As described on Rotten Tomatoes, HBO’s Heated Rivalry is “(a) romance set in the world of hockey; Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov are two stars in Major League Hockey, bound by ambition, rivalry, and a magnetic pull neither of them fully understands.”
The official trailer:
One of the most talked about series of the season, Heated Rivalry portrays lots of gay sex between two very hot guys. If this is why you’ve tuned in, you may not have noticed that not much else actually happens in the first couple parts of the six-episode first season (yes, a second one is eventually in store).
Eventually, though, notes Lucy Mangan, The Guardian, “Sex becomes love (and sex) and intimacy (and sex) and the banter improves a bit. Whether it is reward enough for sitting through the first few hours is for you to decide.”
David Rooney, The Hollywood Reporter, provides a worthy answer to Mangan’s implied question: “The sexual candor, hot bodies and steamy action are the main attraction. Duh. But what sneaks up on you is the sweetness with which Heated Rivalry captures a transitional time in gay men’s lives.”
But gay hunkiness, romance, and athletic prowess aside, many of us along the way have missed another important facet of Hollander: he’s autistic.
This is not conjecture. It’s been confirmed by both the author of the novel on which Heated Rivalry is based, Rachel Reid, and by actor Hudson Williams, who plays him. Furthermore, Reid has stated that the script’s writer/director Jacob Tierney was also fully in on this (Time).
How did I and so many others—minus the many neurodivergent viewers who really understood him—not get it? Well, for one, even Reid acknowledges that when she wrote Hollander’s character she wasn’t explicitly considering autism. However, along with her real-world process of later learning more about her own child, she eventually realized why Hollander was who he was.
Then we have actor Williams, who wanted to play Hollander less stereotypically, more “nuanced.” Neurodivergent traits portrayed “include his intensity of focus, his emotional regulation, his anxiety under social scrutiny, and his deeply thoughtful approach to relationships,” states autism specialist Amanda McGuinness (Little Puddins).
In addition to Hollander having these more internally based traits, Hollander “is Asian at a time when most autistic representation is still overwhelmingly white,” Sarah Kurchak, Time, points out.
And then there’s the glaring fact that autism, of course, is never mentioned in the script. Kurchak supports this adding up—“plenty of people who thrive in a field related to their special interest don’t realize that they’re autistic until later in life, if at all…”
In the following video, Taylor Heaton, aka Mom on the Spectrum (who acknowledges she’s not a mental health professional) explains why she believes “Hollander fits the DSM-5 criteria for an autism diagnosis”; and also, why his portrayal “makes me feel so seen as an autistic adult”:
