“Mann gegen Mann,
Meine Haut gehört den Herren.
Mann gegen Mann,
Gleich und Gleich gesellt sich gern.”

-Rammstein, Mann Gegen Mann

“Hey baby, I hear the blues a-callin’,
Tossed salad and scrambled eggs
And maybe I seem a bit confused,
Yeah maybe, but I got you pegged!
But I don’t know what to do with those tossed salads and scrambled eggs.
They’re callin’ again.”
-theme song from Frasier (1993-2004)

The Winter Olympics are here. The best of the best will twirl, ski, shoot, sled, and freestyle across the Italian slopes while I will crush beers and yell obscenities at my television when a figure skater, a thousand times more graceful than I could ever hope to be, makes a miniscule error. It’s the American way. I went to high school and took a German class with one of this year’s American team cross-country skiers (and a science class with Miss America 2022). They became upper echelons in their fields, with their own Wikipedia pages, and I am reviewing the gay hockey HBO show. The disparate paths of three Robert Service High School graduates.

Which – let’s get ahead of the curve here – there are some nasty rumors (one comment in last episode’s review that made me cry into my beer) going around that I am “insecure” about covering queer culture but am “too broke to say no.” And yes, the latter part of that is true, I buy silly things online and then spend weeks on end eating beans – but to read 1,500 words about how I think Heated Rivalry is cheesy, sloppily-written junk food television and then assume that I would only say that because it features two gay protagonists is sort of reductive. For every Walt Whitman, Yukio Mishima, or Chuck Palahniuk, there is a Shane Hollander in triplicate. Art is hard, to quote a post-hardcore band from Omaha.

If HR followed the sweaty exploits of a lady hockey player and a male lacrosse coach, it would be just as dumb – which, as I explained in my last review, is fine. Not every show has to be Succession or the episode of Frasier where Frasier goes ice fishing – conversely, not every show with a gay protagonist gets to be labeled prestige television. Slop comes in every color of the rainbow – and this is assuredly pretty sloppy. But it’s fun slop, and now my girlfriend is hooked. She comments on Rozanov’s [sic] “volumptuous” butt. She sends me TikToks of the actors doing silly press junket activities. Did you know Rozanov isn’t actually Russian? When he talks it’s like hearing Gandolfini not being Tony Soprano – sort of jarring, and unnerving. It gets to a point, you know?

Now – to business.

Let’s Get Serious – Or, Carrying On In The Greek Tradition

When we left our big ice-skating boys, they had just finished an argument on the balcony of a skyscraper after the Rookie of the Year awards. Ilya and Shane continue texting through this show’s numerous flash-forwards, and we see the two flirt heavily over text before games – but nothing ever happens. It’s like trying to hold hands with Ivan Drago during a prizefight. Lace up them skates, Shane – this is the (checks notes) FHL. NOT the NHL.

Eventually, however, after multiple rounds of flirting on phones with a physical keyboard, the fellas consummate their relationship in the style of Socrates, Oscar Wilde, and Greg Louganis. In front of a roaring fire, no less – which made me chuckle. Sometimes you have to stick with the classics. Throughout the whole scene, my girlfriend kept saying “Oh, my. Oh, my,” like I assume George Takei probably did. Sexy talk delivered in a Russian accent sounds strange – like ordering borscht. Rozanov is completely hairless, like a sphinx cat. You could slide him down a waterslide and he would be completely frictionless. It boggles the mind.

The act itself occurs in the halcyon days of 2013, when the real-life Blackhawks won the real-life Stanley Cup. What else was happening in 2013? The Harlem Shake, and not much else, it seemed at the time. I was 12, in Catholic school. Explains a lot, doesn’t it? (They should make a lesbian version of this show where they both do roller derby.)

We flash forward to 2014 and now it’s the Winter Olympics – in Sochi, Russia, no less! Canada plays Russia in hockey, and in an upset, Russia loses. Rozanov, as a member of the losing team, takes a terrific verbal thrashing from his James Bond villain looking dad, who, at the end of the conversation, wanders off into sort of an Alzheimer-esque fugue state, waxing rhapsodic about Rozanov’s dead mother. A crack emerges in the cold Russian exterior, no doubt.

At the basement afterparty, Rozanov nurses his wounds over cocaine with his ethnically ambiguous girlfriend from Episode 1, and a sexually ambivalent boyfriend (Sasha) from days past. Is everyone gay in this show? Rozanov rebuffs Sasha’s advances, and at this point, we got an ad for Entenmann’s Little Bites Donuts, which made me want a snack. Later, Ilya’s team wins the MLH championship, and at the hockey awards show (the Hoscars?) Shane and Ilya swap Colbert-esque riffs on stage while presenting trophies. Backstage, Shane gets mad at his big beautiful boy for being emotionally distant, and the two finish out the evening doing the horizontal bop as the episode slides into a close. This is a show Mitch and Cam from Modern Family would watch, if that show had lasted into 2025. Or a show Beavis and Butthead might have riffed on, if MTV had any spine. 

There was some discussion of the adverse conditions in Russia for members of the gay community, which is a surprisingly intense topic for a comparatively light show, though it does make sense, considering the nationality and sexuality of its main heartthrob.

I forgot to do the “hockey clock” thing from last episode but let’s be generous and say it was around two minutes. Why do you think the show Heated Rivalry was called Heated Rivalry? Cause the rivalry was heated!

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.