Everyone Needs to Stop Being So Weird About the Gay Hockey Show

HBO’s Heated Rivalry, a steamy series about two closeted gay hockey players, arrived last November to an explosion of online enthusiasm. Social media filled quickly with memes, fancams, breathless recommendations, and insistence that reluctant boyfriends sit down and watch. Celebrities praised it. Culture writers rushed in. Before long, serious publications were offering elaborate justifications for why this particular show deserved to be taken seriously.

That may be the oddest part of the phenomenon.

Heated Rivalry is not offensive, nor is it dangerous. It is, at heart, a glossy fantasy: two handsome men, intense rivalry, and plenty of sex. The show’s appeal is obvious, especially to its core audience. But the effort to frame it as something more—an heir to the great canon of gay literature, a bold cultural breakthrough—feels strained.

The series functions less like a revelation than like an indulgence. It is softcore, escapist television, carefully engineered to provoke feeling rather than thought. There is nothing inherently wrong with that. The problem arises when viewers and critics alike insist on inflating it into a cultural event of historic importance.

For some, that inflation seems necessary to justify their enjoyment. Pleasure alone does not feel sufficient; it must be defended, theorized, elevated. But not every popular show needs to be smuggled into the canon.

Heated Rivalry is what it is: glossy, harmless, slightly strange. It doesn’t need to be condemned—and it certainly doesn’t need to be mythologized. Sometimes a show can just be a show.