Hi and welcome to K Let's Talk, the podcast where we break down
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Let's talk. Hi everyone and welcome back to
the podcast. This will be Part 2 of my heated
rivalry. Q and AI had reached out to
people who follow along with my content on TikTok and Instagram
asking for any questions. They wanted me to do a deep dive
on or talk about on here. And I had so many that I had to
break it up into two parts. So I already published Part 1.
Be sure to go back and listen to that and this is going to dive
into some of the other topics that these questions fell under,
including character psychology, some of the more hockey relevant
questions I got, side characters, supporting
characters, visuals for season 2, and also some personal
questions about my process and how I and analyzing the show.
Before we get started, just a quick note that this episode
includes discussion of disordered eating.
It's not graphic, but if that's something you're sensitive to,
feel free to skip. I just want to flag that so you
can have a heads up on that. And we will be discussing
spoilers for the long game if you're looking to avoid those.
So without further ado, here's Part 2 of our heated Rivalry
Q&A. This question is I'm curious
about Ilya's jealousy. He has a double standard in that
it's OK for him to have hookups but is jealous when Shane has
actual relationships. Have you addressed this already?
Even in the long game, Ilya still feels a little
uncomfortable with the Rose factor, so this might be a long
response. I think this presents as a
double standard on the surface, but it's actually more of a
window into Ilya's deeper insecurities and fears that stem
from his childhood wounds and traumas.
And it's important to keep in mind that Shane is also jealous
of Svetlana and gets upset when Ilya suggests marrying her, even
if strictly for a passport. So they both experience
jealousy, and jealousy is inherently an emotion that
doesn't always make logical sense sometimes.
But Ilya has a fear of being unlovable and also of not being
good enough for Shane or chosen by him.
So I think to answer this, you have to 1st determine whether or
not the significance attached to sex and hookups is the same for
Shane versus Ilya. And it's not because for Ilya,
sex has an entirely different meaning to him than it does for
Shane, at least when they first meet.
And by the time Ilya is in love with Shane, sex with women is
meaningless compared to his relationship with Shane.
It takes Ilya being put in Shane's position, meaning
watching him be with other people for him to start to grow
and have that character development.
But it all stems from the fact that Ilya has been sleeping with
people since he was 14, and that wasn't an attempt to cope with
his own trauma in the long game. Ilya is speaking with his
therapist about this and says that initially hockey was Ilyas
escape after his mother died because it got him away from
home and let him get out some of his anger.
But then he also started to use sex as a way to escape his
trauma as well because it kept his mind and body busy.
At first it was girls only and then boys too.
Not as many, but some. And his therapist points out
that that would have been very risky for him to be doing that
in Russia. And Ilya says that is part of
what he liked about it, the danger.
And in heated rivalry, he reflects that he loved being
with people he knew he shouldn't be with.
He couldn't resist a bad idea. He also tells his therapist that
his desire to be with men didn't scare him, and in part that's
because he simply saw it as another opportunity for more
sex, and he felt that being attracted to men had made him
evolve. Whenever Ilya reflects back on
his experiences before Shane, they are very impersonal and
described like a means to an end.
He would get an endorphin rush and feel relaxed after.
He enjoyed meeting new people, talking to them, charming them.
And when he was in Boston, he went out and hooked up with
people all the time, went to clubs, went to parties.
But in the long game, he says he doesn't miss sleeping around
because now he only wants Shane and is very happy to be in a
monogamous relationship with him.
But that sparks a memory where Ilya recalls that he and Shane
had talked about being with other people a couple years
before the moment in the book that he's talking to his
therapist. He had told.
Shane as casually as he could, that if Shane wanted to have sex
with other men while they were apart, since that was going to
be most of the time with their schedules, that Shane could.
And Ilya figured that made sense because Shane had just figured
out his sexuality at the same time that he admitted he was in
love with Ilya. So to Ilya, if Shane wanted to
explore sex beyond what Ilya could give him, he had tried to
convince himself that it didn't matter.
So long as Shane's heart belonged to him, he would be
able to convince himself that he was OK with that.
But deep down he knew that was a lie, and Shane takes this
suggestion very poorly because he thought it might have been
Ilya's way of letting him know that he had been cheating or
wanted to hook up with other people.
But then Ilya tells Shane he doesn't believe in cheating
because he didn't own Shane, and that further upset Shane to the
point where they didn't talk for four days.
Then when Shane finally confronts him about it, he asks
Ilya if he really wouldn't mind if Shane slept with someone
else. And Ilya, in a way that he self
sacrifices all the time, says of course not if that's what you
would want. But then Shane tells him he's a
moron because that isn't what he wants.
And it's only then when Ilya is flooded with relief because the
thought of someone else touching Shane made him feel sick, and he
had been worried that Shane was calling him from a hotel room in
Philly because he was about to hook up with someone else or had
already hooked up with someone else.
So this is an example of Ilya's initial feelings around sex and
what it means to him versus Shane, and how those feelings
evolve once he's in love. He had never been in love
before, so emotions had never entered into it until Shane.
And this memory that he's telling his therapist is where
we can see that Ilya would be upset over anyone being with
Shane and not just Rose. But Rose is a really pivotal
part of the story because she remains in Shane's life after
they sleep together. Shane had hooked up with other
men, and Ilya and Shane speak of it in the books, but Rose and
Shane are friends. So for Ilya, Rose is the only
other person that Shane dated fit with, and then he liked her
enough to still be friends after they dated.
Which means it was more than just sex for him.
And she represented an alternative life that Shane
could have had where it would have been easier and picture
perfect compared to the more complicated relationship that
Ilya and Shane have been hiding within.
Ilya brings up Rose often in the book, but in My Dinner with
Hayden, the bonus scene, Ilya admits that he actually likes
her a lot. He puts a movie on the TV with
her in it, calls her beautiful, and then jokingly says you could
have had it all. And this line is another window
into his feelings and why Rose has always felt like somewhat of
a threat to him. And it's because at one point
when Rose and Shane got together, Ilia had to face that
very real fear that Shane could be with someone else who he
could love freely and easily and who he was great with and who
Shane got along very well with. And at that point, when Rose and
Shane get together, Ilya does not know that Shane is gay,
because Shane still does not know that himself, not fully
until episode 5. So for Ilya.
Watching Shane being with Rose or any other woman is.
Still considered a very real option for him.
Not to mention Ilya was already in a very fragile state because
of how the tuna melt scene went and Shane leaving, so he would
have been upset no matter who it was and who came into the
picture next. But when Shane and Rose first
get together, Ilya is experiencing jealousy for the
first time ever. He acknowledges that he should
be happy for Shane. Why shouldn't Shane be with a
beautiful woman when Ilya was so often himself?
But because Ilya is so observant and studies Shane, he knows that
this is not normal behavior for him.
It strays outside the boundaries of what Ilya has learned and
expected of Shane. So for Shane to behave this way
doubly knocks him on his ass and makes him question if Shane
might be in love. Which sends him spiraling so
much that he purposely hooks up with a girl who looks like Shane
with dark hair and freckles to cope.
He's being immature here because he's still young.
He doesn't know how to deal with his frustration and jealousy,
which are both foreign feelings to him, and so he behaves in a
retaliatory way, trying to pretend that he's unbothered.
And the club scene is the first time they see each other outside
of the hockey setting, and they're both so hurt by seeing
each other with other people. Subconsciously, it's because
they know they can't behave this way in public with each other
like they'd want to. And Ilya reflects on that in the
hotel room after, about how he would have wanted to dance with
Shane and couldn't, or how good he looked.
And I think that a huge part of Ilya's jealousy of Rose is that
Shane is able to behave that way with her and not with Ilya.
And the appearance of Rose forces Ilya to start to
recognize that the feelings inside of him and the thoughts
he has about Shane are becoming too hard and painful to ignore.
He had been with many women who were fun and gorgeous, but he
didn't think about them after, and he didn't long for them in
the same way that he did with Shane.
That's something he thinks of in the book as well.
At one point, he even thinks to himself that Shane is the only
person to set him on fire and he knows that being with Shane is
not a realistic option. But he's so desperate for things
to continue. And that's reinforced in the All
Star game in Tampa when Ilya is trying to figure out if Shane
and Rose are together and he worries that Shane will tell
him. I'm seeing someone, I'm engaged.
I don't need you anymore. Ilya is not jealous of Rose.
He is scared of Rose having Shane and Ilya not being able to
have him anymore in any capacity.
Keep in mind that Shane is also jealous of Spit Watch, so again
their jealousy is aligned there In the finale when Rose texts
and Ilia gets jealous and says yeah not too gay to fuck Rose
Landry. To me, that actually means you
got to be her boyfriend in public and people loved you for
it, and I'm upset that I don't have that with you.
So Rose gets part of Shane that Ilya doesn't have access to yet
and feels like he never will at that point in the storyline.
So Rose triggers that within him.
He's also jealous of a lot of things in the long game, and
that doesn't improve until they both commit to communicating
better and working through their hang ups.
So it's very much a part of his character growth and development
that as he ages and continues to learn what it means to be a
partner to someone, how to deal with his depression in his own
mental health, and also learns how to ask for what he needs and
how he wants to be loved, that that jealousy starts to go away.
And Shane is a big. Part of that because.
As they start to communicate better, he heals that really
deep seated insecurity and fear from his childhood that Ilya is
unlovable and not good enough for Shane to be chosen by him.
And so it's a very full circle moment that takes them both a
long time to get to that resolution.
But I don't think that initially, when this is
happening in the story, it's a double standard so much as it is
an irrational feeling that Ilya doesn't have the tools yet to
cope with and deal with properly.
This question is how does hockey or what little we see play a
role in their relationship, good and bad?
I would say that hockey is the only way.
This book is what it is, and this show is what it is, in my
opinion. It's been so interesting for me
to see how. People.
That don't have the added context of the sport and its
culture are consuming it because it almost feels like there's
this additional layer to everything we see on screen that
only hockey adjacent people would understand fully or even
see and feel. I think that is in large part
because this show was Canadian made and Canadian funded and it
was initially only going to air in Canada.
So the writing may leave out a lot of the exposition because it
would have assumed it's audience.
And that audience would know the parameters of hockey and the
implications of its culture on these two characters a lot
better than a global community that's very unfamiliar with it.
But to me, the role it plays in their relationship is harder to
quantify because hockey is essentially who they are and
what they were raised and shaped within.
And you can't simply separate Ilia or Shane from hockey
because it is deeply a part of them.
And I say that as someone who played from the time I could
walk and was raised in a hockey family.
And I'm a female hockey player in America who only played
through college, not a male phenom hockey player who is the
face of an Original Six team in the NHL and represents my
country on an Olympic and national team roster.
So even my own experience has its own limits on what I can
assume this would feel like for them.
I can only project so much of what I know and understand onto
them. But what I can say is that
hockey culture permeates into every facet of my life in one
way or another. And I think that's true for
every hockey player. Nearly every pillar in my life
can be traced back to or connected to hockey in some way.
So I'd say on a more surface level, the hockey in this series
and the book series is the arena, pun intended, that they
operate within. They meet at a rink.
They do a commercial in a rink, they talk in the locker room,
they talk in a hotel gym, they hook up in hotels on the road
and at awards and at All Star events.
They only hook up when their teams play each other when
they're at the same hockey events.
Shane and Ilya as a pairing don't exist outside of hockey
related spaces or events for a very long time.
Their worlds and lives are scheduled for them.
They are focused on improving their performance and sport and
largely don't think about or do things outside of that.
It also means that they are two people who can fully understand
the unique experience they both share, because even their own
teammates would not fully understand the pressures that
Shane and Ilya specifically are under due to their talent levels
and captaincies and the very high expectations thrust upon
them from the time they were very young.
I think the best way to summarize that is a passage in
heated rivalries. The book where after Shane and
Ilya play each other in international tournament, they
lock eyes and Shane squeezes Ilya's fingers when they're
going through the handshake line.
And Ilya thinks to himself, I know we were supposed to stand
alone at the top, but we will always be there together.
We will keep climbing until no one can reach us, but it will
always be together. And I think that really
succinctly explains that these two guys are the only people
that understand the position that they're in on a deeper
level. Both of them are competitors and
professional athletes. And up until the point in which
they meet, they were the best player on every single team they
had ever been on or played against.
No one was a real challenge. They had always been the best
without question. But once the international stage
presents them with a reason to actually compete against one
another, they're both faced with the reality that someone out
there in their sport could be better than them.
And that makes them intrigued. And curious.
And they start watching each other's interviews.
It also makes Ilya jealous at points.
And it also makes them both easy targets for media outlets to
exploit them. Hence the rivalry.
These guys are generational players that people pay money to
go see in person. They are very much the face of
marketing for the league. So to have them both end up on
rival teams and be drafted number one and two overall is
really a Cinderella story for the sport.
We saw it when Ovechkin and Crosby were coming into the
league. And so this ignites a fire in
both of them that fuels a lot of their interactions, especially
in the early days. But it also fuels a larger
audience of people to constantly compare them.
And that would feed into their need to be the best.
It would raise the stakes and also raise the stakes of their
hookups and sexual encounters because over time, it's going to
create this deep respect for one another as well.
And they can't convince the world outside of, you know, the
hotel that they're in to understand that nobody but them
can understand that. I think for the two of them,
it's also fun for them to actually have someone to compare
themselves to and compete against because it would make
them both have to work extra hard to beat the other one.
And it would make it possible for them to lose something that
they weren't really used to. So it again ignites that
competitive nature that they both inherently have and that
deep drive to be the best brings out the best in each other.
And that is something that gets mirrored in their relationship
dynamic too. In regards to how hockey is a
negative thing within their relationship, I think that the
culture of the sport is deeply ingrained in both of them.
But mostly Shane, and a lot of his fear and the way he thinks
and his reactions to situations stem from what the culture
expects and celebrates versus shuns and rejects.
And Shane understands that very deeply.
The thing he wants, which is to be with Ilya, would be shunned
and rejected. And so that obstacle combined
with Shane's fear of straying outside the norm and losing
control, it causes a lot of problems.
And in a relationship like Scott and Kipp's, Scott could hide it
if he needed to and compartmentalize that part of
his life in a way that Shane and Ilya cannot because they are
playing against each other on rival teams, and they're
captains of those teams, their faces of franchises.
So they're facing a much higher set of expectations and higher
stakes. They also have more eyeballs on
them. And their careers would be
called into question if they were to be discovered because it
could be insinuated that their relationship affected their
play. And the fans of these teams
would take that very personally. So the hockey is pivotal and it
plays a very big role in how their relationship starts, how
they struggle within it, how they manage expectations
throughout it, how they decide as a united front to move
forward publicly and until they retire, hockey will always,
always have a direct impact on their relationship.
So it's a very complicated, deep seated, nuanced thing.
Hockey culture and how it. Effects the parameters around
their specific relationship. So I find that fascinating to
watch because a lot of it again on screen for people who don't
understand the culture is not being spelled out very clearly.
But as someone who understands it, it feels fairly realistic
that their fears would be so high stakes.
This question is sort of a. Follow up to the previous one,
which is as a hockey person, how much does hockey play into the
story? Does does it add value?
So building on what I said before, hockey isn't just the
backdrop of this story, but it's also the environment that Shane
and Ilya operate in and exist within.
So it's important to think about what that environment actually
would do to a person. And also I think it's important
to remember the years in which they are playing the sport
because it's already different now than it was before in some
minor ways. And we're looking at this show
in a 20252026 mentality. So important to rewind and
remember what year it is and how old they are in that phase of
their life and all those details.
So hockey culture, especially at the elite level, is
hypermasculine. It's very insular and
emotionally restrictive in a way that we can see heightens every
interaction between Shane and Ilya because they don't allow
themselves to feel their emotions and.
Actively try to repress them. And the sport inherently rewards
dominance and control while encouraging players to
compartmentalize their emotions and vulnerability and then
redirect them into anger or motivation in order to perform
better. And that conditioning.
Shapes Shane and Ilya and how they understand themselves, how
they communicate and ultimately how they love.
And I think the best way to describe it is that hockey isn't
the obstacle. They are working.
Around in this show, it's actually what creates the
obstacle to begin with, so it doesn't complicate their
relationship, it creates the complication.
As I mentioned before, hockey becomes your entire world as you
move up the ladder within the sport.
For players like Shane and Ilya, their childhoods would have
been. Spent in the same rings, with
the same people, under the authority of different coaches,
all of whom would influence their worldview just as much as
their parents do, especially when they're younger.
And that world narrows even further as their careers get
bigger. So they would essentially.
Travel from rink to gym, plane to hotel.
Repeat pregame rituals, repeat postgame rituals.
They'd eat the same meals, recover the same way, day in,
day out, for months at a time. And that repetition requires a
lot of mental. Toughness and discipline.
But doing the same thing like that for that long reinforces A
mindset. And so if the mindset within the
sport is that emotions are something to suppress or manage
and not something to explore. Openly because it might make you
misstep or underperform. You don't do that.
And so that's the pressure cooker environment they're both
existing within. Shane and Ilya also enter the
league at the same time. They're drafted #1 and #2
overall by rival franchises, both with very deep histories,
enormous expectations. And like I said earlier, they
are uniquely positioned as mirrors of one another.
They're the only. Two people who truly understand
the pressure that the other is under, and that's where one of
the core themes of the story comes.
Comes in, which is that they are yin and Yang, or two sides of
the same coin. That duality shows up not just
emotionally, but also in how they play.
So Shane is defined by discipline, obsession,
preparation. He's a student of hockey in
every sense. We see him reading hockey books
in his free time. He's meticulous and he's driven
by a desire to be the best. Ilya, in contrast to that, is
more of a natural talent. So he loves hockey, but he
doesn't live and breathe it in the way that Shane does.
He doesn't have to work in the same capacity to be that great.
And his relationship to the sport is more shaped by his
childhood because for Ilya, hockey was an escape.
After his mother died, she had loved watching him play when he
was young, but after her death, his grief at 12 years old pushed
him deeper into the game while he sought to get away from his
home life and try and grapple with his emotions.
And as I touched on before, those different origins create 2
elite players whose motivations are fundamentally different, but
they're also complementary. Also, like I mentioned before,
their rivalry only exists and works because neither of them
can ever fully outdo the other. For every single stat that
favors one of them, you could pull another stat that favors
the other one, and that balance between the two sustains the
rivalry and keeps them bound to each other at the top of the
sport. And they push each other not
just because of ego, but because they genuinely enjoy competing
against someone who can meet them at their level.
And over time, we see that competition evolve into a very
deep respect and admiration of one another, even if the league
continues to frame it differently.
When their feelings enter into the equation, that
competitiveness shifts slightly. And as we see over time, their
emotions begin to bleed into their play in subtle ways, more
like a heightened awareness of each other on the ice.
There's flashes of jealousy, but then also deep pride when each
of them watches the other win the cup, or in smaller moments
when they're more affected by the other one than they want to
admit, like at the face off dot. And there are more fleshed out
examples of this in the book than there are in the show, but
it is hinted at in a lot of the montages I talked earlier about
how they challenge each other in ways that nobody else can.
And this is where that becomes slightly decent stabilizing,
because Shane's earlier jealousy of Ilya when he is young does
turn into an attraction and then an admiration.
Ilya is. Both a challenge.
And a mirror to Shane, because Ilya's existence and Shane's
attraction to him force Shane to confront parts of himself that
he has buried beneath his achievements and his public
persona. One of the most telling changes
the show makes underscores this quite well, which is that
Shane's injury is rewritten so that it's directly caused by his
attention being on Ilya as he carries the puck through the
neutral zone. And then he gets hit in an open
ice hit, something that is completely against his nature as
a player and really against the nature of any hockey player.
And as I mentioned before, Shane doesn't make careless mistakes.
So that moment makes the subtext explicit, which is that Shane's
connection to Ilya is strong enough to override years of his
discipline and and his instinct. Which brings me back to
something I said earlier, which is that hockey isn't the
obstacle they're trying to work around, it's what creates the
obstacle to begin with. Because they know how the
culture feels and they are on the inside of it.
They. Both.
Make educated assumptions as to what the blowback would be if
they were to be discovered. They aren't anonymous players.
They're rivals, franchise faces and money makers in the league's
marketing strategy, and their identities are tied to
masculinity, to national and city pride, to the mythology
that the league depends upon to draw in its fans.
So if the truth came out, it wouldn't just change how fans
see them. Their careers would be re
examined and fans would be likely outraged and feel like
they were lied to. And that scrutiny would be
compounded by the very real levels of homophobia within the
sport from the top down. So the secrecy, the emotional
restraint, the refusal to name what they are for years and
years, all of those choices mirror what hockey would have
drilled into them, which is keep your head down, don't rock the
boat. Everything you do is for the
better of the team. And that's especially clear in
Shane, whose motivations to keep this hidden are, on the one
hand, him not fully accepting that he is gay for much of the
earlier part of their relationship, but also because
he believes that everything should be framed around
protecting the team, the league and the image that he's been
taught to uphold. Ilya's fear is more personal.
It's tied to his Russian nationality and the risks that
come with him potentially being forced out of the sport and
having to return to a country that would not be kind to him.
And it's also tied to his childhood trauma, and that makes
emotional vulnerability feel extremely dangerous to him.
Ultimately, as I said before, hockey is not just the backdrop
of this story. It's a really big part of their
relationship because it dictates the pace of it.
Given that they only hook up and see each other when they play
one another or in the offseason. Their love is expressed in large
part through their joint competitiveness as professional
athletes, and because that personality trait is what allows
them to reach the pinnacle of their sport, it makes total
sense that it would be a huge element in their relationship
dynamic as well. The hockey optics are the reason
why there is tension in this story, and it gives the story
the high stakes it needs for the audience to feel that yearning
and know that their love is not. Just forbidden.
But it's also incompatible with the very culture and system that
made them who they are and that they live and breathe within
every single day. And that's a broader theme that
a lot of people can closely identify with.
This question is, I'm curious, your thoughts on Ilya's
hesitance to fully grab Shane when he's kissing and why that
is? I feel like there are so many
moments like the All Star night one kissing up the stairway in
episode 4 and even their deep first kiss at the cottage in
episode 6 where I think Ilya is hesitant to fully embrace Shane
because he doesn't think Shane is fully his.
But I don't know because he does it in almost every episode.
So curious to know if you think it's something.
So I think this is largely a Connor story physicality thing
and probably not an entirely conscious decision by the
intimacy coordinator and the director.
But I could also be very wrong. I do think that there is some
serious merit in the notion that Ilya does not fully hold on to
Shane until he is his to hold. But he also grabs Shane's face a
lot to tilt his head up or to force eye contact or to kiss
him, and he does that quite often and has no hesitations in
taking that liberty and grabbing him there.
We also do see Ilya fully embrace Shane in episode 5 in
the All Star Hotel scene, so he is capable.
But you're correct that throughout the series Ilya does
keep a looser grip on Shane at times, and he does that
consistently. So it's a mannerism that they
maintained with continuity over the course of multiple years.
Whether it's Connor himself who created that mannerism for Ilya
and kept it consistent across the storyline, or something they
worked on with Jacob and the intimacy coordinator, I'm not
sure. But it was something I noticed
too. So I think there has to be a
reason behind it, and your reasoning is actually a
beautiful metaphor as to why that would be applicable.
This question is my friends and I were discussing the food
relationship the characters have in the show slash book.
For example, they're hockey players.
Could they not really down ate burgers?
Also, I think macro biotics allows Shane to eat meat.
I'd be curious to hear your thoughts if you have an upcoming
video or an opinion about it. So I'm taking this question kind
of running with it to talk about the food relationship,
specifically Shane's. And this is a topic that of
course is. It's very nuanced, it has
multiple angles that you can look at it from, and this is
just my observation and my interpretation of some of these
topics that are mentioned a lot in the long game.
So first question, which is could they have eaten the 8
burgers? Yes, absolutely.
They could have easily eaten 8 burgers.
But I think that the relationships with food for
Shane and Ilya are very much narrative devices to kind of
further convey their personalities.
So Ilia eats what he wants, he eats quickly, he eats slightly
messy and he doesn't restrict himself.
Whereas Shane eats very specific foods aimed for performance and
longevity. He eats very neatly, he often
covers his mouth, and he further expands upon his dieting in the
long game. He also has comfort drinks like
ginger ale. I think it's important to keep
in mind as well that they are professional athletes on teams
with trainers and nutritionists and people whose entire job it
is to make sure they are performing at their best every
day. So those types of conversations
are happening daily within their teams.
It is very easy for them to access nutritionists.
They have team chefs, they have their meals at the rink and on
the road provided for them a vast majority of the time.
And for Shane, who loves control in all areas of his life because
it makes him feel safe, food is naturally an area where he would
want to exhibit that control. And it makes total sense then,
that when other areas of his life feel like they are
spiraling out of control, he would tighten his grip.
On the easiest thing he can control, which is food for Ilya,
I think that the act of eating has never been something
communal for him, where we see Shane often eating with other
people like Hayden and his family or his parents or Rose.
The only time we see him eating on screen with his family is
during the funeral scene and he is very uptight and
uncomfortable, which is in direct contrast to when he eats
with Shane. When he shares the tuna melt
with Shane in episode 4. He eats the.
Burgers with Shane at the cottage in the finale, and then
he has dinner with Shane's parents.
So I don't think the ritual of it has ever had any real
significance to him until he has a partner and a family to eat
with. I also think that Ilya can tell
that Shane's focus on food is always coming from there being
an imbalance in another area of his life.
So Ilya would want Shane to work through those issues and
regulate himself rather than restrict himself in the way that
he is. So he encourages that in the
long game, but as his own depression worsens, he often
uses the food conversation as a way to pick a fight or express
his frustration with Shane about other things because it's the
easiest thing to poke at and get a reaction out of Shane with.
And we see that in the Christmas scene In the long game
specifically, the macro biotic diet is interesting because this
is a show only addition to the story, and macro biotic diets
are largely based on Zen Buddhist principles.
And I've already pointed out, and I think other people
probably at this point have too pointed out the concept of Shane
and Ilya being like a Yang in the show.
And so their food habits are just another layer to that.
They have black and white outfits on in the beginning of
the series, in episode 1 with the water bottle scene, I
noticed very early on that their stick tape is black and white.
So on the face offs, we can see the yin and Yang.
So this fits very neatly into this story and is another way
that they're represented as opposite but independent forces
that create a greater whole once they're in harmony with one
another, which is very much what yin and Yang is about.
Shane also tells Rose in The Long Game that he thinks he
might be drawn to exhibiting discipline and how it makes him
feel better mentally more so than eating food that makes him
feel better physically. And he says I like to practice
discipline and self-control and be rewarded for it.
That's all. To me, that can be broken down
even further given Shane's personality and it can be
interpreted as him needing routines and structure to feel
safe and regulated, which is something we already know he
needs. And he functions best when he
has consistency in structure. So the reward aspect is more of
a way to have measurable data and progress, but also praise
when it comes to Shane and Ilya's sexual relationship.
But as far as food is concerned, he's trying to use food to
improve his performance on the ice and in the long game.
He's getting older, he's entering into the age bracket
where players start to feel their age in hockey.
And he wants to play for a long time and is trying to control
how long his career will be in any way he can.
Because if a person's career is unpredictable by nature, Shane
wants to control as much of it as he can, and his body and his
training and his diet are all controllable factors.
After Shane and Ilya are discovered, Shane actually
spirals and tells Ilya he ate a Snickers bar, and Ilya Facetimes
him right away because he knows that something is deeply wrong
for Shane to do that and also to admit it to Ilya.
For Shane, the candy bar would be like triage because he's so
dysregulated and he needs to reach for something that he has
coded as bad because he feels bad.
And this scene also reinforces that Shane is not someone who
typically deviates from a plan. He is dealing with extreme
internal pressure, and that distress is what makes him lose
control. And we know that losing control
is his deepest fear. Ilya tells him in that scene
that he can eat whatever he wants because it's his life and
it's not the leagues or his teams.
So it clues the reader and the viewer into Shane's motivations
for the dieting being largely set around his career first.
But by the end of the book says he's done fighting the future
and trying to be perfect. He'd been an incredible hockey
player his whole life while occasionally eating a
cheeseburger, and he could continue to do that.
So again, once his personal life falls into a place where he
feels he has relative control and happiness within it, he
loosens up on the dieting. So it'll be interesting to see
if Jacob Tierney leans into that, and if he does lean into
that, how he approaches that narrative, because it's
definitely a sensitive topic and one that I have no doubt he will
handle with care if he. She chooses to.
Cover it. This question is, I'm not sure
if you've talked about the differences between Svetlana in
the book. Versus the show.
But I'd love to hear your insights into the importance of
Ilya, having her in his life. So I think I've touched on this
in other videos, maybe little snippets here and there, but I
think the changes to her character are wonderful and make
a lot of sense because she is a window into Ilya in many scenes
in season 1 and can continue to be that.
In season 2 and making her a childhood friend made it
possible for us to see how Ilia behaves with people that he
trusts and loves, which we can then contrast with the behavior
he exhibits with Shane and easily mark that behavior as him
masking. And then slowly he begins to act
more so like he does with Svetlana once Shane makes him
feel safe enough to do so. Her being his closest friend and
confidante also makes Svetlana a big part in Ilya confronting his
own feelings about Shane ahead of the Russian monologue scene.
And narratively it mirrors how Rose is used in the plot and
kind of rounds out that female character arc that all of these
women have in aiding their men so beautifully.
But the addition of the funeral scene in particular, where her
role within, and it gives us so much great context, is really, I
think, pivotal in understanding what her real purpose is in the
show version. And it comes ahead of Ilya's
phone call with Shane. And we don't get that context in
the book. And knowing that she was so
pivotal in him having the bravery to call Shane and then
incite him feeling brave enough to admit that he's in love with
him. Even though it's in Russian,
it's nice to know that in the show version, Svetlana is
directly linked to that behavior.
That Lana also knows Ilia so well that she can often voice
things that we as viewers are observing, like her pointing out
how bad Ilia is at hiding his messages with Jane.
I also think for season 2, now that we know just how close that
Lana and Ilia are and that they love one another so deeply and
care. For each other as friends.
It will make Ilya's depression storyline and the way he pulls
away from everyone in his life that much more powerful because
she is another person that we can see it affect directly other
than just Shane. If he is pulling away from the
person closest to him outside of Shane, then it makes the
severity of his depression exceedingly clear without
exposition. Then there's the added layer of
Svetlana knowing him since he was a child, which implies that
she would have known him before his mother died.
Theoretically and would have likely known his mother.
And so I think that that's really important as he again in
season 2 is going to be dealing with a lot of memories of his
mom and trauma about her passing.
That if they include more scenes where Svetlana is included in
the storyline. Even if he's.
Talking to his therapist and he mentions that she was around
when he was a kid just paints a much more vivid picture of Ilya,
and she's used as a narrative device to convey more about him
and more about that time in his life.
And her being able to love him in the way that she has as a
friend is really beautiful because Ilya's character has
always resolved himself as being unlovable or difficult to love
or not worthy of love. And so placing someone like her
in his life is a really nice thing for the character himself.
And I think that it would be really rewarding if we have
scenes where she gets to meet Shane earlier on, because in the
book, she only meets him right before they get married, and
it's been years and she doesn't know about their relationship
until Ilya tells her. And he's been in Ottawa for a
couple of years at that point. So hopefully they kind of
rearranged that. I think they owe it to the
character now since they made so many changes to her in Season 1
that they give her a lot more material in Season 2 and utilize
her in really smart ways that I think Jacob has already kind of
teed up really beautifully. This question is what do you
think about the addition of Ilya having a niece that is not in
the book? I personally think this is a
great way to still keep Ilya connected to Russia and also the
show can use her and Svetlana since the show version of her is
still tied to Russia since her father is here to give us
glimpses into that culture and to better inform Ilya's behavior
and how he conducts himself by adding that context.
And I think the show including the line about him creating a
trust for her that she can access at 18 is also a way to
show the viewer the type of person Ilya is and how he is
good and kind and can see beyond the hatred of his brother to
still have love for his family in his heart.
And they can also use the niece as a way to keep Alexi in the
storyline since we don't see him in the long game.
It could play into memories or something that Ilya experiences
while in therapy, or maybe therapy helps him to reconnect
with him or make peace with him more formally.
So I do think that it's a way to kind of round out his life a
little bit more, make his storyline a little richer in
some small way. I think having her be there and
then him creating a trust despite his relationship with
Alexi is again a way to reinforce how good and kind
Ilyas heart is and that he is so self sacrificing and he will do
the right thing by people, especially people who are
related to him. And his niece wouldn't have done
anything wrong. So him taking care of her in
that way again is a really great way to reinforce who he is as a
person without it being spelled out so literally.
So I like that change. I think that they could do a lot
with it or they could do nothing at all with it, and it really
was impactful to have her there in Season 1.
I liked this question and it was why doesn't Shane ever wear his
Reeboks? So this is a great way for us to
see how Shane's persona is unaligned with who Shane is as a
person. And this is all added for the
show. And it's a really ingenious
narrative device that they use to make that point very clear.
In the book. We are in Shane's head and know
how he feels, so we can sort of understand how he is internally
very different than the way he is marketed externally within
the hockey world. But the show needed a way to
take that information and his thoughts and feelings and make
it visually apparent for the viewer.
And so this is a really great way to do that.
All of the commercials and same with him always drinking ginger
ale as his comfort drink but then doing a commercial with an
orange soda brand or being a Rolex ambassador when his
clothing styles and choices of clothing are mainly T-shirts and
athletic clothes. So him not wearing them I think
is less so about him rejecting the brand deal, more so about
when it's up to him and it's his choice.
Those are not the shoes he's reaching for and it's just
another brand partnership and commercial and long term deal
that he has that is assigned to Shane the hockey player and the
public persona rather than something that Shane the person
feels aligned with. And I really think that's
brilliant. Question is, with every choice
in the show being so intentional, what did you think
of them using classical pieces a handful of times and especially
the use of Moonlight Sonata for the monologue scene?
Great question, I really loved this one.
So yes, there's a few times where they use classical pieces
of music. Mozart is playing during the
first commercial scene that Shane and Ilya shoot in Toronto
in episode 1. Then the first time we hear the
Russian composer is in episode 2 when Ilya is in the bedroom with
his father and that song fades over the scene of Svetlana
saving Ilya while he's dissociating and walking him to
the bathroom where Sasha is at. So that is by a Russian
composer. Then there's another one during
the figure scene scene at the Olympics.
There are two songs while Ilya is at home, one while he's
standing in front of the window, and then another during the
funeral scene. Then we get Moonlight Sonata
during the Russian monologue scene.
And then we also have classical music playing when Shane is at
his parents cottage recovering from his injuries and texting
Ilya from the sofa. That's a Bach song playing in
the background of the house. The song playing during the
commercial is Mozart's 29th Symphony.
This is a Symphony that Mozart wrote when he 18, which I think
is kind of interesting when you consider how young Shane and
Ilya are in that scene. So that's kind of a fun tie, if
you will. The scene when Svetlana comes
and saves Ilya and brings him into the bathroom, that's by the
composer Rachmanov, and it's his second Piano Concerto.
I loved how the use of that concerto, it fades and gets
quieter as Ilya's dissociation starts to strengthen, and then
it increases the volume as they're walking to the bathroom,
and then the the tone of it changes throughout the
conversation in the bathroom as well.
So it's used really beautifully in those scenes.
The song that plays when Shane's figure skating friend is
competing in the Olympics is called The Great Gate of Kiev,
and it's a very grand song. It's the finale of the piano
suite of pictures at an exhibition, so a very big song
meant for a big moment in the Olympics for the scenes in
Russia around Ilya's father's death.
There's an interesting tie to the actual songs itself.
If you if you dig deeper, I did talk about the song playing when
Ilya is standing in front of the window in one of my breakdown
videos. And the song playing during the
funeral is song that's tied to fallen.
World War Two soldiers and. That's interesting when you
consider that his father has all these medals and he was
decorated. And so they kind of link the
music to that visual in that scene, which I thought was
really brilliant. The song itself is called or
it's translated into the cranes, and it's talking about fallen
soldiers who are being compared to white cranes flying in the
sky. And it's meant to be a metaphor
for. Their souls.
Leaving the battlefield, The Moonlight Sonata use is really
kind of cool because it's long been believed that Mozart wrote
it for an unrequited love, or someone who he was deeply in
love with but couldn't be with. It's also used really
beautifully here because in the book, Shane describes the
feeling of Ilya's voice washing over him, and it very much feels
like it's musical in a sense. And so I think that them putting
this piano over it and then using the audio in such a clever
way where at the beginning of the monologue, Ilya's voice is
coming through a telephone. And then at a certain point in
the monologue, his voice is right there with Shane.
It's like he's sitting right next to him, talking to him.
There's no more phone line static coming through, and his
voice is clear as day alongside with this music.
So it's a really great way of conveying that sentiment from
the book. In the book, Shane also
describes it as very intimate, like they were somehow sharing a
bigger secret now than when they slept together.
And so the song kind of adds to that level of intimacy as well.
During the scene where Shane and Ilya are texting late at night
in episode 5, the song Prelude and fugue #1 by Bach is playing
in the background. So it's implied that in their
house growing up, maybe Yuna would play classical music at
night, which I think is a beautiful detail.
Although I have seen discourse online that it might be a
different title of Box, a different song of Box.
So clearly a lot of thought went into the choices and selections
of these songs and how they were going to be used in the show.
And I think the sound mixing of the show is really incredible.
But the people who are. Picking the songs for the
soundtrack did such a masterful job of layering in original
score these classical moments, and then obviously the
soundtrack that we all know and love from the montage moments
and playing in the background in restaurants.
And they layer in the music in the show so beautifully.
So I really, really commend them for how well they've done and
how intentional it was done. So I got multiple versions of
this next question, which is why do I think this show changed so
many of us and completely took over our lives in such a short
time frame? And also how I think the timing
of it might have impacted that. And I actually was interviewed
this very question. So I had written down my
thoughts on it and there are many, but again, this is kind of
coming from my personal angle so.
I think this story resonated across.
Genders and sexual orientations and generations, and obviously
it's about love and it's a love story.
It's also a queer story, but at its core, it's also about
pressure and pressure to conform, to perform, and to
present yourself in a very specific way.
And as an athlete myself and someone who played hockey, that
really stood out to me. There's a lot to unpack in terms
of how you're expected to show up in the spaces within the
hockey world and what strength looks like, what emotions are
allowed and what aren't. But even if you've never played
hockey, or even a team sport in general, I think everyone
understands on some level the pressure that comes with wanting
to be seen, understood, and loved for who you actually, and
not a version of yourself you create in order to conform.
And what the show does so effectively is place those
universal themes inside of this hyper masculine world of
professional hockey that we don't often see depicted with
this level of vulnerability. So that contrast is very
powerful. Watching characters struggle
with identity and emotional expression, all while trying to
belong in an environment that traditionally discourages those
things, makes this story feel incredibly human.
So while I think it resonates with men who recognize that
culture first hand, it also speaks to anyone who has felt
constrained by the expectation society places on them, and that
is a universal experience. In that way, the show becomes a
lens for examining how idealized masculinity shapes behavior, not
just in sports, and it captures what it feels like to be on the
outside looking in with a lot of empathy.
It's also connecting a lot of people who appreciate well
developed, complex characters, and it's incited a lot of
discussion about writing and storytelling.
And on my personal pages, breaking down scenes in a way
that highlights the craft has been really enjoyable.
And it's been helping me with the construction of my own
characters while writing my first novel with my co-author.
But on the artistic side, as someone who loves book to screen
adaptations and filmmaking as a craft, I was really struck by
how intentionally this show was made.
The attention to detail is incredible.
There are visual and narrative callbacks throughout the series
that reward close viewing, and you're meant to notice the
nuance in the physicality, in the framing.
And a lot of what makes this show so gripping is what's being
said without dialogue. That feels especially meaningful
in the context of the current streaming era, where so many
shows assume the audience is half watching and the characters
are often repeating plot points out loud because viewers are
scrolling on their phones. And this show does the opposite.
It asks you to lean in. And that kind of storytelling
encourages conversation and re watches and excitement, where on
1/3 or 4th viewing you might catch a detail that was hidden
in plain sight. And then it helps to deepen the
emotional impact of what you've just watched.
And I also think that the slow drip weekly episode drops added
to that community building as well.
So you can really tell how much the entire production team cared
about the story that they were telling because it shows up
everywhere. It shows up in the set design,
especially given their budget constraints.
It shows up in the lighting, which to me it functions as its
own character. It shows up in the costuming,
which very subtly tracks emotional shifts and power
dynamics, and also the timeline of the story.
And it's reflectant of the year that the scene is taking place
in. You can see that in the sound
design. Little things like how you can
hear the hum of traffic outside whenever Shane and Ilya are in a
hotel room, or you can very audibly hear the sound of fabric
brushing against the couch during an intimate scene.
So it feels like we're very much in crouching on that moment.
All of those things create an intimacy that pulls the viewer
further into the world that Jacob Tierney created.
And even structurally, moments like the extended one shot in
the finale adds to that intimacy in a way that feels very
deliberate and. Earned and there are visual
echoes all over the place. Through small movements and
physicality, words and phrases that reappear later and feel
familiar without ever being spelled out for you, the show
trusts its audience to be intelligent and emotionally
perceptive, and that trust is incredibly refreshing.
So I think that the combination of the very human themes
presented with empathy and optimism by the end of the
story, and also that it was executed with such intentional
artistry. That to me, is why the show has
stayed with people, because it didn't just tell a story to you,
it made us all participants in that emotional investment and it
makes us feel like we all went on that journey together.
Or, as Shane would say, together.
This question says I'd love to hear more about your background
and how it relates to the insights you share.
For example, attachment styles. So I inherited my cinephilia
from my mother and grew up watching movies and TV with her
daily. She worked in continuity when
she was younger, and so every time we watched any form of
storytelling, she would point out continuity errors and
explain the magic behind the scenes and how shots were
composed and shown on screen. And that constant exposure to
storytelling and the craft that goes into visual storytelling
was a huge part of my upbringing and definitely shaped my
interest in it. I was also a visual art and art
history major in college, so studying art in all of.
Many forms is another facet of my approach to these videos.
In regards to the attachment style insights, that's largely
from my own. Work with a coach.
And learning about my own attachment style and doing a lot
of that hard work to understand it and wrap my brain around it
in myself and also in people around me so that I can better
navigate interpersonal relationships.
And I would also say that I've always been very emotionally
intuitive and observant. I think that's something I've
always been so. All of those.
Things pour into how I consume media and watch TV and movies,
and I think that understanding the humanness of characters is
something I've always really, really been interested in doing.
And as I'm writing my own novel with my co-author, I'm
fascinated by character development and shaping
characters. So it's always been an interest
to find and. This show is a really great
example of very well written characters, so it's easy for me
to deep. Dive into it.
This question is I want to know your process for creating these
breakdowns of the show and books.
How much homework do you do in order to create these?
Do you collaborate with other content creators or?
Just other people to help you make these videos, or are they
entirely of your own creation? First of all, thank you for
asking. I spend quite a bit of time
reviewing the show and the book before finalizing any of my
breakdown scripts, and a lot of the more thematic videos and
topics are born out of conversations.
With. My friend and creative partner
Lo and her and I are Co writing a novel series right now.
So we're always nerding out on story structure and character
development and it's always a continuous discussion that
organically produces content. And as we watched Heated
Rivalry, that was very much the case.
We were having these long discussions and probably the
100th time we started having one of these, Lo told me to record
my thoughts and I finally listened.
So hopefully she'll agree to record her thoughts on this
podcast with me sometime soon so you can all hear how our
conversations tend to flow upstream and then we suddenly
arrive at a creative watering hole that solves 5 problems we
didn't even know we had. On the whole.
Though when I'm breaking down each individual scene, a lot of
my commentary is just things I'm observing as I'm watching.
Usually when I'm consuming media, I will watch it the first
time just to enjoy it and then the second time I will.
I will watch it and pay attention to the details of the
scene, so some of them I notice right away.
Even when I'm viewing it for the first time and trying to just
enjoy the media. I will notice visual cues, I
will notice repeated patterns, I will notice blocking, lighting,
sound mixing. I will notice those things just
because I always look for them in media, and as I'm consuming
the media, the things I'm pointing out to myself I often
think might be interesting for other people to have pointed out
for them. So the second time I watch
something through, I'll make note of all of those little
details. And then when I'm writing the
scripts, I just make sure that the angle that I'm thinking the
scene might want to be conveyed in or the context I'm thinking
might be applicable. There I just.
Fact Check it with the book or the source material and.
Then run it through my own brain to figure out how to best convey
what I'm trying to say in a clear and concise way for
people. And one that easily ties it back
to the book if that's what I'm doing in the review or connects
it to. In some cases, we're talking
about attachment styles or just my insights and understanding of
the character and how I'm interpreting the scene versus
how I think strategically the scene is being shot or edited
and how that would inform the way it's meant to be
interpreted. So.
There's a lot of. Homework that goes into these
breakdowns, and I definitely try and do all of it before I
publish anything to make sure that my point of view is coming
from a place that's a well-rounded and educated 1.
All right. I think I'm going to wrap this
up there. Puts us right around the one
hour mark, which is great. I pretty much covered all of the
heavy hitting questions, but I did still have a number of
questions that people had submitted, which I'm so
appreciative of. If it's of interest, I'm sure we
could put together a Part 3 of this Q&A.
And if you have any additional questions, as always, be sure to
leave them on any of my socials and I will do my best to get
back to you individually or like I said, put it into another
episode like this if people are liking the more long form
answers. So thank you again so much for
tuning in, for listening. This has been a long episode, so
if you've made it to the end, I really, really appreciate it and
I will see you all. In the next one.