I hate sports. To paraphrase Chauncy Gardner in “Being There,” I don’t like to watch. I’d rather participate than sit on the sidelines. But I will most definitely make an exception for “Heated Rivalry.” Like most other straight women I know, I am obsessed.
An old friend I hadn’t seen or spoken with in years slipped into my DMs the other day. Her message was in response to a meme I’d posted. It was a picture of the world in flames, superimposed with the line “Me: Did you finish ‘Heated Rivalry’ yet?”
She wanted to let me know that so far, she’s watched the entire six-episode series a total of six times.
“I know it’s not OK for me to be this crazy about my two gay hockey boyfriends,” she said. “And yet, it’s the only way I’m surviving right now.”
I know exactly how she feels. I started watching the hockey romance myself after hearing my gay friends rave about it. About 30 minutes into the first episode, I texted one of them to let him know I had no idea gay sex could be so hot. He immediately replied, “Duh.”
And while “Heated Rivalry” depicts gay hockey players on the ice and in the sack a lot, it’s ultimately not a show about hockey or sex. As The New York Times film critic Wesley Morris pointed out, part of the show’s popularity lies in its fantasy of male sensitivity.
Apparently, what the world needs now is men baring their souls along with their eight-pack chests. Manly men gazing longingly into each other’s eyes just before they collide into each other like a pack of rabid dogs. Hockey is about brute force, impact. Teeth and noses are expendable. Egos and pure machismo are not.
But look closely at the face-off. Raw violence melts in a moment that feels intimate. Two men crouched inches apart, staring into each other’s eyes as they wait for the puck to drop.
Maybe that’s the real fantasy. Not the crash of bodies, but the moment just before it. When aggro-male toxicity looks a lot like longing. When the body armor comes off and reveals the most unexpected underlayer: a soft heart.
In a time when everything feels like it’s falling apart — journalism, justice, the idea of America itself — it’s not surprising that we’re fixated on moments like that.
I remember the last time this happened, when a TV show about sport touched a tender nerve in the toughest of times. It was “Ted Lasso” during the pandemic. I still think about the yellow sign Ted hand lettered in Sharpie and posted above the door in the locker room of that British football club. Believe, it said. And for a while, one episode at a time, we couldn’t help but do exactly that.
“Heated Rivalry” and “Ted Lasso,” like sport itself, give us a clock, closure, a sense of community, like we’re all in this shit show together.
Even for a non-sports fan like myself, that may be the ultimate attraction. Not violence or competition or even the promise of hot sex. But the ritual of coming together to witness the unknown and unknowable — one that comes with an actual beginning, middle and end. When so much of the world feels unsure and unstable, sport gives us an arena big enough to express all of our anxiety and anger and hope and fear and exhiliration — at least for a period. Or a half.
Families no longer come together in living rooms to watch the news. We scroll it alone, on our phones. We rarely gather for democracy, most of us choosing instead to defend it in the comments section.
But the Olympic Games are different. We stand next to each other and agree, at least for a couple of hours, what’s happening in front of us. The rules are clear. The clock is running. The end will come, and at least part of the crowd will cheer.
I thought about all this while attending the Olympics opening ceremony watch party recently held at Utah Olympic Park. There were food trucks and firepits and families with dogs and kids so small one of my friends almost tripped over one of them.
“I don’t want to stand outside in the cold and watch TV,” one of my friends had said. But those of us who went knew that wasn’t the point. There we were with a bunch of strangers huddled around heat lamps, lining up for a cold beer or a hot chocolate while gazing up at a glowing Jumbotron, trying not to trip over each other in the darkness. All of us watching together, which, for a moment at least, felt like the same thing as believing.