Less “Six months later” and more time in bed, please.
Photo: Sabrina Lantos/HBO
In the second episode of Heated Rivalry, 18 months pass in a matter of minutes. The opening montage is set in “Summer 2011.” The next scene is set in “Fall 2011,” followed by “Winter 2012,” “Spring 2012,” and “Fall 2012” in rapid succession, each jump in time paired with a jarring cut to black. You could call it a cold open (ice-hockey pun intended) but for the fact that these shifts take place 15 times across the first two episodes, zooming the viewer from 2008 to 2014 in less than two hours. Emotionally frustrated competitors and sometimes-lovers Shane Hollander (Hudson Williams) and Ilya Rozanov (Connor Storrie, doing an all-time Russian accent — like, get this guy in Chess stat!) pass as both recent high-school grads and industry pros, but are we going to have to see them in the 2040s in old-age makeup? Gray hair? When will the march of time cease so we can just watch these two banter about hockey and then have sex?
From a scheduling standpoint, I get it. To follow professional sports is to know that players on different teams live in different cities and see their industry peers maybe only a dozen times a year. So too are Hollander and Rozanov separated by region and weather and the demands of their respective teams and money-seeking families. But Heated Rivalry’s relentless time jumps make much more sense on the page. The HBO Max series is adapted from a Rachel Reid novel that follows Shane and Ilya’s relationship across a decade and is broken up into chapters titled by when in history they take place, moving through various matches, championships, and even the Olympics as the two sneak moments alone while playing in the same city. The end of a chapter allows for these characters to navigate their world off-page, without each other, and their respective narration fills readers in on what they missed.
This chronological edging might be pleasurable for Shane and Ilya, but when built into the framing of an episode of television, the fade-ins and -outs overwhelm and distract the narrative. Heated Rivalry is not a show about precision. It’s a fantasy — set in the real world, but a fantasy nonetheless — about two hot young guys trying to figure out if they can make it together in this big bad world of hockey. No one is watching for historical accuracy. The show ought to trust that viewers will make sense of time passing without stopping the action several times an episode to spell it out. That’s what expository dialogue like “Aren’t the Winter Olympics in Sochi coming up soon?” is for. Showrunner Jacob Tierney never lets us linger in any one city (or season, sports or meteorological) for very long, so every scene, from postgame hookups to sexting interstitials, practically accelerates, the action only ever slowing down long enough for one of these guys to stare longingly into space. This pace also emphasizes how not-robust Shane and Ilya’s lives are outside of their romance; they talk to teammates and family members they’ve ostensibly known for years as if they’re meeting for the first time.
Time is an essential part of the romance between Hollander and Rozanov, in that there is never enough of it to share between them. But even their hookups feel squeezed into snippets of their lives, their hottest interactions segmented with cuts to black, as though prolonged continuity would be too intense. When Hollander and Rozanov reconnect early into the second episode, “Olympians,” the camera fades in and out four times throughout the sex scene — kissing shifting to one position, shifting to … the same position later on in the night. Not all sex scenes should have the same rhythms, but Heated Rivalry’s truncation of intimacy builds nothing and shows little. It’s one thing for Hollander and Rozanov to believe that their limited time together is rushed, but there’s no need to inflict that pacing on viewers as well. In theory, this is the only consistent and steady part of their lives in which Ilya and Shane can really indulge. Again, this is a fantasy — let us linger in a steamy sex scene!
The events of Reid’s novel end in 2017, which suggests the show will slow down going forward. But that won’t undo the haphazard nature of these first two episodes. Part of what’s appealing about a long-distance romance is that minimal time together can feel like an eternity. One night can be — and is — incredibly meaningful, but every interaction in Heated Rivalry draws attention to itself like a kitchen timer. In order to appreciate Hollander and Rozanov’s relationship (and their ripped hockey-player bods), time ought to feel very much unreal both to the characters and the viewer. Their love story doesn’t need to be crammed onto a Google calendar.
