Why I hated (and loved) Heated Rivalry

Everybody is (or was — I’m late as usual) talking about Jacob Tierney’s Heated Rivalry — its edginess, and controversy. And, I’m all for that! But, always suspicious of hype, trends, and popular taste — and equally resistant to either paying for a new subscription or pirating it — I took a while to get to it.

The morning I started the show — before pressing play — another gay guy mentioned that the series was based on a novel written by a woman. I bring this up because I may have entered my Heated Rivalry binge with a bias.

Call it misogyny if you’d like, but the truth is that no cis woman, nor any straight person, for that matter, can fully grasp the nuances of the gay experience, no matter how immersed in the culture they believe themselves to be. Because, shocker, they don’t have the lived experience.

It’s like when a man writes a novel centred on a female protagonist. Can they do it? Sure. Should they do it? Debatable. Will they ever capture the feminine universe? Doubtful.

The more important question, though, is this: can an author write fiction centred on a minority group they don’t belong to and still make it appeal to the masses? Abso-fucking-lutely.

 

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And that’s precisely what Heated Rivalry felt like to me: unrelatable, unrealistic, and utterly predictable — much like most mainstream TV and cinema romances.

I haven’t read the book, and certainly won’t, so what follows are my impressions of the TV adaptation alone. If you haven’t watched it yet and plan to, consider this your spoiler alert. Of the show’s six episodes, I’ll be focusing mainly on the first four. Three of them are, frankly, largely devoid of narrative substance. The other feels like a filler episode at first, but ultimately proves relevant by the season’s end.

So, let me set this straight: the show isn’t bad, it’s bloated. The story could have been told in three episodes.

Finally, I won’t be getting into the very obvious, and arguably intentional, “West good, Russia bad” framing — seriously, don’t even get me started.

The romance revolves around the fiery relationship between two elite male hockey players who happen to play for archenemy teams. They can only meet in secret during the season, usually in their hotel rooms, no more than once or twice a year.

Every now and then, mainly because of an oftentimes trivial argument, they simply skip seeing each other for an entire season — despite the rarity of those opportunities and their obvious intense physical attraction. These arguments are typically conveyed in two or three lines of dialogue. Bits of backstory about their personal lives are seemingly meant to fill in the emotional gaps that are not explicitly vocalised.

Rozanov, the Russian player — surprise, surprise — has a harsh, military father obsessed with his performance. Now suffering from dementia, he is supposedly cared for by Rozanov’s homophobic brother, to whom the athlete sends large sums of money and who, in return, treats him like shit.

Hollander, the Canadian player, comes from a softer family dynamic, though his mother is cold and primarily concerned with brand deals, money, and appearances.

Looming over all that, of course, is the sport industry’s infamous hostility toward homosexuality.

This cocktail of pressure, combined with a necessary, generous dose of viewer imagination, seems to be all the show offers to explain the near total lack of dialogue between the two men in their not-dared-to-be-called relationship.

Because really, all they do is fuck. And sext.

Needless to say, their bodies — along with those of all the other characters, athletes or not, who appear half or fully naked (no frontal, crazy idea!), are sculpted to perfection. The sex scenes are spicy, the cinematography is beautiful, and the soundtrack is pop and upbeat.

For me, that’s what the show is all about: vibes and horns.

As the season constantly fast-forwards through time, we’re shown clips of their lives apart, during which they are continuously sexting. When they reunite, they fuck passionately. Again: hot and fun. But realistically, how much can two people text about blowing and pounding each other when they’ve been in constant contact for… half a decade?

In an early episode, Hollander confronts Rozanov about his absence over the past year following one of their seasonal fallouts. “What do you want from me?” he asks. To which Rozanov replies: “I want you to suck my dick”. The scene goes on with them debating if they should do it right there in that bathroom or back in their hotel rooms.

After five years, they finally spend the night together. The next morning, Rozanov makes breakfast and, after taking a distressing call from his family, Hollander asks: “How’s your dad?”, a first-ever question about the other’s life. Rozanov doesn’t answer, but they do share a rare and brief moment of tenderness, with some cuddling that leads to more sex and, also for the first time, them calling each other by their first names.

Probably because of that, immediately after cumming, Hollander shuts down, leaves without explanation, and goes on to finding himself a girlfriend. It’s worth noting that while Rozanov is clearly portrayed as bi, Hollander is implied not to be.

The show, in my opinion, falls really short in portraying any real emotional depth in a romantic relationship, no matter how carnal it may be. One could argue that their relationship is purely sexual — except the narrative repeatedly hints otherwise. We’re given fleeting glimpses of true affection, jealousy, hesitation, care, resistance, and denial. But, nothing ever develops from those moments. They evaporate, replaced again by more sex and sexting… for months and years.

Yeah, nah. I just can’t buy that two people in constant communication, tangled in such a torrid “situationship”, if you will, would still be asking nothing more than “How’s your dad?” after five years — and not even getting an answer.

Not even if both were men. Didn’t mean to catch you off guard — but not even gay men.

And that’s precisely the problem: it taps into a deeply ingrained, homophobic cliché in the collective imagination, the idea that between two men there’s nothing but sex.

There’s also a subplot involving another gay couple: yet another ridiculously hot hockey player and an unbelievably ripped barista. This is a tad more nuanced than the main romance. It touches on the challenges of maintaining a loving gay relationship while hiding it because of a sports career.

Still, very Pretty Woman-like. Rich, successful man meets cute server while ordering smoothies, takes him home for the night and, boom! — madly in love by morning, he asks pretty boy to move in.

So what do I love about the show?

Well, first and foremost, it’s a gay story that went mainstream. People watched it, loved it, hated it, argued and opinionated about it so much that it inevitably became political. And I love that.

Secondly, it’s simply enjoyable to watch. Who doesn’t like voyeuring on impossibly hot people going at it?

 

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I’m about as gay as it gets, and yet I loved watching the ten-minute lesbian sex scene in the French film Blue Is the Warmest Colour — so no one will convince me that Heated Rivalry’s soft porn isn’t appealing across the board, including straight men, even if very few would ever admit it.

Think, too, of that Sens8 orgy scene. Whatever your sexual orientation, you definitely enjoyed scanning everybody’s bodies on screen.

And, finally, mind you, this is the gay 50 Shades of Grey. It’s sexy, horny, and vibey. But, just as much as 50 Shades is not an accurate representation of BDSM, neither is Heated Rivalry of gay sex.

What the show frames as “edgy” — something made obvious by the dramatic music, lingering shots, and tension-building acting — is just Monday lunchbreak sex for the average homo.

And while that can be somewhat frustrating — at least for me, a grumpy, overanalysing bitch — it may well be the price of going mainstream.

The general public isn’t, and perhaps never will be, ready to see what actual edgy gay sex or BDSM really looks like. So while I’d personally love more of that on screen outside PornHub, I also do appreciate that delicate balance achieved by the production — whether by strategic artistic choice or simply by faithful reproduction of the original story written by a cisgender, female author.

Last Updated on Feb 24, 2026