HEATED RIVALRY BLIND REACTION! Episode 4

Comments · 563

• KN

  @KnucklesMustache · 2 months ago (edited)

  Ilya doing the literal worst imaginable job of completely failing to say “What if we stopped sleeping with other people?” Is brilliantly written and acted. And then poor Shane with no chance at all of ever figuring what the hell Ilya failed so spectacularly to communicate.

  84

• SK

  @skfhdsjknldgfv · 2 months ago

  You are seriously the only reactor out of dozens I've seen who noticed how Shane was freaking out when Ilya was cooking for him.

  217

• SO

  @sophieo.b3392 · 2 months ago

  I am LOVING your reactions. its so funny how you always say you dont understand what's happening and then you talk yourself through what all the character could be feeling and pretty much exactly hit the nail on the head

  233

• JA

  @jacquie2004 · 2 months ago (edited)

  Ok, so what I think you missed in the montage at the start is it showing how, as time passes, keeping in touch with each other becomes more &amp; more important to both lads, Shane texting during working on ad campaigns, Ilya giving girls the bums rush in clubs so he can keep texting. It&apos;s around 2 years since we saw them in the last episode, and basically, outside of hockey, they&apos;ve become each other&apos;s main constant in life. It&apos;s 2016. They&apos;ve fancied the arse off each other for 8 years, and have been getting together for 7. In episode 2 we saw Ilya realise he&apos;d fallen way too deep for Shane after they made love, and Shane kissed his forehead. It&apos;s partly why he was so shitty later, in, and after Russia. He was desperately trying to keep things strictly &quot;casual, but back to the opening montage... he failed. They both did.<br>In this episode everything is different. Ilya has invited Shane to his home. In daylight. They&apos;re not sneaking around in some hotel, in the dark. There are huge windows, lots of sunlight (remember that &quot;you deserve sunshine&quot; line from ep.3?) Ilya wants to be seen. They&apos;re both absolutely pants at saying how they feel, so Ilya tries to show it instead. He practically begs Shane to stay over. He&apos;s put a lot of effort into arranging this, preparing food Shane can/will eat, getting the ginger ale in. He tells Shane about Svetlana, but also tells him he won&apos;t be looking for anyone else, because he&apos;s &quot;lazy&quot;. He clumsily asks Shane about girls because he wants to know if Shane is gay, bi or just still &quot;curious&quot;. <br>After the call from his dad, Ilya literally has to shake off the stress and negativity before going back to Shane. He doesn&apos;t want any of the toxicity he has to deal with in Russia contaminating what is so precious to him, the time when he can just be true to himself with the man he loves (although he&apos;d say &quot;likes, but not as a person&quot; 🙄). When Shane asks about his dad, Ilya isn&apos;t ready or able to talk about it, but he&apos;s touched that Shane cares. He&apos;d have been quite happy to just spend an hour cuddling on the sofa, but Shane&apos;s spiralling again. Cuddling isn&apos;t what they do! They have sex. So he instigates it. But it&apos;s different this time. More intimate. They call each other by their first names for the first time. They both see what a future together could be with post nut clarity. In that moment Ilya looks like he died and went to heaven. He knows he&apos;s bi, and he&apos;s perfectly comfortable about it. He&apos;s got the man he loves in his lap, calling him Ilya. Shane, who hasn&apos;t even clocked for himself that he&apos;s gay, freaks out. He can&apos;t want this! He mustn&apos;t! He can&apos;t want to spend the rest of his life in the arms of Ilya Rozanov, FFS! He runs away, leaving Ilya devastated. The first time he&apos;s ever let his defences down this far, and he got hurt. Badly.<br>Shane gets together with Rose in a desperate effort to be &quot;normal&quot;, to be what he&apos;s expected to be. Ilya can&apos;t not look at every paparazzi shot, every TV clip. It kills him to see Rose doing all of the little things with Shane Ilya can only dream of. Having dinner together, supporting him at games, just being able to hold his hand in public.<br>In the club Ilya immediately clocks Miles and realises Shane&apos;s probably there with Rose. He spots them in a heartbeat. He finds himself a random blonde both to satisfy his needs and to hurt Shane. Miles, who represents Shane&apos;s sexuality, starts breathing down his neck as he watches Ilya suck the shine off her earrings, trapping him between what he actually yearns for and what he thinks he should want. &nbsp;The song lyrics as Ilya and Shane just stare miserably at each other....omg! So they both go home, where Ilya sorts himself out in the shower, and Shane gives Rose a seeing to with all of the enthusiasm of me tackling the ironing, but all they can think about is each other. They need to, to get the job done. Everything else is &quot;not enough&quot;. <br>The club scene is some of the best TV I&apos;ve seen. Everything is perfect. The acting, the micro-expressions, especially from Connor Storrie as Ilya clocks Miles and looks for Shane are spellbinding! You see all of the pain, the anger, the fear, the lust, and he barely moves a muscle. The cinematography, lighting &amp; music couldn&apos;t be any better. I LOVE this episode, even though it&apos;s so painful to watch.

  120

• NU

  @NunuLemons · 2 months ago

  <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hk_qmLJhzvs&amp;t=575">09:35</a> On the &quot;What is Ilya doing&quot; question: In the beginning montage, we see Ilya actually go through some character development, where in the beginning of the montage he&apos;s pretty engaged with the people he&apos;s hooking up with, but by the later years, he&apos;s becoming more and more disillusioned with this whole lifestyle, and thinking more and more about Shane. He&apos;s on his phone more rather than paying attention to the girls around him. At home, he&apos;s watching documentaries about Shane.<br><br>By the time we get to the car scene with Svetlana, Ilya is realizing that he can no longer keep pretending to himself that Shane is just a 3-4 times a year hookup. When Shane visits him in Boston, Ilya decides he&apos;s gonna try to push the relationship in a less casual direction, maybe develop a deeper friendship between them where they can hang out after a hookup or watch TV together or know more about what&apos;s happening in each other&apos;s lives.<br><br>During the couch scene, Ilya is basically trying to have a define-the-relationship conversation with Shane: &quot;I&apos;m bisexual // I&apos;m guessing you&apos;re gay? // You already know I hook up with other people but it&apos;s nothing serious and I&apos;m doing less and less of that anyway (I&apos;m lazy) // Do you have anything serious going on, because it looks like you don&apos;t? // If we both don&apos;t have anything serious going on then maybe this can be our thing for a while?&quot;

  52

• ME

  @melleblanc1976 · 2 months ago

  Hudson Williams won Best Lead Performer in a drama series at the Canadian Screen Awards in May. Hudson is only 25 years old. He is the youngest actor to ever win this award.

  69

• NI

  @NickIlievski · 2 months ago

  <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hk_qmLJhzvs&amp;t=894">14:54</a> Ilya wanted to see where Shane stood emotionally and sexually. Because Shane never talks about his private life, Ilya used women as a conversation buffer to gauge if Shane viewed their secret hookups as a temporary phase before marrying a woman. By framing his feelings around casual arrangements with women like Svetlana, Ilya protected his pride while trying to drop hints and check if Shane was jealous or interested in monogamy. Ilya deliberately curated a homey environment (ginger ale, tuna melt, asking him to stay) because he was already in love with Shane and wanted more connection, even if he didn&apos;t know how to ask for it outright. The novel emphasises Shane&apos;s internal struggle with his sexuality and emotional boundaries. In the book, Shane has strict mental rules: they are rivals, it’s just sex, and they don&apos;t do real-life intimacy. The moment Ilya acts domestic, plus says &quot;Shane&quot; instead of using his last name &quot;Hollander,&quot; it shatters the barrier keeping Shane emotionally safe. Shane’s flight response leaves Ilya feeling rejected and hurt. It&apos;s simply a lack of good communication.

  64

• CO

  @Coo5kz · 2 months ago (edited)

  I’m glad you mentioned Hudson’s acting skills. He’s a very internalized character but Hudson did so great that the audience is able to know what he’s thinking or feeling without him expressing it. <br><br>Something to also notice is that when Shane is around other people - he’s actually very charming and has rizz. Examples: him chatting with Rose or when he makes jokes with his teammates in the locker room. But every time he’s with Ilya you can feel the tension and his anxiety. All he can say when he’s around Ilya is “fuck you”….

  40

• ZI

  @Zibet-cg1qm · 2 months ago

  Neither Connor Storrie nor Hudson Williams has spoken publicly about their sexual orientations, and it is not something to speculate about, in my opinion. They are actors giving brilliant performances. Hudson Williams has a girlfriend, but that does not mean necessarily that he is straight. Sexual orientation exists on a broad spectrum and other possibilities exist. Meanwhile, Connor Storrie has not said anything either way. These actors, like all of us, have a right to privacy in these matters, and it is absolutely none of anyone&apos;s business but their own.

  93

• SU

  @suse464 · 2 months ago

  The thing that makes Shane freak out in this scene is that they actually use their first names for the first time and in a very intimate moment. That shift in the level of closeness scares the hell out of him.

  121

• MA

  @mattfladude8491 · 2 months ago

  Wait until you see episode 5.

  119

• CI

  @cindym9501 · 2 months ago

  I have to say - I absolutely LOVE that you pause the video to make a comment. &nbsp;It&apos;s so rare to see that in reaction videos. &nbsp;Usually people will talk during the shots, and miss critical dialogue.

  73