"T he 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."
"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 This Way." Beyoncé's 2014 VMAs performance in front of a giant "FEMINIST" sign symbolized an era when celebrities and Tumblr teenagers were at the vanguard of popularizing social justice politics. There was an earnest sensibility in this period, now known as millennial optimism, that things could and would get better."
Heated Rivalry's first season tracks a relationship between teenage Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov across a jumpy 2008–2017 timeline. Fans and critics have poked fun at the disorienting timestamps, but the show's contained setting allows it to ignore strict historical accuracy. The series functions as a 2010s period piece that revives millennial optimism through cultural markers like Lady Gaga, the It Gets Better campaign, and Beyoncé's 2014 VMA FEMINIST moment. The season concludes in 2017 as backlash begins to form, and culminates in a live-TV coming-out by New York captain Scott Hunter, imagining broader acceptance in hockey culture.
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