The Prestige TV Podcast - Heated Rivalry Midseason Check-In

Episode Date: December 8, 2025

Joanna Robinson welcomes her friend Richard Lawson onto the pod to discuss Episodes 1-3 of the steamy Canadian hockey romance that's capturing the internet’s heart, ‘Heated Rivalry.’ (0:00) Intro (1:43) First impressions of the show (6:30) The show’s core audience (19:10) The Scott and Kip subplot (33:04) Shane and Ilya’s story line (44:05) Standout scenes Email us! [e-mail] Subscribe to the Ringer TV YouTube channel here for full episodes of The Prestige TV Podcast and so much more! Hosts: Joanna Robinson and Richard Lawson Producer: Devon Baroldi Additional Production Support: Justin Sayles Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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See terms at Fandul.com slash predict slash bonus dash offer dash terms. I sold my car in Carvana last night Well, that's cool No, you don't understand It went perfectly Real offer, down to the penny They're picking it up tomorrow Nothing went wrong

So what's the problem? That is the problem Nothing in my life goes to smoothie I'm waiting for the catch Maybe there's no catch That's exactly what a catch Would want me to think Wow, you need to relax

I need to knock on wood Do we have wood? What is this table wood? I think it's laminated Okay, yeah, that's good, that's close enough Carvana Sell Your Carvana Pick up these mantel Hello, welcome back to the PrestiH TV podcast feed.

I'm Joina Robinson. Joining me today, someone who I podcasted for a really long time with at Vanity Fair, we did Little Gold Men together, we did still watching together. It's Richard Lawson. Hey, Richard, how are you doing? Hello, I'm good. Good to see you. Oh, my God.

So happy to have you here. We reconnected recently on our pal Katie Rich's podcast, and it just was reminded of how much I love talking to you about film and television and all the rest. So it's good to see you. Same. Thank you for having me. It's really, and what a show to talk about? What a show to talk about?

Okay, so we're going to talk about heated rivalry, a Canadian show that HBO, like, hastily acquired two weeks ago. So now it has become also an HBO show here in America. And dare I say, sort of burning up all of my social media accounts that I am logged into, all of my algorithms are like talking about this show. based on a book series by Rachel Reed, which is subtitled Heated Rivalry, Cullen, a Spicy Gay Hockey Romance. So that is where we are here today.

We're going to talk up through episode three. So if you haven't seen Up Through Episode 3, that is what we're going to talk about today. But we really just want to do a mid-season check-in. It's only six episodes, middle of the season. Richard Lawson. How did this first come across your notice and what was your first impression of this show?

I mean, have you seen the gay hockey show is a question that if people know me, they know to ask me? Not because I'm such a hockey fan, by the way. But yeah, it was just a kind of slow trickle of one friend who works in our field kind of being like, oh, have you seen the trailer for that show, that HBO Max show or whatever? And I kind of forgot about it. And then another person mentioned it like a week later. And then it was three people a week after that, and then four. And then I was like, okay, this actually seems to be a show that is organically picking up a lot of steam.

You know, it doesn't have big stars attached. It's from Canada. It's about a sport that is big in America, but not that big. It's gay stuff, which usually is a little bit relegated to the sidelines of major TV discourse. But it, yeah, it's becoming, I think, kind of at least a mini phenomenon on its own. So for once in my sorry life, I actually managed to get to that phenomenon, toward the very beginning rather than playing catch-up, which I'm very proud of myself for.

Was this, so this is based, as I said, on a book series by Rachel Reed. Fun fact, like, per your point about it being this sort of word-of-mouth phenomenon, HBO did barely any promo for this, because again, this was sort of like a late-in-day acquisition. You and I are lucky enough to have access usually to screeners for these shows. They don't have it up on their platform. We had to watch it through like a Canadian platform because, It was such a late-in-the-day acquisition for them. Harlequin, the publishing house that publishes these novels, was not prepared for this,

and the book is sold, like, the paperback copy is sold out everywhere. They're hastily reprinting it, you know, to meet the demand of this, yeah, sort of word-of-mouthed sensation. This is from, I just want to mention really quickly, this is from Jacob Tierney, who's a guy I really, really like. He is the co-creator of Letterkenny, and also it's very hockey spin-off Shoresy. So he has sort of been in this Canadian hockey space for a while. And as a queer man himself, he's like, let's get really gay and spicy about it. Why not?

Was this what you wanted when you heard, hey, have you heard about, have you seen the gay hockey show? And then when you watched this, was this what you wanted from it? I mean, it's not to sound corny, but it's almost more than I wanted. Because I, you know, there have been a fair amount of gay shows on television. television in recent years, but a lot of them are pitched younger. You know, I'm thinking about Love Victor, certainly Heartstopper. And it's not that I'm so, like, desperate to watch these teenage characters, like, have sex or whatever.

I'm not. But, like, the chasteness of Heartstopper started to grate on me after a while. Love Victor was a bit more progressive about that. But again, it's about young people. It's about first times and all this stuff. And there's an element of that in heated rivalry, but at least they're kind of grownups and at least some of them have a complicated history with their gayness rather than it being brand new for everyone involved. And I really like that.

And, you know, it really goes there with the sex scenes in a way that I can't, I was texting with friends about it. I was like, I can't even think of like a mainstream or even like indie American movie that has done that. You know, it feels graphic in a way that is honest about why it's graphic. You know, it's not trying to be too artful about it. It's just like, this is something part of life and people want to see it. and it's sexy and fun. And I wasn't expecting that. I was frankly expecting something a lot cuter

and maybe like Emily in Paris, but about gay hockey players and they kiss once in a while. And otherwise, it's like way more about hockey than I wanted to be. And it's just not. It's really very much about these relationships and the physical aspect of those relationships, the emotional one, in a way that actually feels deeper than I really,

really thought it was that TV right now was capable of when it comes to gay stuff. Yeah, a couple things I want to say about that in terms of, you mentioned Heart Stopper, and I was thinking a lot about Heart Stopper. I show that I really like, but I hear your comments about it, or red, white and royal blue, sort of another recent, like, book-to-screen adaptation, that to me, when I, a criticism I have heard of those particular adaptations, are that they feel like they're for straight people, that they're gay stories for straight people

or maybe even specifically gay stories for straight women is something that I hear a lot. And then what I've heard from, you know, certainly a lot of straight women I know are loving heated rivalry, but also that it doesn't feel like it's that kind of softening of a story or making something feel more palatable for a straight audience. Does that make sense to you? Yeah, totally.

I mean, look, that's been a big debate, in especially the publishing world for a long time. You know, you think about the backlash about Love Simon that Love Victor is a spinoff of and people like, oh, wait, a straight woman wrote that. And then Becky Albert Terry was like, well, no, I'm actually bisexual. But still there were people who were like, but why then not make it about a bisexual girl instead of a gay boy? And more and more, you see a lot of boy love fiction, which is a kind of term that's, I think, mostly popular in East Asia.

But like, you know, sort of sweet teenage boy, college age boy romance that is for women, by women, and a lot of those women are straight. And that's fine in its own right. But what I've heard from friends in the publishing world is that it's actually increasingly hard for gay men to actually get those stories published because there's just,

there's a thought that like, well, that's not what the, who the market is. The market doesn't want a gay man writing about this stuff. I don't know if I fully believe that 100%. But I know when I wrote a young adult novel, God, it came out like eight years ago, there was gay characters in it. And there was a lot of sensitivity about how those gay characters interacted, how far they went, because it was, you know, it was about teenagers.

And there's sex in my book, but like it's kind of glancingly referred to. It's not, you know, and I didn't want to write. like an in-depth sex scene for 17-year-olds. But I talked to YA authors who were women at the same time, and they didn't get any of the same notes that I got, even though they had gay characters. So I think this show represents something really interesting, which is the source material is kind of in that tradition,

which, again, I'm perfectly fine with, but I just want everyone to be able to be involved in that rather than it feeling a little bit more demographically cordoned off. But so, you know, those books are a thing. People like them. They're going to probably reprint them now. And then a queer man comes and it makes the show. And so basically everyone wins, you know?

Everyone is sort of satisfied. Well, not everyone, everyone, but, you know, the widest possible audience is satisfied by the show because all experiences are coming to bear on it. And I think you really do feel that potently in the TV show. I'm not saying it's like the highest of high art, but it feels like it's coming from a place of lived experience and authority, which I haven't always felt with other shows kind of roughly in this genre, or books even.

Totally. And something I will say is that watching the first episode, I was like, oh, this is like, this is fun, this is horny, this is, you know, all the things that you, like, the way the camera is lingering on someone's sweaty neck or whatever it is, like, that is the thing that, I don't know, since normal people or since before,

People are really excited about horny television. That's great. Love that for everyone. By episode two, I will say, though, I think Hudson Williams and Connor's story, who are playing Shane Hollander and Ilya Rosenoff are, these are, this is like such a calling card show for these two young actors. And they are bringing, I mean, and also Tierney's camera, I think, is doing some really interesting stuff.

But, like, they're bringing a depth to this story. that I think takes it up a notch. Again, I agree with you. I don't think this is the highest art I've ever seen in my entire life, nor does it think it is and nor is it trying to be. But there is an emotional entanglement that I feel that after the first episode, I was worried I wouldn't, and by the second episode, I was like emotionally invested.

100%. I think that it's a good at the show thus far, three episodes in, is a really good argument for, like, you can make stuff that is pulpy, and fun and sexy and romantic and swoony and sort of, you know, all that stuff, but also pay attention to like what the camera's doing, what the performances are doing,

what is the, what is the look of the show, you know, there's a real authoritative, no, what am I trying to say? There's a real authorship behind the camera in the writing, in the way it's shot, in the way it's performed on camera too. Like, that makes it definitely cut above a lot of sort of, sort of, oh, it's based on a kind of frothy book. We'll just kind of roll it out cheap for Netflix or whoever, and people will like it because

they're basically just reliving this book or this book series that they read. We don't really need this to be quality. Maybe one step above Hallmark original movie, we're fine with that. But this is taking it further, and thus people are treating it more seriously while also having fun with it. So that is possible. I mean, I think something, I mean, this is maybe a silly comparison to make, but you look at something like the White Lotus, which can.

can be really like, you know, sort of juicy airport novelty and kind of crazy, also really deep and thoughtful. But no matter what you're getting served, it all looks really great and has performed very well. And maybe that's hopefully setting like a new standard where it's like really entertaining stuff. It doesn't have to look like shit. Yeah, absolutely.

And I love that. I love that you brought up White Lotus. It wasn't on sort of my list of comps that I was thinking. but it feeds in really well to this thing that I was thinking about in terms of the clipability of something or the meme ability of something. So, like, we've got two charismatic handsome young men leading this show. They're really good in all of their sort of social media appearances. And the show, the clips that I have seen going viral are very good little adverts for the show. And I remember this happening with White Lotus where it caught a level of attention that,

Mike White Project usually didn't because of those sort of like memeable, clipable moments that people are like, oh, Parker Posey's doing this wild accent or whatever, you know, going back to season one, you know, he shit wear, like all, you know, all this sort of stuff. So like, I'm curious what you think of, I don't think anyone should ever make a show in a calculated way trying to create this effect. But I don't think you can buy publicity, like what heated rivalry has achieved in just, you know, the last week and a half of its existence. And, and I'm curious if that's something that, like, I don't want people to be overthinking it when they, when they create a show. But, like, but, you know, how do you, how do you, I'm excited that people are

watching something. I'm excited that people are watching the summer that I turned pretty even though I thought it was a fairly stupid show, you know, like, I'm excited that people are all talking about something together. And, and I want more of that in general, you know. I think, I, I think, I I think it's so hard because it sounds almost fatalistic and I'm basically saying that like every TV network and studio should just like fire their marketing teams. But like I'm not saying that. But these days it's like who the fuck knows? Sometimes it just hits and sometimes it doesn't. And a lot of times it feels really organic.

There was a big marketing engine behind the White Lotus first season, but not that big. Most of the really, really big marketing stuff surrounding that show or for another example, Succession, Succession got. a very muted rollout in the summer of the year it premiered, and it wasn't like one of the big shows that HBO had been touting all year as coming soon, coming soon. And then it gradually gained more and more steam over the first season. So by the time the second season arrived, people were really excited for it.

And then the sort of marketing kicked into high gear. That seems to be some version of what's happening here. What I worry about, as I worried about with White Lotus, or really a lot of shows that have had a second season to really claim on success that they didn't expect, is that they start then writing to that. They start writing for the memes. They start writing because they've been spending too much time on social media, seeing what fans want, and then they, oh, here you go, it gets put in the story.

We've seen that happen time and time again. Right. And it's almost always with diminishing returns. So I hope that in this case, this seemingly organic hit can maintain some of that the energy of anonymity that it seems to be enjoying right now. I think, yeah, something I was thinking about, a comp that I was thinking about was Schitt's Creek, which was a show that I remember you and I were like a little early on because for a while it was only available here on like pop before it hit Netflix. And then it hit Netflix. And something I think about all the time with Schitt's Creek is like it hitting Netflix was, of course, a huge part of its widespread success. But also, whoever decided to start engineering the reaction gifts with the very distinctive font, so you always knew that it was a Schitt's Creek reaction gif.

Again, this is a feed where we're ostensibly talking about prestige television. So I don't mean to get in the weeds about memeability or giffability. But it is an undeniably potent way to get people talking about. your show. You and I both know that there are so many phenomenal shows that nobody watches.

And so, you know, if there's ways, Netflix does this all the time with their like Oscar movies where they're like, to their detriment. Like they'll clip

something for marriage story. Yeah. I don't envy, you know, like any of these marketing executives because it's like, back on the old days, you just were like,

okay, on ABC, this fall, these are the shows you're going to watch. Some of them will hit, some of them won't. But you don't have any other options. You have the two other, three other networks. That's it. And now it's like, how do you

compete with all of this sort of atomized, you know, death of monoculture stuff? It's lovely to see that things can break through, but what worries me is that no one really ever seems to know why it broke through, except, I mean, you go, you return to the baseline. It's good. And yes, the summer I turned pretty maybe doesn't quite fit that model. But like, a lot of the shows that have been like, who saw that hit coming? And it's like, well, it was a good show. you know, and not every good show succeeds. But yeah, I just, again, to reiterate, I hope that this show that Heated Rivalry does not cave

or at least even wilt under the pressure of it being a kind of surprise hit because I think that can lead to a lot of self-consciousness in the making of another season. And I think that, you know, to your point, like I think toward the end of Schitts Creek, we were seeing a lot of fan service stuff that I just didn't connect with as I did the earlier seasons when they were really just doing it for an audience of themselves. Right.

And I mean, I think this is certainly enjoying an expanded viewership. Well, I don't know the numbers actually, so I can't say with certainty, but it feels... We might be a slight echo chamber in terms of like how many people are watching this show. Possibly, who could say? But probably, but thinking about Jacob Tierney's work on Letterkenny and Shorzie, both of what... Letterkenny specifically, which was like a very small Canadian show. which didn't get as big as Shits Creek, but also when it hit Hulu,

you have Brad Pitt on the red carpet being like Letterkenny's my favorite show. So that's a show that has experienced this sort of ballooning outside of its smaller Canadian audience into a larger global audience. And so I'm hoping that Jacob Tierney has enough experience in this, that that won't be something you stepped by.

And what's true about Heated Bible we read is it's based on a book series. So I believe the shape, and Ilya story is like the third, Heated rivalry is the third book in the series. Episode three, which we're talking about, you know, today ostensibly,

is the first book in the series. The story of Scott Hunter and Kip the smoothie guy is the first book. And so they've like taken, I haven't read the book, so I don't know, some of, most of the plot of the first book and jammed it sort of into this episode,

which you can kind of feel, because it's like a lot, of story packed into one contained episode and a slightly unexpected, perhaps, departure from the Shane and Ilya story that were sort of right in the middle of. We're right in the middle of Shane saying, like, we didn't even kiss, and our hearts are like, oh, my God, what's happening? And then let's take a detour to follow Scott and his story. I love Francois Arnault. He's been in a ton of things. He's really ugly, but other than that, I do like him as an actor, yeah. horrible to look at.

When you and I were texting about this episode, you're like, we're doing the Arnault episode. So what's your relationship with Francois Arna? Well, Jamana, I just have an ambient knowledge of just handsome men out in the world. He was on the Borges, right? He was on one of those shows. And then he's popped up here and there. An old old friend was his publicist at some point,

so that helped me be aware of him. But I have to be honest. I don't know. I'm probably forgetting something, but I was thinking watching this episode, I was like, this might be the longest sustained piece of acting I've seen him do because I didn't watch the,

maybe I saw a couple scenes with the Borges or whatever. And I think he's really good. And I really appreciate the way that he plays the character and the way that it's written, that I kept expecting the big blowup of like, you're forcing me to be out and you're too gay and I don't want to be that, that never arrives in this episode.

It's a much quieter kind of self-denial and alienating Kip. And that felt so much more credible to me. And I think that's obviously a credit to the writing. But also Arnaud, like, really, as someone who I think recently came out as bisexual or queer in some way, like, after a long career of people not knowing that, I think he brings a lot of personal feeling to that,

the kind of arc of this episode in a way that, again, elevates it above the sort of baseline kind of generic queer writing I was expecting when I first heard about the show. Yeah, I was really impressed by this episode in terms of, you know, when it first started and we sort of rewind, and, you know, we've seen Scott Hunter, you know, circling the Ilya Shane story. He's giving looks that, you know, makes us believe that he understands more of what's going on than Shane hopes he understands. going on or whatever. And my brain is like, well, you don't cast Arnaud in that role if there's not something queer going on with him. Okay. So I was satisfied to have been right about that.

Yeah. So, but we were winding time and I was like, oh, we're just, we're going to do Scott's story. Okay. And then I was really pleasantly surprised by, mostly because Scott is such an isolated figure, the community around Kip, like his friends and his dad and how sort of emotionally invested I became in those characters was very little time to get invested in them. And I thought that was really an impressive piece of writing to give me this

this, you know, Gapar found family community, to give me this dad relationship that we only get like a couple conversations and then I'm like crying when he's hugging his son at the end of the episode. So yeah, I mean, what do you make with something like that? It

makes our nose characters loneliness stand out. that much clearer because you're like, wait, we don't see him with anyone other than hockey people who are co-workers, not friends, not family. I mean, we find out that he lost his family, his parents quite tragically, it doesn't have siblings and all that. But like, you see at least some kind of vibrant social life on Kipp's part and then nothing on the other side. And I think that's really well done. Maybe it's a sort of obvious thing, but it's executed in a way that

feels sort of thoughtful. And I think that it's, yeah, it's rare that you would get a love interest character like this in Kip, who actually the episode is almost like, well, actually this is more his story in a way. And I think that's a really, I don't know, almost respectful way to handle a dynamic that is probably all too familiar among, you know,

closeted famous people, where we tend to think of the agony of the closet for that person, which is certainly real and worth talking about and dramatizing. But less often do we think about what it was like for the other person who does love them and does understand why they can't make this choice because of career, because of family, because of culture. And yet is like, but over time, the fairy tale fades and a real relationship exists, and yet it's so limited.

And I think the way that it just this episode gradually showed that constricting force where Kip is like, this is from a movie. I met this hot hockey player where he has a beautiful apartment and he invites me to basically live with him after two dates or whatever it is.

And then you watch us, he's like, but wait, but I do actually want more from that. And I do like my humble real life, my truer life. And yeah, I just think it was much more credible than the big history on it kind of dramatic of a lesser show would have been. I'm also watching this,

not from so much of an intellectual standpoint, but from an emotional one. By the end of the episode, I was sad, but I was also relieved that the door seems to have been left open for a reunion, maybe episode 5, 6, who knows? Maybe we'll have to wait until next season. But yeah, I just think in terms of delivering

what nation fans of this show want, which is like sexy, kind of romantic-y stuff, but also real thought about what this would actually feel like and how it would play out is, yeah, another sort of testament to this shows really good sense of balance. I would be surprised. I don't know how that book goes, the first book. I would be surprised if we get no more Scott and Kip before the end of the season.

That would be, I think, an odd way to tell the story. Or maybe it's just like a good tease for a season two. I don't know. But on the sports front, you and I are neither of us. like huge sports people. But I in this particular story, the way it starts with we watch, you know, we've already met Scott as like he refers himself as an old timer, right? Like Ilya and Shane are the rookies and he's like the older guard here. And we open with hearing, you know, podcasters at the ringer sports, sports radio people talking about like

how washed up he is, like, you know, how bad his record is recently. We're watching him run. He's wearing this skin-tight, you know, spandex, whatever. So we can see like how hard this person has been training probably his entire life. The absolute, you know, like he, you know, when he pulls the headphones out of his ears, like, he's just hearing garbage in his ears about how he's not good enough. We see that physically this guy could not like be trying harder to be in tip-top condition. And just that added pressure in addition. In addition, to this other emotional romantic journey that he's going on. Because, yeah, the, like, the closeted life of a hockey star, especially this is, you know,

this is a period piece of a kind, right? We're in the, like, early teens, the 2013, 14, 15 is like we're watching. Pre-Trump. Wow, what a concept. But, like, to have that hanging over him the whole episode, I thought was a really, really a brilliant way to start his story. Yeah, and there was discussion. I mean, it's playful, flirty discussion,

but I think there's something real underneath it about the whole like serial killer thing. And he says, well, I've heard about athletes. And I think the implication there is that like kind of like really driven musical theater stars or whatever, like athletes are a little bit nuts. I mean, they kind of have to be. They have to be so focused and so regimented and so, like,

blocking out so much of their life. I mean, not all athletes are like that. obviously, but a lot of them are. And I think that to have that drive and that sort of tunnel vision, single purpose in life, while also carrying the added, you know, sort of kettlebell of like being closeted, like that, that seems really stressful and difficult. And I think that the episode did a good job of making me care, not just about the closeted part, but about the sort of sports legacy part,

which normally I would not give a shit about, frankly. Well, can I ask you, okay, this is a, this is something I've been mulling over in our cover. We've been covering a pluribus also on this need, which features, you know, a queer woman, woman in the lead who is, who feels the need to be closeted inside of her. And she's a romance novelist, right? And feels like she needs to be closeted. And I was asking a question, you know, from my like limited tunnel vision straight POV where I was like, in 2025, like, like, obviously people are still in the closet but I was like what is what is

what is stopping Carol a successful woman in her field that this was like a a harder story for me to understand and then we get later in her story we learn about that her parent sent her to conversion camp and all this trauma that she has in her background which like helped me understand it a bit more but like in terms of this like highly closeted athlete story

Does this, in your perspective, does this make more sense as a slight period piece? Or does this, do you're like same as it ever was sort of notion? Yeah, I mean, when Adam Ripon, you know, skated at the Olympics in 2018, he was the first out gay American athlete to compete at the Olympics. So the first out gay American athlete to qualify. You know, you think about someone like Johnny Weir, but he came out after his Olympic career, Gus Kenworthy, the skier, Gus Kenworthy, came out during his Olympic career.

So his first Olympics, he was still in the closet, at least publicly. So at that time, 2013, 2014, this would have been significant, you know, if he were to come out. But also, I'm talking about figure skating in Adam Ripon's case, in Johnny Weir's case. This is hockey. I don't know if you dealt with the hockey a lot growing up on the West Coast, Joanna, but I grew up in Boston, where hockey was like one of the big sports, if not the big sport at my high school. I mean, the football team, who cared? The hockey team, we cared about. Or, I mean, other people cared about.

So that would be real. So it doesn't feel dated at all. I don't know that it's changed that much. I also think that any athlete in that position, be it then or now, they would have the concern of if I come out, maybe everything won't fall apart. But then I'm just the gay athlete. I'm just getting invited to the out or the glad awards. I'm just, I become this kind of token that alienates me further and further from my teammates,

from my sport. And it's not like maybe he doesn't think he's going to be gay-bashed in the locker room, but he knows that he'll forever have a distance between him and his teammates. It's interesting that they're circling that concept. I saw Jacob Tierney give an interview where he was asked about the character of Shane Hollander, who is also Asian-Canadian in the book and the question of like, did you ever consider not having him be Asian in the show? And he was like, no, this is an important part of the character.

And so when you have, you know, Jacob was talking about, like, when you read a book about a guy named Shane Hollander, it's like easy to whitewash him in your mind. He was like, but I like that, you know, he's got this mom, momager, this mom manager and this early on banging the drum about what does it mean to represent Asian people inside of, you know, the hockey world. And his sort of slight. He's a very, like, calm, unruffled guy in general, but there's this slight bump he has and just sort of like, I don't think about that or I don't really want to talk about, like, let's talk about my game more than what I represent. And so having that as this sort of precursor for this other idea that you're talking about, I thought it's really smart and interesting. Yeah. I mean, I think there are definitely some public figures, be they athletes or artists or whatever it is, who either seem comfortable with or actually aspire to. want to kind of take up the mantle of being a representative ideal. Like, I'm so proud to be the first person, you know, person to do whatever, you know. And then they kind of make that part of their celebrity. And they do good work with it. And it helps other people in theory who are coming up

behind them. And I think that's really admirable and we need those people. And I think there are other people who are like, I really appreciate those people paving the way for me, either ahead of me or laterally to me. But I don't want to do that personally. I don't want the pressure of that. I don't want the weight of that. I just want to be a hockey player, you know, and because I'm, you know, Asian, okay, that feels incidental to me, but I understand it means something more to the culture, and then you have the gay thing on top of it. And I think that ambivalence that you see in that character is, I think, really well drawn. And again, I keep comparing this to the straw man of a show that doesn't exist, but I'm just to keep imagining a worse version of this show. Yeah, yeah. And I think that that conversation would be far more at the forefront and done in this kind of like didactic lecturing way that it wouldn't be true to life. Whereas obviously it's in the background of his consciousness and his parents' consciousness and, you know, hockey fans' consciousness. But he's not centering it because he'd rather just focus on the task at hand, which for him is, you know, doing well at hockey.

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I want to talk to you to go back to Hudson Williams as Shane and Connor Story as Ilya. These are two very different performances, right? Like Connor Story, who's doing, you know, is American. He's in Texas, right? Yeah, he's like doing a great accent. And, like, when he speaks Russian, sounds very convincing to my ear. And I also saw him give an interview to, like, I don't know, a Quebecois outlet in fluent French as well. So, like, this is something that this guy's deal.

I don't know. Yeah, it's crazy. It's crazy. But let's talk about his performance. It's the bigger performance, right? This is, like, the big showy. Elia is, as far as I understand from the readers of this series, the most popular character in the series.

He's the little stat, like the vampire list of that sort of figure, right? And so how are you feeling about this performance, the bigger moments, and then the smaller sort of we see something play across his face that maybe even Shane can't or recognize is going on inside of him? Yeah, I mean, it's a dynamic that's familiar

to a lot of gay fiction, you know, not to get in the weeds of it, but it's like sort of needy bottom and sort of like, you know, sort of like disinterested top, whatever. And I don't mean just physically. I mean like sort of their,

that's the roles they're playing in the relationship or sort of one is more dominant, one is more submissive, passive, whatever. But I think that in the performances, especially in stories, like you do see some shading there that is crucial to, again,

to compare it to this show that doesn't exist, it would be cheaper in that, version. I think here you see enough genuine affection. He's not just completely shutting his emotions off for the purposes of sex. There's an added element to it that I think is communicated in facial expressions and changes in tone of voice that, you know, draw the audience in even further because you're like, oh, there's actually, there really is something under the surface here. But I also think that the way that he interacts with his family over the phone, with this girlfriend-ish character,

suggests that he's, you know, there's a real sadness there and maybe an exhaustion with code switching. I don't think that we are meant to think that he is fully gay and just repressed. I think he's probably somewhere in the middle of the spectrum or wherever. And I think the way that he plays that that sort of drifty fluidness in the ways that it's fun when he's flirting and doing other things. And in ways where it's really frustrating where he's kind of like lonely because no one actually really knows him, including the guy he's currently sleeping with. You know, and I, yeah, I mean, I think that if this were, if this show were to somehow get the attention of like Emmy's awarding. voters or whatever, that would be the performance that would get it, get the ball, the lion's

shared the attention, right? Because it's so flashy. But I don't think that in that flash, there is all the cliche I was expecting, you know. Again, it's a familiar trope how this relationship works and who he is, who Ilya is and who, you know, the other guy is. But, but he keeps doing things that I don't expect that sort of stock character to do. Yeah, I am curious if this would ever be on an awards voting radar. But as I said at the top, to me, it feels more like casting directors are going to be paying a lot of attention to this.

And like the same way we saw, you know, Joe Quinn or Josh O'Connor or Paul Meskell sort of like be cast out of a breakout TV role. Like these guys are going on the list. And I think Hudson Williams as Shane Hollander is tasked with doing something that's harder because they're both incredibly good and actually the accent work perhaps

evens the playing field but I think to turn Shane who is such like so much more of a repressed calm on the surface kind of guy and to make that performance as equally compelling with smaller looks and gestures and emotionality and you know you're talking about comparing this show to a worse version of it I always get so nervous when texting is a massive amount of screen time of film or a TV show.

And it's like an undeniable truth of how we communicate these days or, you know, back in 2014, 2015. So like it makes sense, but like it's so easy for that to be so boring or so stupidly done or whatever it is. But these guys are really good at just like gazing at their phone and smiling. and blushing or whatever it is that just makes it feel like a conversation, you know? It's a facet of modern acting that I guess that I don't think we think about enough. It's like there's a lot of those reaction shots

that they just didn't used to be, you know? Yeah. And I also think that the writing of the text is credible, you know? Like, I believe that this is how these two men would text message each other, you know, a little bit saucy, but not trying to commit too hard

or seem too eager, you know? Yeah, And I don't know. I was texting friends about the show. Speaking of texting, I was mid-episode two, I want to say. And I was feeling sort of giddy because I was like, you know that feeling of like when you're like,

oh, I'm now really invested in this relationship and whatever. And I was, I drafted a text message to friends being like, this is so corny. I was so embarrassing. But I deleted it because I was like, why is it embarrassing? This show is doing it well. It's not like I'm stooping to find something of value in a, just because it's a gay show.

It's like, no, it's actually like, it's elevated. It's earning it, I guess, what I'm saying. And I think that little moments like that that you pointed out are part of what does it. I also keep thinking about, partly because I have a pair of new socks on my desk next to me here, but the socks thing as a way to end the third episode. It's a nice grace note. It's a callback. It's a subtlety that communicates big things. And like, not for nothing. I like that show. But like you wouldn't see that on Love Victor. You know, you wouldn't see that on a lot of lesser shows that, you know, are working a bit more broadly, I guess. It's interesting that you mention that because, so the couple moments at the end of episode three, again, with this straw man of a worst show,

when you see Kip and his friends in the bar and you're outside the window and the camera's pulling back and I was like, oh, please don't literally have Scott standing outside the window. And then they do. And then I was like, oh, but wait, I care anyway. even though they're doing the thing that I hope they wouldn't do. And then I was like, okay, we're pulling the hockey socks over the banana socks. We're like, you know, hiding our true banana self with our, like, more professional hockey self. And I'm like, there's a world in which that metaphor is so labored and I don't like it. And then, but I got really emotional watching it because I was just like, Scott, be your banana self, man. Like, come on.

I think, I think, again, this worst show that maybe you and I should just write the worst show. Just just as an experiment. The worst show would have him, like, throwing the banana socks into trash, you know, or something like, I also didn't mind him standing at the bar because he knew what bar it was. It was named, you know? Yeah, yeah. And he's such a loner that, like, yeah, he's just out walking and he was like, oh, I guess I kind of want to go see, you know. But no, you're right. It is a very fine line that they're treading between, like, expected cliche and something that feels a bit more thoughtful. and they are for the most part on the latter side of that line, which I'm really grateful for.

And I don't know, for halfway through the season now, there hasn't been much to make me suspicious that the back half of the season will suddenly collapse into the worst show we keep referring to. Yeah, no, no, no. They have my faith entirely. I will say the last thing I kind of want to talk about is the drawn-out nature of the story. This takes place over years.

We're speeding through months at a time. And something that I like, and I find quite believable, is how the sort of tenderness between them ebbs and flows. Like you have this moment when they say goodbye in the stairwell, and it's just very soft and sweet. But like what is that progress is not always like a, you know, a straight line moving forward. You know what I mean?

We're going for it or we're moving back. words, what is going on with us personally, what is going on with us professionally, what is going on in our, in our respective standings inside of this world where we're supposed to be enemies, rivals, etc. And I find all of that incredibly believable, you know, because sometimes you can stretch out a will, they, won't they? And it's not quite a will they won't they because they frequently do. But like, will they be able to connect on this deeper level? will they be able to be together and out? Like these are the questions we're asking ourselves. And it is believable to me that this could be stretched and strained over several years of a lifetime.

And the fact that we meet them when they're, I think, literal teenagers, you know, and following them into their, you know, into their 20s, I think is, I don't know, it's really rewarding. I mean, I guess normal people did a similar thing where we're stretched over several years of the lives of young people. but that can go so wrong so quickly, and this is really captivating me. Yeah, and I think, you know, a lot of gay men or queer men that I know or have read things written by, whatever,

and I'm sure this is true of straight people as well, but there are a lot of casual relationships like that where it's like, oh, I'm in Chicago for work you want to meet up, like someone you met on Grindr or whatever. And I like the idea of the show being like, what if a fuck buddy you see every, six months or every 18 months is someone you're actually deeply in love with, you know, and the forces of distance and repression or whatever are keeping you apart.

But I like that the repressive part of it, the I can't come out yet part of it, I mean, obviously in episode three, that's more at the foreground. But for Ilya and Shane, it's more like, yeah, that is part of it. But it's more just like, well, our lives are intersecting, but also kind of will then bounce off of each other and fear in a different direction. and like it's almost as much about career as it is keeping people apart as it is about, you know, any sort of sexual repression. Yeah, I love that. The last thing I want to ask you before we go is, was there a moment that stood out to you that we haven't identified already, like a scene either between Kip and Scott or Ilya and Shane that really caught your attention?

Like, I equate it to something like in Fleabag season two, I remember watching that season and just I would find myself just like leaning closer and closer to the screen because the, I was just so wrapped up in the relationship that was going on inside of that season of television. So was there anything that made you lean forward either in that sort of, uh, it's enraptured me kind of way or anything else that stood out to you? Um, I, I mean, I appreciate the stuff that gives a little bit of context to what queerness is like or how it's spoken about in this really rarefied world that they're in. Who knows how true to life it was in 2013 with a hockey player.

But the moment at Sochi, which we then flash back from, where the teammate whose name, I'm sorry, I don't remember, who's sort of a side character. Yeah. He's like, oh, my buddy's in the figure skating. Do we want to go see that? Like, that's really brave of him to be coming to a country like this, you know, blah, blah, blah. And maybe in a way they're referring to Johnny Weir, who I believe did skate at Sochi, wasn't out, out, but, you know. And I thought that was really nice because it's like, yes, it was the Obama era.

There would have been maybe some younger players, the odd player or two, scattered about the league or whatever, who would have, I mean, you're in Ice Reef, drinks all the time. You would know figure skaters 100%. You'd be sharing ice with them a lot. I mean, obviously the figure skaters aren't on the ice when hockey people are practicing, but like you're in that space together a lot.

We know sports. It's fine. Right. No. No. I mean, I, you know, when I took skating lessons as a kid, I was so annoyed because my sister got figure skating skates and they just instinctively gave me hockey skates. All the boys got hockey skates and the girls got figure skates. And I really wanted the figure skates, but

these are the two genders in Boston. It's figure skating or hockey. Protested too much or something. But anyway, I just think that moment that we then revisit in episode three briefly is just a nice bit of grounding. Because I think that if the hockey world was portrayed as this just relentlessly awful thing where everyone is a super cliched, like tyrannical bigot, those people definitely exist in professional sports. I'm not saying they don't. But there would be other people. There's a gradient.

Athletes are not a monolith, you know. And I think that moment of this side character, just allowing a bit of grace to whoever might sort of be in his friend's situation, just, yeah, sort of broadens the show's sense for me of, like, having a decent humane approach to the material. I really like what you're saying. And I hope it's true. And on the other hand, given that Rachel Reefat,

series as many books along with different gay male hockey players in each book. I'm not discounting the fact the idea that all three of the people at that table might be also gay, a closet of gay. Do you know what I mean? Like, I read these books, damn. I thought he was just an ally. Well, he might be, but like, I think that's what some people thought Scott was. And then they're like, oh, but he was also sitting there. You know, so I don't know the answer to that. But, um, I, I, I love what you have to say about that. I will say that I think this scene in the bathroom right after the two of them go on stage and present the award together,

and then there's a scene in the bathroom after, which is like one of many scenes of like, you know, I'll fuck you later or whatever if I win this, etc. But there's just like something so unspoken and emotional about the moment for the two of them. And then Elia walks out and Shane just like wipes under his eyes really quickly. like he wasn't, tears weren't streaming down his face or whatever, but he was just slightly welling up from this exchange and that, that really got me. Yeah. Yeah.

And to your allyship point, please correct me if I'm wrong, I don't think we've heard any major homophobia come out of anyone's mouth in this show so far, right? No, and I don't think that we need to. No, but that's interesting, right? I think that we, Canadian audiences, American audiences, are certainly aware of what professional sports can be like, what the culture of professional masculinity can be like. That we don't need to spell out for us.

And that would just kind of cut away from time spent on the relationship. If we have to devote five, ten minutes of every episode to some coach who's an asshole and a homophobic or whatever, we'd be like, all right, we get it. This way, that is clearly in the background in all of their, you know, timidity to kind of live out lives. Yeah, we don't need it sort of further explained for us. And I think, again, the worst show would definitely have a lot of that in it. There would definitely be some antagonist player who was always harassing them in the locker room, you know, et cetera.

The worst show, the worst gay show coming soon from Joanna and Richard. We will write the worst gay show. It doesn't have to be hockey. We could change the sport. I made a joke on Twitter last night about a gay curling show. show. Maybe we could give that a whirl. Let's do it. Yeah, it reminded me of, I remember Dan Levy talking about this once again, Shits Creek, where he was, you know,

people were like, hey, in a small town like this, when we hear a lot of people being homophobic towards these characters. And he was like, I don't know, do we need that story? We've seen that story. So, like, I don't know that that's necessary. Sometimes that story absolutely has its place, but not in my

like, sexy, surprisingly well-made hockey drama. Like, I don't, you know, Exactly. All right. Well, that has been our like, you know, light little check-in on these spicy gay hockey ban. On the show that's changing my life. Rewriding Richard's DNA. Thank you so much, Richard Lasson. Where can folks find your work nowadays? Well, that's exciting. I'm happy you brought that up. I just started a newsletter. So it's just me doing my own kind of writing. It's going to be about three days a week, I think, Monday, Wednesday, Fridays. Some of that will be behind a paywall. Some of it will. won't. It's called Premier Party, and it's easy to find. The website is just PremiereParty.com. So I'm pretty excited about that. And then in the coming weeks, I don't think I can announce anything yet.

You might be hearing about some sort of audio project. So stay tuned for that. And that will definitely be, I'll make sure people know about that on my social networks and all that stuff. Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Richard, for coming by. I really appreciate. I always love talking to you about this stuff. So thank you so much. Well, thank you. Same. And this was the perfect thing to call me on for. And I do think if your listeners want to hear more of my rambling thoughts about this show, there will be in a week or two, almost assuredly, something about heated rivalry on my newsletter. I was looking to see if you had written anything already and I couldn't find anything. Probably in the coming, I would say week. So stay tuned. No one recaps a TV show better than Richard Lawson, I have to say. Oh, well, and that's something I will be doing come in the new year on my newsletter. That will be fully behind the paywall.

I believe I'm going to start with recaps of the U.S. traders. Oh, nice. So my first recapping in a decade, basically. Wow. Okay. Very exciting. Thank you to Devin Boraldi for work on this episode. Thank you to Justin Sales for the work on this feed.

We are ongoing covering Pluribus. There was a chair company episode the other day. There's a lot of stuff going on this feed all the time. And I don't know if we'll be back with more heated rivalry. where you guys let us know. Press EastGV at Spotify.com if you want more heated rivalry coverage. And we'll see you soon. Bye.