Okay, I’ve just finished watching the sixth and final episode of the first season of Crave/HBO’s Heated Rivalry. Like all romances, it has a happy ending. If that’s a spoiler to you, then you don’t know the romance genre. A happy ending is required; the drama arises from how they get there.
It felt like a lopsided series, with two couples featured but one—the storyline with Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov—being dominant with the Scott Hunter and Kip Grady plot serving as something on an afterthought. This is a shame because, quite frankly, I cared much more about Scott and Kip. Their relationship felt like the true heart of the series while Shane and Ilya should have been the steamy side dish. In fact, Scott and Kip were the subject of the first book (Game Changer) of romance author Rachel Reid’s Game Changer series while Shane and Ilya are the main draw in the second novel, Heated Rivalry. Alas, much of the storyline involving Scott and Kip didn’t make it to the screen in what was greenlit in a short-run first season.
If the first episode caught viewers’ attention for the sex, the final episode got Shane and Ilya navigating the beginnings of a relationship. The jocks were still heavy on bro talk and bro behaviour but they managed to say the key words about how they felt in the now and where they wanted to take things.
It isn’t totally strange that I kept comparing the lead characters to Nick and Charlie from the Netflix series Heartstopper, not simply because both series featured a gay and a bisexual character as the developing couple, but more on account of both shows portraying how people navigate the search for sexual identity and the journey to coming out. Heartstopper hit its marks better since this exploration happened at the developmental logical time, i.e., adolescence. By contrast, I felt less patience and endearment regarding the story of Shane and Ilya who were held back by the Neanderthal milieu of professional hockey. Sure, it was nice to see them break barriers—and maybe these fictional characters will nudge a few of the pros in real life—but I couldn’t fully suppress a surge of annoyance: Come on, guys. Get over it. Get on with it.
Maybe that makes me heartless or at least hypocritical. I vividly remember spending too much time in the closet and, yes, it wasn’t until my mid-twenties that I began living a slightly more authentic life as a gay man… but that was in the late ’80s in the midst of the AIDS crisis. So much has changed in the thirty-five years that have followed.
Professional team sports has basically remained in the closet while everyone else has moved on. It’s like watching an Amish character turning on a television for the first time. Personally dramatic but not so interesting to watch since we’re all beyond the novelty of turning on TVs. Been there, done that. I suppose the leave-very-little-to-the-imagination sex scenes in Heated Rivalry are what’s new(er) in the Crave series. Wow. They’re showing that on a regular streaming channel? This is the most that many straight women—one of the prime target audiences for the show—have seen of gay sex.
I’ll most likely tune in when the second season airs which will apparently focus on the third book in the Game Changer series, Tough Guy, about hockey player Ryan Price and musician Fabian Salah and, according to series creator Jacob Tierney in a Variety interview, continue the story of Shane and Ilya. In the meantime, I may buy the first book, Game Changer, to get more of the story involving Scott and Kip.
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