They got lookalike contests for everything nowadays. If you bear a passing resemblance to Jeremy Allen White, Timmy Chalamet, or Jack Schlossberg, you can finagle that into 15 minutes of internet fame. So of course, drawing on the popularity of our hockey romance, there was a Heated Rivalry look-alike contest a few weeks ago in Washington, D.C. And apparently, the two winners went on their own date following the contest. What a beautiful world.

When we left off, we hadn’t seen our boys in a while – the last episode followed Smoothie Hunk and his Closeted Captain. But never you mind them anymore – we are back to dude-on-dude action between Hunkanov and Hollandaddy. This episode starts off with another time and date stamp – Summer 2014. Rozanov is playing hockey against Hollander, with lots of shots of action on ice and in the sack. Hollander is also shown advertising for some kind of probiotic looking soda which I don’t think they had in 2014. But you know what they did have? Sobe. You remember Sobe’s? Pina colada, strawberry banana… man, I could KILL a Sobe right now, bro. They stopped making them sometime around COVID which for my money was the biggest casualty of the pandemic. A pina colada Sobe and a sunny day in Pullman, Washington – there was nothing better in 2019, for my money.

2015 hits and Hollander’s team wins the championship for the first time in forever. This reminded me of the time I dropped 30 points in intramural basketball. Our team was called the “Active Shooters” because we couldn’t MISS! While this is all going on Hollander and Rozanov keep texting each other but whenever anyone asks who the other one is messaging they stay lying on some dishonest #typeshit. 2016 rolls around and Hollander’s team wins again. I reached for my phone to put some money down on Kalshi, out of habit, but then remembered that it was TV. Maybe I have a problem.

Hollander hangs out with one of his teammates at the aquarium who tries to set him up with a girl yoga teacher. Little does he know…. Maybe they could go back to the aquarium on a first date, and have a whale of a time!! #aquariumhumor

Hollander visits Boston and visits Rozanov’s lake house for the first time. Hollander is wearing glasses like he’s Canadian Clark Kent and they literally refer to his house as a “Fortress of Solitude” and it’s like, who wrote this episode, notorious Superman fan Jerry Seinfeld? Hollander and Rozanov then do something I had my girlfriend look up which is apparently called “frottage” and then I said “frottage at the cottage” and I thought that was pretty funny. And I’ll stand by it.

The boys wake up and have tuna melts. Tuna melts – in the morning, after getting freaky – is some nasty work. Also Rozanov has Grillo’s, those terrible pickles in the plastic jar that taste like butt. This is a Claussen household –  glass jar or nothing. Pickles are experiencing a renaissance – have you noticed that? They occupy the same cultural space that bacon did in the 2010s. I’d like to make it clear I’ve been a #realpickler since childhood. My mom would take us to Arctic Roadrunner (Anchorage denizens will know) and I would suck down condiment cup after condiment cup of those sliced dill pickles from the ketchup and mustard bar area.

Rozanov gets a weird call from his dad in Russia who is probably losing it. The show heavily hints that he has Alzheimer’s or some equivalent. Rozanov and Hollander fight and then break up which is lowkey #notthemove. My girlfriend said this part was sad. And I guess it was – degenerative brain diseases always scare me to no end.

Hollander then ends up meeting an actress – Rose – at a bar and they start going out. Bro is on the Montreal Metros but he actually plays for both teams! Hello! The tabloids end up picking up their relationship and heavily publicizing it. Rose and Hollander show up on TV which makes Rozanov mad. Towards the end of the episode, Rozanov and Hollander end up with their friends at the same bar but neither wants to admit to anyone else that they are together so there’s some weird sexual tension. There’s a lot of Trent Reznor/Atticus Ross style club music and stolen glances.

The episode ends with Hollander and Rose playing hide the Grillo’s pickle and Rozanov by himself while “All The Things She Said” plays which, as a casual Red Scare listener and close friend of Dasha Nekrasova’s ex Adam Friedland, I recognized almost immediately and had a visceral reaction to. Running through my head, running through my head. God bless those Russian women and their earworm Eurodance.

Jacob Hersh was born and raised in Anchorage. He is currently studying law at the University of Idaho. He occasionally does movie reviews and writes weird columns for the Landmine to get extra money for beer.