How One Line Reframes Shane Completely | Overanalyzing Heated Rivalry (ep 8)

Comments · 704

• JO

  @johannanel1181 · 6 months ago

  For me, David is a very interesting character. On the surface level he seems to be a bit clueless and often inserts seemingly unrelated topics into the conversation. If you look a bit closer, these inserts often draws Shane&apos;s attention from a topic that causes some anxiety and gives him a moment to breathe. In this case, Yuna is throwing a lot of information at Shane &nbsp;and David&apos;s interjection draws Shane out of the flow for a moment and gives him a chance to catch up with Yuna. <br>In episode 6, David&apos;s remark about nice men in Montreal creates a moment of levity, that lightens a very tense conversation.<br>Throughout the season you often see David seems to be tuned into Shane&apos;s emotional state. He sees Shane&apos;s meltdown at the dining table before Shane&apos;s lowers his head to the table. David is a very good dad, who adores his wife and son and is finely tuned to their needs.

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• PE

  @pegapage · 6 months ago (edited)

  Boring and asshole are coded words for their admiration for each other. They are also the ways they&apos;re perceived publicly. What they stand for is bold/adventurous and reliable/true

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• BR

  @briannabridges9716 · 6 months ago (edited)

  That line from Yuna about how Shane should’ve been watching hockey videos really highlights the complexity of their relationship and makes it very realistic for me. Later, in episode 4(?), when Shane is out with his parents again and Yuna says “I’m sure you could have A glass of wine,” it becomes clear that she doesn’t realize how much little comments like those affected him. She helped set up the expectation that Shane be perfect, but then is surprised that he ends up being rigid and unforgiving towards himself as a result. Those two lines alone from Yuna convey so much about their relationship and the unintended consequences of her words to Shane.

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• HE

  @heylauramay · 6 months ago

  I feel like the &apos;f him, right up the butt&apos; line is so key here. His parents are nice, they love him, but Yuna is still talking about this act that Shane wants to experience as this terrible thing that should happen to someone she hates, and it has clear homophobic tones. As a closeted kid who&apos;s trying to figure out if it&apos;s safe for him to share, this tells him it isn&apos;t, it tells him that his mom sees his desires as offensive, something to use to insult people. <br>And there&apos;s the way the three interact, where David is asking questions about YouTube and Yuna is talking over him about Rolex and disregarding what he&apos;s saying cause it&apos;s unimportant to her in that moment, but Shane stops to try to explain it, and when Yuna is like &apos;focus on hockey&apos; it&apos;s David that&apos;s like &apos;the animal videos matter too&apos;. Like David is trying to talk to Shane the person, and Yuna wants to talk about Shane the brand

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• IL

  @IllyTheFireGoddess1 · 6 months ago

  Funny enough, the &quot;unlikely animals becoming friends&quot; line is actually the specific line that stood out to me on my first viewing and made me think to myself that I was in for something good with Heated Rivalry. The reason being is because I do genuinely believe it&apos;s meant to be a metaphor for Shane and Ilya, especially since it comes after their first sex scene. But that being said, the idea that it could be a lie also makes so much sense, and I think adds a whole new layer to the scene. Especially because we clearly saw what it was that Shane was watching previously and the fact that when Yuna brings up the exact same video later we see Shane become a bit nervous and also try to hold back a smile as his mom keeps on talking about his crush. Lol<br><br>But what I think makes the line even more interesting is if we combine it being a metaphor while also being a lie, it could possibly mean that Shane subconciously came up with a such a weighted lie because he was also thinking about Ilya at that moment, and ended up saying something that unintenionally connected the two.<br><br>I absolutely adore your analyses, btw! ❤

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• PA

  @pascalebarke4087 · 6 months ago

  Something i find interesting is that viewers (myself included) are completely taken in by Ilya&apos;s perception of Shane, beacause Shane is not really a bad liar he just can&apos;t lie to Ilya, Shane lies to everyone all the time including himself but he can&apos;t lie to Ilya the attraction is too strong. Shane is autistic and closeted he&apos;s constantly masking and performing, lying is pretty much second nature to him. So the way I interpret this scene is that he probably had watched those animal videos at some point before but this time he&apos;s lying because the only thing that could make Shane break character and be late is Ilya.

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• TO

  @TottWriter · 6 months ago (edited)

  Okay, so this is a complex topic with a lot of landmines so I want to say this delicately but... I think a crucial detail some people overlook with Shane and Ilya&apos;s respective family backgrounds is the fact that Ilya KNOWS his upbringing was unhealthy. We don&apos;t see the full extent so I won&apos;t speculate on anything specific, but what we see is that he has a harsh, demanding father, and a brother who is consistently verbally abusive. But those are very clear-cut. It has hurt him - a lot - but he is at least aware that he doesn&apos;t like it. His dilemma is the fact he feels loyal to them in SPITE of their abuses. <br><br>Meanwhile... Shane loves his parents! He respects them! He knows - correctly! - that they love and respect him in turn, and they genuinely want him to be happy and succeed! The problem is that THEY don&apos;t realise the damage they are doing. They don&apos;t notice his neurodivergence, and they take his willingness to please as an active endorsement when it comes to being held up as an aspirational figure. And as someone who is neurodivergent, Shane has spent a lifetime learning how things work by logically working them through. Every context clue around him, both inside and out of his familial space, tells him that he lives a perfect life. This is the dream. This is the ideal. It doesn&apos;t get any more perfect - so the only variable which can be wrong? Himself. Any time there&apos;s a problem, it&apos;s not that he is having a normal reaction to a situation which places unfair pressure on him. It&apos;s that HE is doing something wrong. HE has to fix himself. <br><br>And while Ilya absolutely has much more high-impact trauma to overcome, and considerably more external pressures/danger/consequences, he is acutely aware of all of them, from the outset. Meanwhile, it&apos;s not simply that Shane doesn&apos;t recognise the ways in which he has been hurt. It&apos;s that he has no concept that those are ways in which ANYONE could be hurt. He has no concept that what he is feeling has anything to do with hurt at all. It&apos;s just...expected. Maybe even everyone feels like that, and he&apos;s simply ungrateful. <br><br>Also, I think another nuance of this scene is incredibly important, but won&apos;t really pay off until S2, and it&apos;s the fact that we see yet another reminder that while, in his spare time, Ilya is off doing other things, Shane&apos;s entire life is hockey. Not just as a career, not just externally from his teams and brand deals etc. But also in this moment, even his relationship with his parents, who have loved and supported and cherished him... on some level, that is reliant upon hockey as well. It&apos;s not a job, or even a passion/special interest for him. It&apos;s fundamental to every single facet of his life.

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• TH

  @The_dandy_zombie · 6 months ago (edited)

  Honestly I think my perception of David is the one that flipped the most in rewatches. He feels bumbling and clueless in these early episodes but as the show goes on I think it becomes clear that he&apos;s a very intelligent guy and he puts on an act of cluelessness to help put Shane at ease. He&apos;s constantly giving Shane these little looks, like someone that&apos;s made it their mission to make sure Shane is okay mentally. He can tell Shane is uneasy at the table in this scene so he plays up the dumb dad, asking about Youtube and allowing Shane to explain how ever he choses. In this time period (plus David&apos;s job) it&apos;s a little strange David wouldn&apos;t know what Youtube is (plus plus who his wife is). and when Shane moves onto explaining what a rabbit hole is, that doesn&apos;t really answer the question David asked, but he doesn&apos;t point that out because it wasn&apos;t about learning what Youtube is, it was about giving Shane a little room to breathe. He&apos;s constantly doing stuff like this, reframing the tennis trip to Europe as a family thing to relax, how he&apos;s noticeably looking at Shane during the Scott Hunter kiss scene, how he&apos;s the first to notice Shane is having a panic attack in the last episode. Bottom line: David&apos;s a super subtle character and I love that the show never points it out, its all just happening.

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• AL

  @AliceLee-p7o · 6 months ago

  &quot;he&apos;s goalie now, yes?&quot; from the interview Shane watches on his phone is also referring to the fact that the rivalry is media-constructed and how they&apos;re constantly compared or pitted against each other- Ilya wouldn&apos;t be &quot;scoring on Hollander&quot; specifically, per the interview question, but on the goalie.

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• NA

  @nattyww8799 · 6 months ago (edited)

  The &quot;What an asshole&quot; line delivery felt authentic for me. He&apos;s alone, not needing to mask or be overtly expressive in his tone for anyone else.<br>The smile is what made it real for me. Shane seems to have a genuine smirk, and with the tension in his face it seems like he is holding back a wider smile after the line delivery. I assumed he was remembering their playful interaction when he thought Ilya was going to leave him without reciprocal attention at their first hook-up, when Shane called Ilya an asshole to his face. <br>Shane is secretly very funny. ;)<br>So interesting the different takes from viewers - and I love your discussion and analysis as always. Thank you!

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• AL

  @althracee · 6 months ago

  I was always confused why people didn&apos;t like this scene, because I found it really interesting right away. For me it always seemed like Shane was lying to his parents and the point of the scene was to show that a) he is keeping a part of himself from his family and b) they don&apos;t know him well enough to be able to tell. It felt very parents that think they know you really well but are actually missing so much. So he is just feeding into that image they have of him as this innocent wholesome person in order to cover up the parts of himself he doesn&apos;t want to share.

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• CB

  @cb90100 · 6 months ago

  <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AAauaWMXToE&amp;t=1274">21:14</a> this is such a fascinating take because for us who&apos;ve read the books know that when Shane and Ilya go to his parents house after getting caught Shane makes sure to put on a shirt from a charity hockey camp that he volunteered for to &quot;remind his parents that he&apos;s a good and normal person&quot;

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