Heated RIvalry Revelry
Gay America is having a moment. The Heated Rivalry tidal wave came out of nowhere and hit one second after midnight on Thanksgiving. We've been riveted, obsessed and gutted ever since.
Outside of small indie films that never reached a wide audience, we've never existed like this on the screen before. Even Brokeback Mountain* never went for it like this. For a great number of us, it's had a similar resonance and joyous agony, rooting for these tortured boys to bust off their shackles, first of their own creation, and find love. It's probably been since Brokeback that I've cried this hard, but week after week. It been gorgeous, brilliant, and it's us, finally.
I couldn't bear the weight each week, so I bought the book (#2 in the Game Changers series by Rachel Reid, also called Heated Rivalry. Amazon quickly sold out, still a 2-4 week wait, but I got it in time. I had to wait a week then, which was a week too long, haha, so I bought the audiobook, two, which I love.) Each week, I only allowed myself to read up to the point where the series had gotten. It follows the book, very closely so that was easy. It was hard not to plunge ahead, but couldn't bare to spoil it.)
I usually struggle with even a great book once I know everything that's going to happen, but Rachel's super talented, and I was just as riveted the second pass. The book went much deeper into crucial things the show only had time to hint at. (Much of it through interior dialogue, plus longer scenes.)
For about 2 hours after the finale, before I could pull myself together at all, I decided to wait for S2, rather than plunge into The Long Game. I didn't get that one nearly in time--Amazon doesn't even have a ship date yet--so I bought the audiobook that night, and wolfed it down in under two days. Cried just as hard from the approach of the climax through the end. I highly recommend it.
A big swath of straightland joined us, to catapult the show into HBO's top 4 by that weekend, where it's been rising ever since. A week after the last episode aired, it's still #1. Women have made up the majority of the audience, outnumbering gay men.
The last several episodes have each left briefly to #2 on IMDB's list of Highest Rating TV episodes of all time--(user ratings--behind) Breaking Bad's "Oxymandius," the only one ever to sustain a perfect 10. And right behind my all-time favorite episode, until maybe now, Six Feet Under's finale "Everybody's Waiting." Just the title brings back an emotional flood. Most fade somewhat over time, but the last two Heated Rivalry eps are still at #12 and 13, with the same 9.9 rating.
Heated Rivalry just capped the biggest breakout year for gays on TV since "The Big Gay Summer" of 2003. (That's what I call it in my gay soldiers book.) We existed on TV this year like never before, and unabashedly allowed to love.
It started with Overcompensating on Amazon in May and went bigger with Netflix's surprise breakout Boots in October, but Heated Rivalry is in a league of its own. Overcompensating was renewed for S2, and so was Heated Rivalry after a few eps.
Netflix demonstrated how far we still have to go, though. It canceled its major sleeper hit Boots, presumably to ease regulatory approval of it's massive Time Warner acuisition. (The Pentagon trashed Boots as "woke garbage.")
Though whole year has also felt like fortuitous timing for my gay soldiers book, Don't Fall in Love, coming out this fall. I had to get it into production (copy-editing) the Monday before Thanksgiving, and four days later, Heated Rivalry began to rock my world. Still rocking.
(More on the book soon. Finally coming up for air after 26 years. I've been shadowing these two soldiers since February 4, 2000, when I met them in a gay dance club in Colorado Springs, at the height of Don't Ask, Don't Tell. It's been a long haul)
* BTW, I created The Ultimate Brokeback Guide and The Ultimate Brokeback Forum on my blog 3 months before the film came out. When it did, the twin sites ballooned into the primary Brokeback fan forum, with millions of hits per day. We even self-published a book written by our members, Beyond Brokeback: The Impact of the Film. It sold 5,000 copies, and you can still buy it at that link. The forum is still going strong.
I ran the site for several years, but I couldn't afford the time, or then the hosting fees for that level of traffic and massive database of hundreds of thousands of posts. So a few years back, I let my long-time site manager migrate it to their own URL (above), and completely let go of the reigns. (I guess I'll post more on that experience soon, too.)
What a fascinating look at rivalry in sports! It really got me thinking about the sheer energy it brings to fans. Do you think that ragdoll hit captures that chaotic intensity? I remember a time at a local match where the crowd's roar felt like a living thing! What are some of your favorite rivalries in sports?
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The emotional depth in *Heated Rivalry*—especially those quiet, intimate moments between Shane and Ilya—is what makes it so powerful. It’s like their story finally lets us see ourselves on screen without filters or apology. Speaking of which, I’ve been using Matcha Filter Remover lately to restore old photos with harsh color casts, and it’s amazing how removing a distracting tint can reveal the true emotion in an image, much like this show reveals raw feeling beneath surface tension.
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