I’ve only alluded to this show before — note the photo at the top of my January 10th post — but perhaps I have some things to say about the TV series “Heated Rivalry.” On the occasion of this longish essay in today’s NYT.
NY Times, critic’s notebook by Wesley Morris, 27 Feb 2026, I’m So Used to Gay Tragedies That I Almost Missed Romance, subtitled “After a lifetime of settling for shame, secrecy and death onscreen, I had my doubts about ‘Heated Rivalry.’ Then it seduced me, too.
The writer has a video at the end that summarizes much of the essay.
I’m not going to summarize the situation. Well, maybe I should, if only for any readers who might be seeing this blog in 20 or 50 years. (It’s possible, via Wayback Machine and other such facilities.) The situation: “Heated Rivalry” is a 6-part TV series made by a production company in Canada and streamed in the US on HBO Max, beginning last November. It quickly developed a word-of-mouth following — especially among women — and has made its two stars, Hudson Williams and Conner Storrie, international celebrities. They’ve been on talk shows; Connor just hosted Saturday Night Live. The show is about hockey players, two players who are usually on rival teams, who fall in love, over years, via series of hotel room hookups, as they gradually acknowledge their feelings, and circumstances allow them to come together.
It’s based on a series of gay romance novels written by one Rachel Reid, and consumed mostly by women. This is a curious phenomenon which I won’t explore at the moment. There are apparently a lot of such novels.
There is something mesmerizing, even addictive, about this show. The actors are great, the plot is subtle yet intricate, the production values are impressive. I think what’s attractive about the show is that it’s mostly about yearning, and uncertainty. Not about the sex, per se. Is he or isn’t he? Does he or doesn’t he? It’s partly about family ties. It’s about the fear of getting hurt — and in this kind of romance genre, no one gets truly hurt. People are supportive. It’s only uncertainty and hesitation that provide the barriers to a happy ending.
I’ve watched it 5 times now, mostly streaming it on my computer while I should been working on my various projects. This last time, I took notes, especially about the timeline, since the show conveniently inserts title cards along the way to indicate time and location. It begins in December 2008, when the two boys are rookies, and ends in 2017, when they finally acknowledge being ‘boyfriends.’
That time span, to me, seems the story’s greatest flaw. Why so many years? We understand that Ilya, the Russian, has something of a playboy reputation, with women… though he has experience with men too. But Shane, the white/Asian mix, despite his hockey expertise, is something of a nerd: he sits home at night reading books, and has little or no sexual experience, before he meets Ilya.
Only after watching the show the first time did I read that the character of Shane was ‘on the spectrum,’ according to the author, and the actor. OK, then, that makes sense. There are plenty of moments when that was indicated: how he’s not sociable (according to the hockey game announcer in the very second scene), how he has a hard time looking his mother in the eye, in the last episode, how he repeatedly announces in social situations that he’s going to the bathroom rather than simply excusing himself (this comes from a certain literal-mindedness among the autistic). And about his repeated ‘panic attacks’? Not sure about those.
I have elements of being slightly on the spectrum myself, as I’ve discussed. Aversion to noises and crowds, the way I insist on buy books and magazines that are perfectly aligned with no wrinkles, even how I fold and adjust newspaper sections before I read them once Y is done. And for that matter, I was a slow starter in the same way Shane apparently was. I had no thoughts about being straight or gay until I was… 23? And my first sexual experience was at 24.
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But one more thing.
There is a science-fiction idea called “conceptual breakthrough.” I wrote about this in my essay published last year, which I know only one person to have read, but it’s a common sf idea. It’s about a discovery or breakthrough in understanding that completely revolutionizes the way one sees the world. It would be like finally understanding that those lights in the sky aren’t just twinkles in some kind of dome, but actually other *suns* billions or trillions of miles away; your idea of the size of the universe, and of reality itself, undergoes a revolution.
I think the idea of realizing one is gay is a kind of conceptual breakthrough. One grows up as a child in a world full of parents and other children. Gradually learns how parents create children. The idea of sex. That’s what sex is for, you are told. Until you have a conceptual breakthrough. Sex has other ideas. There was that moment of revelation, even shock, for me, at a certain age.
I think Shane might have had that breakthrough. He’d never really thought about these things, until Ilya triggered those thoughts.
