Heated Rivalry Recap: From Russia With Love

Heated Rivalry
I’ll Believe in Anything
Season 1 Episode 5
Editor’s Rating ★★★★★
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Though it might come as a disappointment to fans within the world of the show who were excitedly shipping Shane Hollander and Rose Landry, their public romance proves to be short-lived. When the pair get dinner, Rose casually brings up her gay actor friend Miles before asking Shane if there are any gay hockey players. Their sex life apparently hasn’t been particularly successful, so this is Rose’s attempt to subtly pry into why that might be. She goes on to (less subtly) ask him if he’s ever been with a guy, and we can see Shane fighting off his urge to lie before confiding in Rose as we’re shown quick flashes of him with Ilya. When the options are admitting to being gay or admitting to being bad at sex, the choice is clear. Rose, who’s not new to having gay boyfriends, describes their pairing as trying to fit a square peg in a round hole, to which Shane says, “I kinda prefer being the hole rather than the peg.” Out of the closet for two seconds and he’s already calling himself a hole; here we go. 

It’s 2017, and Ilya and his hole find themselves in Tampa Bay for the All Star game — sort of like Drag Race All Stars, but hockey — and you can tell it’s Florida because they’re wearing a Hawaiian shirt and a white Miami Vice–esque suit, respectively. Not only are they both playing in this game, they’re on the same team this time, which means they can feasibly hang out in public. That gives them the chance to get closer, and as they sit at the bar together, they both ask if the other is there alone. They both are, and naturally, both seem glad to hear it.

They banter about Shane hiring a stylist, flirt on the ice, and even watch the sunset together before Shane eventually sneaks up to Ilya’s room, per usual. But unlike their usual meetups, it’s clear Shane has something on his mind, and he tells Ilya about finally coming to terms with his sexuality (with the help of Rose). But it’s not just being gay that he’s struggling with, it’s this strange relationship with Ilya. We’ve officially moved from the strictly physical to something much more, and he tells Ilya that the last time they were together (before he freaked out), it “felt like we were something.” After Ilya quickly tells him that they can’t be something, Shane asks if he would want that if they hypothetically could be. It’s not a hypothetical that Ilya is willing to engage in, given the Russia of it all. Ilya’s closet isn’t the result of shame or family embarrassment, but actual danger that could come his way given the political landscape of his home country. 

But speaking of his family, that’s where the conversation turns as Ilya opens up to Shane about his mother dying when he was young and his father now having dementia. It’s the most intimate scene we’ve gotten yet between the two of them, and Ilya starts to cry before Shane kisses and holds him. It’s largely through this plot point that this episode brings new depth to both the show and this central relationship. Not only are we getting to know Ilya better by seeing him deal with these struggles, but Shane is too. 

Weeks later, Ilya gets the call that his father has died, and he travels back home to Russia. He FaceTimes Shane, who wants to do anything he can to help — an offer Ilya pounces on by telling him to take his clothes off (but to leave his reading glasses on). After Ilya has a tumultuous fight with his brother, the pair have another phone call, but Ilya struggles to get into everything that he’s been dealing with over there, especially in his second language. 

“Tell me everything that’s on your mind, but in Russian. I won’t understand, but maybe it’ll help,” Shane tells him, and that’s exactly what Ilya does. He tells him that he hates it there, how everybody in his life just uses him and constantly wants more, that it kills him that his brother was there to take care of their ailing father but he wasn’t. He adds that at least he has Svetlana, whom he loves, “but not like … but not like I love you. That’s the worst fucking part of all this. That all I want is you. It’s always you. I’m so in love with you and I don’t know what to do about it.” But Shane, unless he’s been hiding a Duolingo subscription from us, doesn’t know that he said any of this. 

Then we’re at a game. When and where? I couldn’t tell you. I’m sure the show did tell us, but I missed it. It’s a miracle that I ever know where we are in space and time on this constantly time-jumping, location-jumping show, but the good thing is that’s very rarely important. All that’s key to know is that we’re on ice and hockey is being played. In fact, too much hockey is being played. The great thing about this show is that it usually skips right past the sport itself, but now we’re lingering out there, which can’t be a good sign. Sure enough, Ilya watches as Shane takes a nasty hit and gets carried out on a stretcher. 

He goes to visit him at the hospital, where a somewhat out-of-it (but ultimately okay) Shane greets him with a delirious “Heyyyyy.” He has a concussion and a fractured collarbone, but he’s most upset that the injury interfered with their plans to meet up after the game. (The collar wasn’t the only bone impacted, apparently.) Especially because he planned to ask Ilya if he would come to his family’s cottage over the summer, where they could spend time together, just the two of them. “Maybe,” Ilya says, because that of course is a big step in a relationship that Ilya is afraid to let be real. But the most devastating part of this injury, to me, comes when Shane is back home with his parents recovering and Ilya texts to check in on him. “How’s your head?” Ilya asks, and Shane painfully, embarrassingly misses the opportunity to reply with, “I haven’t had any complaints yet.” If Jordan Firstman thought this show wasn’t accurate gay representation before, he’s going to have a field day with this oversight.

With neither Shane nor Ilya up for the cup this year, they watch on television as Scott Hunter wins the championship. We see that his neglected smoothie boy Kip is watching on from the stands with the same melancholy as Scott had watching Kip’s birthday party from outside the bar he was too afraid to enter. But as the winning team’s loved ones flood the ice to celebrate, Scott is alone. At least, he is until he waves down Kip to usher him onto the ice, where he kisses him in front of the entire arena and, more importantly, television cameras. 

Shane and Ilya watch, slack-jawed, as Scott Hunter throws the first puck at Stonewall, and an inspired Ilya doesn’t waste much time before he calls Shane with a simple message: “I’m coming to da cottage.” 

Butt Dials

This is a crisis. Not a single butt this episode. While I’m tempted to rescind the episode’s five-star rating because of this, I ultimately admit that not showing the sex that happens this week was a really smart move. Part of what makes Shane and Ilya’s story so compelling (and so much more so than Scott and Kip’s) is that we’re watching something strictly physical become romantic. That’s a complicated, messy transition that makes for a much more interesting story. What we’re seeing onscreen, butt-wise, in turn reflects that transition. We were seeing nothing but butts when their relationship was just about butts, and now that it’s about love, the show’s focus is instead on those more meaningful, intimate exchanges.