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9 hours ago
7
I suspect that Chala Hunter is still on a recuperative retreat somewhere. Until about May, I would think. For she was the intimacy coordinator on Heated Rivalry and she has earned a break.
For those not aware: intimacy coordinators gained prominence in the aftermath of the #MeToo movement, when assorted testimonies from actors (largely female) made public and unignorable the shocking fact that actors (largely male) and directors (largely male) will often (largely always) try to get away with more than has been contracted for once they are naked with A N Other person. An intimacy coordinator is there to help arrange scenes and advocate for actors. Think of them as somewhere between a bureaucrat and a contraceptive.
Second of all, Heated Rivalry has a lot of sex in it. Specifically, sex between men. Even more specifically, sex between young men who are ice hockey stars and bitter rivals on the rink but irresistibly drawn to each other off it. They are Shane Hollander (Hudson Williams), a golden child whose talent has been nurtured by fond parents from the get-go and whose mother is his manager, signing him up for more lucrative brand deals and commercial shoots every time he sits down for a rest; and Ilya Rozanov (Connor Storrie), a product of the more brutal Soviet system, whose mother is gone, whose father drives his son relentlessly for the glory of Russia and whose brother is a feckless waster, sponging off his sibling while also despising him for being gay.
But in any romance – and however explicitly decorated, this is what Heated Rivalry remains, like the Game Changers books by Rachel Reid on which it is based – opposites attract and soon Shane and Ilya are at it like knives. Knives with fancy hotel rooms, perfect bottoms and legs and pieces of furniture perfectly placed at all times to obscure anything that would prevent the sale of Heated Rivalry to international markets.
Their first time is Shane’s first time with a man. For Ilya it is “really not”. Fortunately, Shane gets the hang of things pretty quickly and Ilya is a talented teacher, dedicated to increasing his student’s skill set over many more nights in many more fancy hotel rooms and, as their wealth and status increases over the years, apartments and architect-designed cabins as their secret relationship continues.
After a while, however, watching people have sex – however perfect their bottoms – is undeniably tedious. And watching young men banter in between times (“You’re boring” says Ilya, repeatedly. “You’re an asshole,” Shane generally replies) even more so. And though the hockey scenes are kept to a minimum, they are also far from fascinating.
Just when you are beginning to think “I would forsake some of Hunter’s hard work here in favour of just a little character development or emotional investment”, a second relationship is introduced that provides just that. Shane’s teammate Scott Hunter (François Arnaud) turns out to also be a closeted ice hockey player and episode three is devoted to the beginning of what turns out to be a life-changing and life-enhancing (by this stage for all of us) relationship with a lovely man called Kip (Robbie GK). It gives us something to hang on to while we wait for the main pair to grow up.
The second half of the show lets them, a bit. Sex becomes love (and sex) and intimacy (and sex) and the banter improves a bit. Whether it is reward enough for sitting through the first few hours is for you to decide. Heated Rivalry has been a massive word-of-mouth hit (the creator and director Jacob Tierney has referred to its “baked-in” audience as “wine moms” which I do not have enough time or space to unpack here) since it was first released last year, so we will have to assume that for enough people, it certainly was.
There has been praise for showing young men in love and in flagrante, and there has been criticism for not showing them, a la Russell T Davies’ masterwork Queer as Folk, more realistically in love and in flagrante, though the latter I think is to misunderstand the romance genre Tierney’s show sits in. I think the problem lies more in the fact that once you move past the relative novelty of the sex being shown on a mainstream series, there is only just enough of all the other stuff you need to make a good, rewarding story there. Maybe wine moms are too drunk to care? But – and I’m thinking of all those about to be caught up in the inevitable slew of copycat dramas to come – both actors and viewers deserve more.
