Heated Rivalry Midseason Check-In

26:48Joanna Robinson:We're watching him run. He's wearing this like skin tight, you know, spandex, whatever. So we can see like how hard this person has been training probably his entire life. The absolute, you know, like he, you know, when he pulls the headphones out of his ears, like he's just hearing garbage in his ears about how he's not good enough. We see that physically this guy could not like be trying harder to be in, in tip-top condition and just that added pressure in addition to this other emotional romantic journey that he's going on because yeah the like the closeted life of of a hockey star especially this is you know this is a a period piece of a kind right we're in the like early teens the the 2013 14 15 is like watching pre-trump wow what a concept um but like to have that hanging over him the whole episode I thought was a really really uh brilliant way to start his story yeah and there was discussion I mean it's playful flirty discussion but I think there's something real underneath it about like the whole like serial killer thing like and he says like well I've heard about athletes and I think the implication there is that like kind of like really driven musical theater stars or whatever like athletes are a little bit nuts I mean they kind of have to be.

28:08They have to be so focused and so regimented and so like blocking out so much of their life. I mean, not all athletes are like that, obviously, but a lot of them are. And I think that to have that drive and that sort of tunnel vision, single purpose in life, while also carrying the added sort of kettlebell of being closeted, that seems really stressful and difficult. And I think that the episode did a good job of making me care not just about the closeted part, but about the sort of sports legacy part, which normally I would not give a shit about, frankly.

28:47Joanna Robinson:Well, can I ask you, okay, this is something I've been mulling over in our cover. We've been covering Pluribus also on this feed, which features a queer woman in the lead who feels the need to be closeted inside of her. And she's a romance novelist, right? And feels like she needs to be closeted. And I was asking a question, you know, from my like limited tunnel vision, straight POV, where I was like, in 2025, like obviously people are still in the closet, but I was like, what is, what is, what is stopping Carol, a successful woman in her field? That this was like a harder story for me to understand.

29:30Joanna Robinson:And then we get later in her story, we learn about that her parents sent her to like conversion camp and all this trauma that she has in her, in her background, which like helped me understand it a bit more. But like, in terms of this like highly closeted athlete story, does this, in your perspective, does this make more sense as a slight period piece or does this do your like same as it ever was sort of a notion? yeah i mean when adam ripon you know skated at the olympics in 2018 um he was the first out gay american athlete to compete at the olympics so the first out gay american athlete to qualify you know you think about someone like johnny weir but he came out after his olympic career gus kenworthy the skier gus kenworthy came out during his olympic career so his first olympics he was still in the closet at least publicly um so at that time 2013 2014 team, this would have been significant if he were to come out.

30:28But also, I'm talking about figure skating in Adam Rippon's case, in Johnny Weir's case. This is hockey. I don't know if you dealt with the hockey a lot growing up on the West Coast, Joanna, but I grew up in Boston where hockey was one of the big sports, if not the big sport at my high school. I mean, the football team, who cared? The hockey team, we cared about. Or I mean, other people cared about. So that would be real. So it doesn't feel dated at all. I don't know that it's changed that much. I also think that any athlete in that position, be it then or now, they would have the concern of, if I come out, maybe everything won't fall apart, but then I'm just the gay athlete.

31:05I'm just getting invited to the out or the GLAAD awards. I become this kind of token that alienates me further and further from my teammates, from my sport. And it's not like maybe he doesn't think he's going to be gay-bashed in the locker room, but he knows that he'll forever have a distance between him and his teammates. It's interesting that they're circling that concept.

31:27Joanna Robinson:I saw Jacob Tierney give an interview where he was asked about the character of Shane Hollander, who is also Asian-Canadian in the book, and the question of, did you ever consider not having him be Asian in the show? And he was like, no, this is an important part of the character. And so when you have... Jacob was talking about Like when you read a book about a guy named Shane Hollander, it's like easy to whitewash him in your mind. He was like, but I like that, you know, he's got this mom manager and this early on banging the drum about what does it mean to represent Asian people inside of, you know, the hockey world.

32:11Joanna Robinson:and and his sort of slight you know he's a very like calm unruffled guy in general but there's this slight bump he has and just sort of like i don't think about that or i don't really want to talk about like let's talk about my game more than than what i represent and so having that as this sort of precursor for this other idea that you're talking about i thought it's really smart and interesting yeah i mean i think there are definitely some public figures be they athletes or artists or whatever it is who either seem comfortable with or actually aspire to want to kind of take up the mantle of being a representative ideal.

32:47Like, I'm so proud to be the first person to do whatever, you know. And then they kind of make that part of their celebrity. And they do good work with it. And it helps other people, in theory, who are coming up behind them. And I think that's really admirable. And we need those people. And I think there are other people who are like, I really appreciate those people paving the way for me, either ahead of me or laterally to me, but I don't want to do that personally. I don't want the pressure of that. I don't want the weight of that. I just want to be a hockey player. And because I'm Asian, okay, that feels incidental to me, but I understand it means something more to the culture, and then you have the gay thing on top of it.

33:28And I think that ambivalence that you see in that character is, I think, really well drawn. And again, I keep comparing this to the straw man of a show that doesn't exist, but I'm just keep imagining a worse version of this show. And I think that that conversation would be far more at the forefront and done in this kind of like didactic lecturing way that it wouldn't be true to life. Whereas obviously it's in the background of his consciousness and his parents' consciousness and cocky fans' consciousness. but he's not centering it because he'd rather just focus on the task at hand, which for him is doing well at hockey.

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35:09Joanna Robinson:All new Sundays at 9, exclusively on AMC and AMC+. I am the vampire Lestat. I'm a rock star now. I'm a little killer. I'm a human. From Anne Rice's immortal universe comes what Vulture calls the most momentous event in fictional rock history. Thousands of fans love you. I want millions. It's my era. Anne Rice's The Vampire List. All new Sundays at 9, exclusively on AMC and AMC+. Stream now. I want to talk to you, to go back to Hudson Williams as Shane and Conor Story as Ilya. These are two very different performances, right? Like, Conor Story, who's doing, you know, is American. He's from Texas, right?

35:53Joanna Robinson:Yeah, is like doing a, Great accent. And when he speaks Russian, sounds very convincing to my ear. And I also saw him give an interview to a Quebecois outlet in fluent French as well. So this is something that this guy... What is this guy's deal? I don't know. It's crazy. Something he does. But let's talk about his performance. It's the bigger performance, right? Yeah. This is the big, showy... Ilya is, as far as I understand from the readers of this series, the most popular character in the series. He's the Lestat, like the vampire Lestat sort of figure, right? Sure, yeah, totally. And so how are you feeling about this performance, the bigger moments, and then the smaller sort of we see something play across his face that maybe even Shane can't recognize is going on inside of him?

36:43yeah i mean it's a dynamic that's familiar to a lot of gay fiction you know um not to get in the weeds of it but it's like sort of needy bottom and sort of like pass you know sort of like disinterested top whatever and i don't mean just physically i mean like sort of their that's the roles they're playing in the relationship or sort of one is more dominant one is more submissive passive whatever um but i think that in the performances especially in stories, you do see some shading there that is crucial to, again, to compare it to this show that doesn't exist. It would be cheaper in that other version.

37:21I think here you see enough genuine affection. He's not just completely shutting his emotions off for the purposes of sex. There's an added element to it that I think is communicated in facial expressions and changes in tone of voice that draw the audience in even further because you're like, oh, there really is something under the surface here. But I also think that the way that he interacts with his family over the phone, with this girlfriend-ish character,

38:00suggests that he's, you know, there's a real sadness there and maybe an exhaustion with code switching. I don't think that we're meant to think that he is like fully gay and just repressed i think he's probably somewhere in the middle of the spectrum or wherever um and i think the way that he plays that that sort of drifty fluidness um in the ways that it's fun when he's flirting and doing other things and in ways where it's really frustrating where he's kind of like lonely because no one actually really knows him including the guy he's currently sleeping with you know um and i yeah i mean i think that if this were if this show were to somehow get the attention of like emmys awards voters or whatever that would be the performance that that would get it to get the the lion's share of the attention right because it's so flashy um but i don't think that in that flash there is all the cliche i was expecting you know again it's a familiar trope how this relationship works and who he is who ilia is and who the other guy is.

39:10But he keeps doing things that I don't expect that sort of stock character to do.

39:15Joanna Robinson:Yeah, I am curious if this would ever be on an awards voting radar. But as I said at the top, to me, it feels more like casting directors are going to be paying a lot of attention to this. And the same way we saw Joe Quinn or Josh O 'Connor or Paul Meskel sort of be cast out of a breakout TV role. Like these guys are going on the list. And I think Hudson Williams as Shane Hollander is tasked with doing something that's harder because they're both incredibly good. And actually the accent work perhaps evens the playing field. But I think to turn Shane, who is such like so much more of a repressed, calm on the surface kind of guy, and to make that performance as equally compelling with smaller looks and gestures and emotionality.

40:09Joanna Robinson:And, you know, you're talking about comparing this show to a worse version of it. I always get so nervous when texting is a massive amount of screen time of film or a TV show. And it's like an undeniable truth of how we communicate these days or, you know, back in 2014, 2015. So it makes sense, but it's so easy for that to be so boring or so stupidly done or whatever it is. But these guys are really good at just gazing at their phone and smiling and blushing or whatever it is that just makes it feel like a conversation. It's a facet of modern acting that I guess I don't think we think about enough.

40:53It's like there's a lot of those reaction shots that there just didn't used to be. you know um and i also think that the writing of the texts is credible you know like i believe that this is how these two men would text message each other um you know a little bit saucy but not trying to commit too hard or seem too eager you know um yeah and i i don't know i i was texting friends about the show speaking of texting i was mid episode two i want to say and i was feeling sort of giddy because I was like, you know, that feeling of like when you're like, oh, I'm now really invested in this relationship and whatever.

41:29And I, and I was, I drafted a text message to friends being like, this is so corny. I was so embarrassing, but I deleted it because I was like, why is it embarrassing? This show is doing it well. It's not like I'm stooping to find something of value in a, just cause it's a gay show. It's like, no, it's actually like it's elevated. It, it, it, it's, it's earning it, I guess what I'm saying. And I think that little moments like that that you pointed out are part of what does it. I also keep thinking about partly because I have a pair of new socks on my desk next to me here, but the socks thing as a way to end the third episode.

42:00It's a nice grace note. It's a callback. It's a subtlety that communicates big things. Not for nothing, I like that show, but you wouldn't see that on Love, Victor. You wouldn't see that on a lot of lesser shows that are working a bit more broadly, I guess. it's it's interesting that you mentioned that because so the couple moments at the end of

42:24Joanna Robinson:episode three again with this straw man of a worse show when you see kip and his friends in the bar and you're outside the window and the camera's pulling back and i was like oh please don't literally have scott standing outside the window and then they do and then i was like oh but wait i care anyway even though they're doing the thing that i hope they wouldn't do and then i was like okay we're we're pulling the hockey socks over the banana socks we're like you know hiding our true banana self with our like more professional hockey self and i'm like there's there's a world in which that metaphor is so labored and i don't like it and then but i got really emotional watching it because i was just like scott be your banana self man like well i think i think again this worst show that maybe you and i should just write the worst show just just as an experiment the worst show would have him like throwing the banana socks in the trash you know or something like um i also don't didn't mind the him standing at the bar because he knew what bar it was it was named you know yeah um and he's such a loner that like yeah he's just out walking and he was like oh i guess i kind of want to go see you know um but no you're right it is a very fine line that they're treading between like expected cliche and something that feels a bit more thoughtful and they are for the most part on the latter side of that line, which I'm really grateful for.

43:42And I don't know, if we're halfway through the season now, there hasn't been much to give me, you know, make me suspicious that the back half of the season will suddenly collapse into the worst show we keep referring to.

43:56Joanna Robinson:Yeah, no, no, no. They have my faith entirely. I will say the last thing I kind of want to talk about is the drawn out nature of the story. This takes place over years. We're speeding through months at a time. And something that I like and I find quite believable is how the sort of tenderness between them ebbs and flows. Like you have this moment when they say goodbye in the stairwell and it's just like very soft and sweet. but like what is that progress is not always like a straight line moving forward you know what I mean we're going forward we're moving backwards what is going on with us personally what is going on with us professionally what is going on in our respective standings inside of this world where we're supposed to be enemies rivals etc and I find all of that incredibly believable you know because sometimes you can stretch out a will they won't they and it's not quite a will they won't they because they frequently do but like will they be able to connect on this deeper level will they be able to be together and out like these are the questions we're asking ourselves um and it is believable to me that this could be stretched and strained over several years uh of a lifetime and the fact that we meet them when they're i think literal teenagers you know and following them into their uh you know into their 20s i think is uh i don't know it's really rewarding.

45:24Joanna Robinson:I mean, I guess normal people did a similar thing where we're, you know, we're stretched over several years of the lives of young people, but that can go so wrong so quickly. And I, this is really captivating me. Yeah. And I think, you know, a lot of gay men or queer men that I know or have read things written by whatever it's, and it's, I'm sure this is true of straight people as well, but like there are a lot of casual relationships like that where it's like, oh, I'm in Chicago for work. You want to meet up like someone you met on Grindr whatever um and i like the idea of the show being like what if a fuck buddy you see every six months or every 18 months is someone you're actually deeply in love with you know um and and the forces of distance and repression or whatever are keeping you apart um but i like that the the repressive part of it the i can't come out yet part of it i mean obviously in episode three that's more at the foreground.

46:20But for Ilya and Shane, it's more like, yeah, that is part of it. But it's more just like, well, our lives are intersecting, but also kind of will then bounce off of each other and veer in a different direction. And it's almost as much about career as it is keeping people apart as it is about any sort of sexual repression.

46:39Joanna Robinson:Yeah, I love that. The last thing I want to ask you before we go is, was there a moment that stood out to you that we haven't identified already? Like a scene either between Kip and Scott or Ilya and Shane that really caught your attention? Like I equate it to something like in Fleabag season two, I remember watching that season and just I would find myself just like leaning closer and closer to the screen because I was just so wrapped up in the relationship that was going on inside of that season of television. So was there anything that made you lean forward either in that sort of it's enraptured me kind of way or anything else that stood out to you?

47:25I mean, I appreciate the stuff that gives a little bit of context to what queerness is like or how it's spoken about in this really rarefied world that they're in. Who knows how true to life it was in 2013 with a hockey player, but the moment at Sochi, which we then flashback from, where the teammate whose name I'm sorry, I don't remember, who's sort of a side character. Yeah. He's like, oh, my buddy's in the figure skating. Do we want to go see that? That's really brave of him to be coming to a country like this, blah, blah, blah. And maybe in a way they're referring to Johnny Weir, who I believe did skate at Sochi.

48:13Wasn't out, out, but you know. And I thought that was really nice because it's like, yes, it was the Obama era. There would have been maybe some younger players, the odd player or two scattered about the league or whatever, who would have, I mean, you're in ice rinks all the time. You would know figure skaters 100%. You'd be sharing ice with them a lot. But I mean, obviously, the figure skaters aren't on the ice when hockey people are practicing. But you're in that space together a lot.

48:40Joanna Robinson:We know sports. It's fine. Right. No. No. I mean, when I took skating lessons as a kid, I was so annoyed because my sister got figure skating skates. And they just instinctively gave me hockey skates. All the boys got hockey skates and the girls got figure skates. And I really wanted the figure skates. But I... These are the two genders in Boston. It's figure skating or hockey. I would have protested too much or something. But anyway, I just think that moment that we then revisit in episode three briefly is just a nice bit of grounding. Because I think that if the hockey world was portrayed as this just relentlessly awful thing where everyone is a super cliched, like tyrannical bigot, those people definitely exist in professional sports.

49:26I'm not saying they don't. But there would be other people. There's a gradient. Athletes are not a monolith. And I think that moment of this side character just allowing a bit of grace to whoever might sort of be in his friend's situation just sort of like broadens the show's sense for me of like having a decent, humane approach to the material.

49:50Joanna Robinson:I really like what you're saying and I hope it's true. And on the other hand, given that Rachel reads a series as many books long with different gay male hockey players in each book, I'm not discounting the fact the idea that all three of the people at that table might be also gay, closeted gay. Do you know what I mean? I gotta read these books, damn. I thought he was just an ally. I well he might be but like I think that's what some people thought Scott was and then they're like oh but he was uh also sitting there you know so I don't know the answer to that but um I I love what you have to say about that I will say that I think the scene in the bathroom right after the two of them go on stage and present the award together and then there's the scene in the bathroom after which is like one of many scenes of like you know I'll fuck you later or whatever if I win this, etc.

50:45Joanna Robinson:But there's just something so unspoken and emotional about the moment for the two of them. And then Elia walks out and Shane just wipes under his eyes really quickly. Tears weren't streaming down his face or whatever, but he was just slightly welling up from this exchange and that really got me. Yeah. And to your allyship point, please correct me if I'm wrong, I don't think we've heard any major homophobia come out of anyone's mouth on this show so far, right? No, and I don't think that we need to. No, but that's interesting, right? I think that we, Canadian audiences, American audiences, are certainly aware of what professional sports can be like, what the culture of professional masculinity can be like.

51:34Joanna Robinson:Sure. That we don't need it spelled out for us. And that would just kind of cut away from time spent on the relationship. If we have to devote five, 10 minutes of every episode to some coach who's an asshole and a homophobe or whatever, we'd be like, all right, we get it. This way, that is clearly in the background in all of their timidity to kind of live out lives. Yeah, we don't need it sort of further explained for us. And I think, again, the worst show would definitely have a lot of that in it. There would definitely be some antagonist player who was always harassing them in the locker room, etc.

52:12Joanna Robinson:the worst show the worst gay show coming soon from joanna and richard we will we will write doesn't have to be hockey because we could change the sport i made a joke on twitter last night about a gay curling show maybe we could give that a whirl let's let's do it um yeah it reminded me of i remember dan levy talking about this which once again schitt's creek where he was you know people were like hey in a small town like this wouldn't we hear a lot of people being homophobic towards these characters and he was like i don't know what do we need that story we've we've seen that story. So like, I don't know that that's necessary.

52:40Sometimes that story absolutely has its place, but not in my like sexy, surprisingly well-made hockey drama. Like I don't, you know.

52:51Joanna Robinson:Exactly. All right. Well, that has been our like, you know, light little check-in on these spicy gay hockey drama. On the show that's changing my life. Rewriting Richard's DNA. Thank you so much for your lesson. Where can folks find your work nowadays. Well, that's exciting. I'm happy you brought that up. I just started a newsletter. So it's just me doing my own kind of writing. It's going to be about three days a week, I think, Monday, Wednesday, Fridays. Some of that will be behind a paywall, some of it won't. It's called Premier Party, and it's easy to find. The website is just premierparty.com.

53:27So I'm pretty excited about that. And then in the coming weeks, I don't think I can announce anything yet, you might be hearing about some sort of audio project. So stay tuned for that. And that will definitely be, I'll make sure people know about that on my social networks and all that stuff.

53:43Joanna Robinson:Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Richard, for coming by. I really appreciate. I always love talking to you about this stuff. So thank you so much. Well, thank you. Same. And this was the perfect thing to call me on for. And I do think if your listeners want to hear more of my rambling thoughts about this show, So there will be in a week or two, almost assuredly, something about heated rivalry on my newsletter. I was looking to see if you had written anything already and I couldn't find anything. Probably in the coming, I would say, week. So stay tuned. No one recaps a TV show better than Richard Lawson, I have to say.

54:14And that's something I will be doing in the new year on my newsletter. That will be fully behind the paywall. I believe I'm going to start with recaps of the U.S. traders. oh nice so my first recapping in a decade basically wow okay very exciting um thank you

54:32Joanna Robinson:to devon baraldi for uh work on this episode thank you to justin sales for the work on this feed well we are ongoing covering pluribus uh there was a chair company episode the other day there's a lot of stuff going on this feed all the time and uh i don't know if we'll be back with more heated rivalry you guys let us know press ccv at spotify.com if you want more heated rivalry coverage and we'll see you soon. Bye.

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