Despite the internet’s penchant for confusing popularity with profundity, “Heated Rivalry,” Canada’s completely inescapable gay romance series about two star-crossed hockey players, only has glimpses of true complexity. The show is, by and large, about the smut of it all, and viewers can’t seem to get enough of Montreal’s star player Shane Hollander (Hudson Williams) duking it out with Russia’s bad boy Ilya Rozanov (Connor Storrie), both on the ice and in the bedroom. But while the series’ softcore pornography doesn’t negate the emotional effect Shane and Ilya’s love story has on its audience, it’s worth noting that the largest demographic of “Heated Rivalry” viewers is women, with a significant and particularly vocal portion of those women being straight. The series’ female audience is inextricably linked to its existence, providing a constant source of fascination for critics and a recurring talking point for the show’s seemingly never-ending press tour. There’s no question: Straight women — the same ones who turned Rachel Reid’s source novel into a bestseller — helped explode “Heated Rivalry” into the indomitable sensation it has become.
But anyone tracking the show’s popularity has likely seen that straight women have been both its champions and its warriors. Over the holiday season, there were online pile-ons galore, with straight women repeatedly taking gay critics of the show to task over their negative or merely interrogative opinions of the series. One noteworthy snafu involved writer and actor Jordan Firstman, who criticized “Heated Rivalry” for what he believed was an unrealistic portrayal of gay sex. “It’s just not gay,” Firstman told Vulture last month. “It’s not how gay people f**k.” In response, the show’s army of fans flooded Firstman’s Instagram with hateful comments, swore to boycott “I Love LA, ” the HBO show Firstman is currently starring in, and turned a genuinely innocuous comment into a war that had every “Heated Rivalry” viewer, gay or straight, picking a side. Even one of the show’s supporting actors, François Arnaud, chimed in with a retort to the tune of 30,000-plus likes and counting. In no time at all, the backlash became so intense that Firstman walked back his comments, and the show’s creator and writer, Jacob Tierney — who is gay — said Firstman sent him and the cast apology messages. “We as queer people need to check our messaging,” Tierney told The Hollywood Reporter following the incident, brushing off criticisms that the show is fetishizing the gay experience for women viewers.
