Review: Heated Rivalry, "Rose" | Season 1, Episode 4

“That’s not who you are.”

In some corners of the internet, there’s no doubt debate about the smuttiness of Heated Rivalry. It was certainly the subject of early reviews, and romance critics have necessarily stepped into the conversation to consider the way sex functions as plot (this piece from Jenny Hamilton is a good example) within the genre. And while we can debate whether the plot function of sex scenes is impacted by the show’s pacing (the time jumps), and whether the conversation would be different if this were a more traditionally paced story, for the most part I want to be clear that this newsletter is a space where the sex in this show is integral to the story it’s telling.

However, the other debate that I’ve seen more of across my feeds—which, way to go, feeds—has been the conundrum that is Shane Hollander. Going into the series, I wondered how Jacob Tierney would confront the imbalance between our two protagonists. It’s not that I think Ilya is an inherently more interesting character than Shane, but he has so many advantages: he’s the bigger personality, carries more personal baggage, and pops up in every other book in the Game Changers series. In addition, so much of what book readers relate to in Shane comes through his inner monologue, and the thing that would excite an in-world fan to invest in his career—his on-ice skill—is one thing the show isn’t well-positioned to explore.

“Rose” is undoubtedly the biggest episode yet for Shane, and thus the biggest test yet for Hudson Williams. In my review of “Olympians,” I laid out my argument for the logic behind Williams’ basic affect when playing Shane: Canadian hockey players are trained to be boring, and this would be triply so for an Asian Canadian who is also at least subconsciously aware of his queerness. But this argument was based on episodes where Shane’s independent corner of the story was tiny, consisting of short scenes with his mother or his teammates. Now, both before and after sharing tuna melts with Ilya, Shane is pushing at the boundaries of the life he’s built for himself, and we get a better understanding of his boringness within the context of the show and its production.

We’ll get to Rose herself in a bit, but my overall assessment is that Show Shane is boring in ways Book Shane isn’t, and it isn’t just because we lack the inner monologue. The scene with his parents is, to my money, the best example of this. Here, Shane is still reeling a bit from his time at Ilya’s, and he’s purposefully short with his parents. The idea of attending Wimbledon with his sponsor Rolex is sold in two different ways. His mother sells it as part of his career obligations, noting that they don’t want their box to be “too tennis-y,” which Shane snarks means they think it’s too white. Trying to pivot, his father sells it as a fun family vacation, reliving his childhood love of London. Neither of these visions fits Shane’s own idea of his life, because it would disrupt his off-season training. When he proposes lying that he’ll show up and letting his parents take advantage of the trip, Yuna tells him the quoted line above: “That’s not who you are.”