Fact-based journalism that sparks the Canadian conversation

Articles Business Environment Health Politics Arts & Culture Society

Special Series Hope You’re Well For the Love of the Game Living Rooms In Other Worlds: A Space Exploration Terra Cognita More special series >

For the Love of the Game

In Other Worlds: A Space Exploration

More special series >

Events The Walrus Talks The Walrus Video Room The Walrus Leadership Roundtables The Walrus Leadership Forums Article Club

The Walrus Video Room

The Walrus Leadership Roundtables

The Walrus Leadership Forums

Subscribe Renew your subscription Change your address Magazine Issues Newsletters Podcasts

Renew your subscription

The Walrus Lab Hire The Walrus Lab Amazon First Novel Award

Amazon First Novel Award

Heated Rivalry Is Millennial Optimism Porn

Imagine if things had actually gotten better?

The year is 2008. The banks are failing, a confident ingenue named Lady Gaga is taking over pop radio, and Barack Obama is riding a wave of hope to the American presidency. And, in director Jacob Tierney’s world, a teenage Shane Hollander approaches Ilya Rozanov at the International Prospect Cup. The rest is history.

This is where Heated Rivalry begins its decade-spanning first season—though if you blink, you’ll miss the timestamps. Fans and critics alike have poked fun at the show’s disorienting timeline, which rapidly jumps from 2008 to 2017 as it chronicles Hollander and Rozanov’s journey from opponents to boyfriends. Aside from choice shots of Hollander in boat shoes, the show’s contained world means that it doesn’t have to pay particular attention to historical accuracy.

But those timestamps tell a story of their own: Heated Rivalry is a 2010s period piece. In particular, it taps into and revives the optimism that pervaded that decade’s first half, from the It Gets Better campaign to Gaga’s chart-topping “Born........

© The Walrus