"that follows Shane and Ilya's relationship across a decade and is broken up into chapters titled by when in history they take place, moving through various matches, championships, and even the Olympics as the two sneak moments alone while playing in the same city. From a scheduling standpoint, I get it. To follow professional sports is to know that players on different teams live in different cities and see their industry peers maybe only a dozen times a year."
"Emotionally frustrated competitors and sometimes-lovers Shane Hollander (Hudson Williams) and Ilya Rozanov (Connor Storrie, doing an all-time Russian accent - like, get this guy in stat!) pass as both recent high-school grads and industry pros, but are we going to have to see them in the 2040s in old-age makeup? Gray hair? When will the march of time cease so we can just watch these two banter about hockey and then have sex?"
Heated Rivalry compresses long stretches of time into quick episodic jumps, moving from 2008 to 2014 across the first two episodes with abrupt cuts to black. The series labels brief scenes by season and year and performs roughly 15 jumps early on, producing inconsistent cues about character age and stage. Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov oscillate between recent graduates and established pros, creating tonal dissonance. The show stems from a Rachel Reid novel that uses chapter breaks and narration to bridge time, but the same technique on screen reduces emotional clarity and strains believability.
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