya stretching out his leg and touching Shane’s hand when he passes his water bottle is a confirmation. Yet they both need to maintain a level of plausible deniability so that if they’re misreading the signs, they can bail without blowing up their careers. It’s a sexy scene, but it’s also one that sets up the central lesson Shane and Ilya will spend the next decade unlearning—that the best, safest way to communicate is silently, subtextually, and without ever overtly stating what they actually want.
In fact, part of what makes this episode’s sex scenes so hot is that they’re the only place where Shane and Ilya have crystal-clear communication and a truly consensual dynamic—full of “Is this okay?” and “I like that, Hollander.” Because they both know what they’re there to do, they’re unafraid to discuss the specifics of it, from Ilya’s past relationship with his coach’s son to Shane’s lack of experience with men. The intimacy of this episode’s sex scenes is obviously a physical one, but it’s a verbal one too. In the bedroom, Shane and Ilya have a directness that’s so different from the more tentative dynamic they have everywhere else; whether that’s Ilya asking “So what do you want to do?” or Shane earnestly worrying “Was that bad?”
They’re also both just such endearing characters, separately and together. Shane briefly contemplating wearing a suit to their hotel room hookup is such a funny character beat, as is Ilya pretending to leave mid-tryst only to roll over and get even more flirty. Because Williams and Storrie are in their mid-twenties, it doesn’t entirely register, but Shane and Ilya are functionally high school sweethearts, with all the sweetness and horniness that entails. (Shane’s little “Holy shit” when Ilya leaves is such an adorable acting moment from Williams.) Only instead of getting to live openly like most high school sweethearts do, they have to live a life of high-stakes subterfuge.
And the stakes really are high for both of them, as this episode drills home in between establishing their chemistry. They’re both providers for their families, important players on their respective teams, “role models” for young fans (particularly Asian-Canadian ones in Shane’s case), and potential brand ambassadors for high-profile companies. They have all the awkwardness and emotional repression of normal 19-year-old boys but they aren’t living the lives of normal 19-year-old boys by any stretch of the imagination. They’re giving press conferences where they’re supposed to offer eloquent answers to complicated questions in languages they aren’t fluent in.
Part of what draws them together is that they’re the only two people in the world who understand the strange fishbowl they’ve both been thrust into as on-ice rivals. And yet that’s what makes their ultimate miscommunication at the end of this episode so tragic too. As I wrote about for The A.V. Club earlier this year, because Shane and Ilya are so similar, they underestimate how dissimilar they are too. Ilya has such internal confidence in his sexuality, he can’t fathom that Shane has a fraught, complex relationship to his sexual identity in a way that extends beyond just not wanting to get caught. The idea that making “a plan to fuck” or kissing in a dark corner could cause someone to panic is completely foreign to Ilya. Yet, for his part, Shane mistakes Ilya’s outward bravado for the kind of core stability he takes for granted as a kid who grew up with loving, supportive parents who have been by his side throughout a hockey career that’s unfolded in his famously friendly home country. He can’t understand that losing Rookie of the Year isn’t an ego blow for Ilya, but something that will make his already difficult relationship with his cold father even tougher.
So just as Shane and Ilya start this episode miscommunicating on a sidewalk, they end it miscommunicating on a rooftop. Back in 2008, it was Shane making an earnest gesture and Ilya distrusting it, but here it’s the reverse. When Ilya says “Not everything is about you, Hollander!” he genuinely means it. When he tells Shane he’s going back to Russia in three days, he’s trying to explain why he’s so upset. And when he responds to Shane’s handshake by kissing him, he’s trying reestablish their early intimacy. (Watch the complete openhearted sweetness with which Storrie plays the moment after the kiss.)
Unfortunately, Shane reads all of those things as tactics of manipulation, not genuine bids for connection. He’s put confident, cocky Ilya on a pedestal just as Ilya has decided that sweet, shy Shane can’t handle all the actual hardships of his Russian life. “Rookies” establishes the connection that makes it impossible for Shane and Ilya to quit one another. But it also demonstrates that they have a long, long way to go before they’re truly on the same page.
Next time: Shane and Ilya grapple with sexting and Sochi in “Olympians”
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Super excited for this series + to watch along!