Heated Rivalry Season 1, Episodes 1-5 Spoilers Ahead
If there’s one show everyone seems to be watching this holiday season, it’s Crave’s breakout sensation, Heated Rivalry. The queer hockey romance — heavy on the queer and the romance, less so on the hockey — is based on the Game Changers book series by Rachel Reid.
The first two episodes of the series introduce us to the multi-year, rivals-to-lovers slow burn for professional hockey players Ilya Rozanov (Connor Storrie) and Shane Hollander (Hudson Williams), the leads of Reid’s second book.
Rather than continue their story, however, the third episode makes a pivot and instead showcases fellow hockey player Scott Hunter (François Arnaud), a side character up until now. Having been shrouded in secrecy in the lead-up to its release (the title, “Hunter,” was only revealed the day before it aired on December 5), this unexpectedly Scott-centric episode was undoubtedly a shock to viewers, but to book readers? Not so much.
Scott may be a side character in the show, but he’s actually the co-lead of Reid’s first novel, Game Changer, alongside NYC smoothie maker and art history major Kip Grady (Robbie G.K.). Scott and Kip’s love story spans only a few months in the book, compared to the nearly decade-long “will they, won’t they” that plagues Shane and Ilya, so it’s not unreasonable that the show only devotes 48 minutes, rather than a six-episode season, to telling it (well, most of it).
And, in this journalist’s humble opinion, these 48 minutes just so happen to be some of the very best of the year in television.
I already know I’ll always hold a particular fondness for “Hunter” because it was the episode that really hooked me on the show (admittedly, I’d experienced the first two episodes of Heated Rivalry in suboptimal conditions — the story kept getting broken up by the same four ads, and none of the Russian dialogue in Ilya’s scenes was translated), but my reverence for this episode extends far beyond those personal circumstances.
“Hunter” best exemplifies what’s referred to by TVTropes.org as a “lower-deck episode,” where we step away from the main storyline for a moment to explore the perspective of a side character. What’s so impressive here is how seamlessly the show transitions into this entirely new story, and then subsequently weaves Scott and Kip’s romance back into the narrative overall.
Book readers know that Scott and Kip (collectively dubbed “Skip”) factor into a critical moment later in the story for Shane and Ilya (a.k.a. “Hollanov”) — yes, I’m referring to that very public on-ice kiss they share in Episode 5, “I’ll Believe in Anything.” And who else knows this? Creator and showrunner Jacob Tierney, who, according to Reid, always hoped to include a Skip-focused episode in his pitch for the series. “It was one of the first things [Jacob] described to me about his vision…he really wanted to do this, this bottle episode,” Reid told Today.com after the third episode’s release.
When you watch the episode, Tierney’s intentionality and forethought come through in impressive fashion — from the immediate outset until the very last frame, the entire episode feels expertly crafted.
To kick things off, “Hunter” cleverly utilizes the Sochi 2014 Olympics as not only a framing device but also a way into Scott’s perspective. We open on a familiar scene in the Russian ice cream shop from Episode 2, “Olympians,” only this time we zoom right in on Scott’s expression, a choice that’s accompanied by the opening notes of Wolf Parade’s “I’ll Believe in Anything.” (Notably, this song, which is also the title of Episode 5, makes its triumphant return during Scott and Kip’s big moment at the playoffs.)
Revisiting this prior conversation about the host country’s homophobia, this time through Scott’s eyes, establishes a new truth in the Heated Rivalry universe — Shane and Ilya aren’t the only closeted players in the league. It immediately sets the tone for non-book readers: Yes, Scott Hunter is queer, and no, that’s not the only new detail you’re going to learn about him over the next 48 minutes.
From Sochi, we rewind four months, a first for a show that has otherwise favored large leaps forward in time, to arrive in October 2013. It’s still early in the hockey season, and Scott, captain of the fictional New York Admirals, is not having a good time. Out on a punishing training run with the voices of less-than-charitable hockey podcasters polluting his ears, Scott finally snaps and cuts his run — and the podcast episode — short.
On his self-declared break, he wanders into a not-so-random smoothie shop, Straw + Berry, and encounters an employee (can you guess who it is?) dozing at the till. Amused, Scott clears his throat to get who we quickly learn to be Kip’s attention, and just like that, a classic rom-com meet-cute is underway.
The chemistry is evident between Scott and Kip in this very first interaction, during which Scott orders a blueberry smoothie with Kip’s suggested addition of a banana. The smoothie shop serves as the backdrop for two more similar encounters between the characters, and each time Scott pays Kip a visit, it’s more flirtatious than the last.
The third time Scott enters the shop, he musters up the courage to stay for a while, allowing him and Kip to finally share their first legitimate conversation — and it’s about serial killers and spree killers, no less. Totally normal stuff to say to your crush, right? It’s a little weird, but Kip’s rolling with it.
Plus, it turns out Scott only knows this because he reads “a lot of murder books.” According to the overly intense hockey captain, “serial killers make me feel not obsessive.” They banter a bit about athletes’ superstitions, particularly when it comes to playoff season, and Kip at one point tells Scott, “And just to be clear, I’m not complaining about the whole ‘stop shaving’ thing. I mean, you all look like hot lumberjacks by the end of May.”
This comment, despite being more or less innocuous, throws Scott for a considerable loop, suddenly rendering him incapable of maintaining their prior easy repartee. For a brief, terrifying moment — for both us and Kip — it seems like the vibe is ruined… Until Scott surprises Kip — and us — with an invitation to his home game that night. It may be the first time that Scott boldly expresses his desire to move things forward with Kip, but it won’t be the last.
Kip brings his friend Elena (Nadine Bhabha) along to Scott’s game, and she’s the one who has to encourage him to acknowledge and reciprocate the small wave Scott gives him as he skates by during warm-up. “That wasn’t…that wasn’t to me,” Kip tries to reason, even hilariously checking over his shoulder for whoever Scott must actually be waving at. (It’s you. He’s waving at you, Kip!)
The next time Scott and Kip cross paths is straight out of a rom-com: Kip, working a second gig as a server at a fancy gala, accidentally crashes into Scott with a tray of appetizers. This literal run-in gives the ever-opportunistic Scott his next chance to make some progress with Kip. They bond over a mutual hatred of the event’s food — Scott hates eating it, Kip hates serving it — and then Scott rather brazenly asks if Kip would like to join him for some far-superior Mexican food after the event. If that feels suspiciously like a date, it’s because it is.
And it’s also a date that quickly — and conveniently — switches to them spending the night together at Scott’s lavish penthouse in lieu of waiting in the Mexican restaurant’s lengthy line.
Later in the night, when Kip goes to leave, assuming this was just a hook-up, he’s stopped by Scott’s simple inquiry: “Can you stay?” When Kip confirms he can, Scott requests, equally simply: “Then stay, please.” This is yet another instance of Scott being direct about what he wants, a behavior that returns in full force the following morning.
Kip once again assumes their time together, however lovely, has finally run its course, and he intends to leave Scott’s apartment when Scott once again stops him. “What if you didn’t [go]?” Scott asks Kip. He then proceeds to launch into a wonderfully raw monologue about his situation (he’s a closeted pro athlete) and what he wants (namely, Kip), and it’s a deeply poignant scene that’s expertly performed by Arnaud.
Scott prefaces his speech with the acknowledgment that yes, he knows he’s a lot. He’s “too intense”; everyone tells him that.
“Is that okay? Can I be too intense?” he asks Kip here in a moment of remarkable vulnerability (and also one that cemented him as my favorite character in the show). Scott’s speech to Kip demonstrates his biggest struggle: he’s a walking contradiction, a man who is so sure of what he wants while being simultaneously so afraid of what might happen if he goes for it fully. He’s unapologetically himself around Kip, but the complete opposite when out in public.
He tells Kip, “I want you more than I’ve wanted anything in a long time,” but he also can’t let himself be honest to anyone else in his life about who he truly is. In Scott’s mind, there’s just too much at stake.
It’s this internal warfare that leads to his proposition to Kip: he wants them to be together, just not in public. Not yet. Kip does accept the offer, and through an adorable montage set to Alfa Rococo’s “Lumière,” all seems to be well in the land of early-relationship Skip …
Until it’s not, because they can’t outrun reality forever.
The first cracks begin to show when the secret couple’s trip to an art gallery devolves into Scott nearly having a panic attack at the thought of the gallery attendant perceiving him as being in a queer relationship.
The foundation further weakens when Elena rightfully questions Kip, an out gay man, about the damage of having essentially reverted back into the closet over the last two months for the sake of his and Scott’s relationship. “What’s the plan, babe?” she asks him, and she’s absolutely right to do so — there really does need to be a plan. Scott and Kip can’t continue like this forever.
Elena gets the chance to express her concerns to Scott himself at another gala that she, Kip, and Scott all attend. During a slow dance with Scott that Kip has no choice but to watch longingly from the sidelines, Elena advocates on her friend’s behalf. “He’s crazy about you,” she tells Scott, a sentiment he reciprocates. “He’s also miserable. Are you miserable too?”
This takes Scott by surprise. From his point of view, he’s been honest with Kip about the limitations of his current situation as a public persona. “I’m doing my best. I- I love him. I just can’t do better right now,” he tries to explain to Elena. She understands Scott’s perspective, but she also knows that Kip isn’t disclosing to his boyfriend how much it’s killing him to be kept a secret and to have to keep a secret himself.
Elena wants more for her friend, and she wants more for Scott, too. “He deserves the best. He deserves sunshine,” she says at the end of their dance. “And so do you.”
While we have seen glimmers of a happy, healthy, sustainable relationship throughout the back half of the episode — like when Kip gifts Scott a pair of socks that resemble that very first blueberry-banana smoothie — the final nail in the Skip coffin is Kip’s birthday, or rather, the low-key party that Kip wants Scott to attend that his friends are throwing him at a gay bar. They can just go as friends, Kip argues — he just really wants Scott to be there with him.
But Scott refuses.
His conversation with Elena is still front-of-mind, and Scott realizes in real time that as much as he wants to take this next step with Kip, he can’t. Their relationship has become something he simply can’t have, no matter how badly he wants it, because the risks of being his authentic self for all the world to see are still too great.
As we know from Scott’s earlier monologue, this entire situation with Kip is unprecedented. He’s never brought anyone home before, has never gotten this close with someone before, has never had a reason until now to challenge the truth that he’s been telling himself his entire career. Scott’s plan was to stay hidden until he retired from pro hockey, and then, maybe, only then, once he was out of the limelight, actually start to embrace his true self.
But things are different now. Remaining firmly closeted doesn’t just mean that Scott will suffer — it’s causing the person he loves to suffer now, too. For the first time in his life, Scott isn’t the only casualty of his contradictory existence.
And it’s with this devastating awareness that we witness the end of Skip (at least for now).
The episode runs down the clock to the tune of “Lips” by Baxter Dury, and as a forlorn Kip walks home, we intercut his trek with moments from another Scott speech, this time from the fundraising gala earlier that evening. It’s from this that we receive greater context for Scott’s lifelong mentality and all his fears. He lost his parents when he was 12 years old, and hockey quite literally became his entire life, his only family.
“The family that I crave, the family that I needed, that I still need today…hockey gave it to me,” he says to conclude his speech. “So from the bottom of my heart, I want to thank you all for being here tonight, and for supporting this cause, because it’s not just a scholarship, it’s… It’s everything that comes with it. It’s a whole world, a whole life. It’s everything.”
Hearing this sentiment from Scott recontextualizes the breakup we just watched. Scott can’t jeopardize his hockey career by coming out as gay, because if he loses hockey, then what else does he have? His existence is an extremely tragic and lonely one that hockey has helped soothe somewhat, and even though he had a taste with Kip of what true, loving companionship could feel like, he doesn’t trust that he can have one without risking the other.
The final shot of the episode? Scott, two months into the future, back at the Sochi Olympics, covering up the blue banana socks from Kip with his regular old gray ones, a metaphorical representation of his entire heartbreaking existence.
It’s a quiet but agonizing note to go out on, and even though we now know this isn’t truly the end of Scott and Kip, that doesn’t undermine its impact in the moment.
Sure, the Skip story is based on a romance novel — happy ending guaranteed, and all that — but even if it weren’t, even if we never got to see Scott passionately kiss Kip on centre ice after winning the playoffs in “I’ll Believe in Anything,” I’d still consider “Hunter” an enduring triumph in storytelling in its own right.
The Episode 5 culmination of Scott and Kip’s relationship is so emotional and satisfying thanks to the enormous groundwork laid by the couple’s first onscreen appearance. “Hunter” serves as a cautionary tale for Scott specifically, an example of what happens and what’s lost along the way when one is unable to overcome their own contradictions and live as their true self. It’s a story of sacrifice and fear and hope and love, and it’s equal parts painful and beautiful.
This episode is not only my pick for MVP of the season of Heated Rivalry, but the year in TV as a whole. I’m so grateful it exists.
Heated Rivalry is now streaming on Crave and HBO Max.
First Featured Image Credit: ©Crave | Screenshot via HBO Max.