This Week:
- The hockey show everyone needs to watch.
- Why aren’t you watching Celebrity Traitors?
- Christmas time is here.
- The best TV show announcement ever.
- The most 2025 thing ever.
Turns Out I Love Hockey
Pleasantries are gone. Greetings, small talk, common manners? A waste of time. For the past week, any instance I’ve encountered a gay man, they’ve cut directly to the chase, whispering in a sort of thrilled, mischievous wink: “Have you seen the gay hockey show?”
Any clandestineness shrouding the conversation immediately pops like an overfilled balloon upon confirmation that both parties have, in fact, seen the first episodes of Heated Rivalry. A shriek, a moan, some performative fanning of a flushed face all follow. Blissfully, the TV show about hockey players having hot, graphic, realistic, kinda porny gay sex is not a secret.
It’s the buzziest show that’s streaming right now, and we all get to delight in, celebrate, and publicly be turned on by it.
It’s taken over social media—in a welcome turn of events, I’ve seen more screenshots of the lead actors’ butts on my timeline than news about whatever nonsense that man on Pennsylvania Ave. is up to. (The future we deserve!) Out magazine put a phrase I never thought I’d see in a headline: “‘Heated Rivalry’ Star’s Nasty Back Arch Is Going Viral.” Nasty back arch. Reports are that boilers across New York City are overheating because everyone who has seen Heated Rivalry has exclusively been taking cold showers.
At a time when there are incessant reports about how the nerds in Gen Z are offended by sex scenes in TV shows and movies, and queer storytelling and projects are the first to be canceled as programmers tighten their belts, the Heated Rivalry sensation is kind of a watershed moment.
Heated Rivalry was developed for Crave in Canada, and HBO Max scooped up distribution for the U.S. (Canadians, we thought you were all so polite and demure. We didn’t know you had this in you.) It’s based on Rachel Reid’s novel Game Changers, if you want to plan ahead for what you’re going to read on your summer beach trip.
At the start of their careers, Canadian hockey player Shane Hollander (Hudson Williams) and Russia’s Ilya Rozanov (Connor Storie) find themselves constantly paired together because they’re both the sport’s Next Big Thing. What the public doesn’t know, however, is that their spark isn’t just a rivalry. It’s a physical connection.
The show, essentially, edges its viewers. There are frequent title cards flashing how many months have gone by before they’re in the same town again, making you yearn while you watch: When are they gonna bang again, my God!!!???
The sex and nudity start with a shower scene, in which you see their butts for the first time and wonder, “How is that real? Should I have been playing hockey this whole time? Do I know anyone who is playing hockey? Should I go to the nearest hockey rink and pull up Grindr?”
Then the sex scenes start. It sounds silly, but even as far as we’ve come in representation over the years, it’s still so rare to see gay men having sex on screen and, more so, see it and actually feel like it looks like how gay men have sex in real life.
The fun part of the show, at least in the episodes that have aired so far, is that it is such a corny Hallmark romance series in every other way. And then—break out the lotion and tissues—they’re getting it on.
Mostly, at least for me, it’s extremely cool that this show doesn’t feel like it’s “just for us,” the way that queer programming often seems created by and for its niche audience. This is simply a steamy, sexy, romantic drama series that’s more in line with the taste of my aunt than the shows I usually watch.
The Gay Sex Porn Hockey Series is for everybody, and I just think that’s beautiful.
The Brits Are Doing It Better
I vowed to use this time before the chaos of the holidays to rest and catch up on sleep. Instead, I have stayed up past 2 am every night this week watching Celebrity Traitors. I have no regrets. (Well, my neighbors who hear my screamed expletives when my alarm goes off each morning after no sleep might have regrets on my behalf.)
The spin-off of the UK’s version of The Traitors first aired on BBC One in the fall, and is now available stateside to binge on Peacock. It is a perfect show.
The format is no different from the U.S. The Traitors competition that’s become so popular over the last two years, but its vibe is so different. Whereas American reality stars who appear on The Traitors are trained experts in the genre and, as such, often orchestrate TV moments, the celebrities on The Celebrity Traitors are from all walks of public life—actors, athletes, broadcasters, musicians—who lack that flipping-tables, delivering-monologues polish.
There’s a bumbling adorableness to them (complimentary, all the Brits reading this, I swear!) that I find much more fun to watch than the camera-ready machinations of the U.S. version of the show. And that goes all the way to how bafflingly—and, in turn, entertainingly—terrible they are at the gameplay of The Traitors itself. They are so bad! It’s truly astonishing.
One bit of proof of how superior this show is: In one episode, revered 73-year-old actress Celia Imrie farts during a challenge because she’s nervous. Flanking her are British TV legend Alan Carr and the venerable Sir Stephen Fry himself. (By Kevin Fallon metrics, any TV show that prominently features farts is superior.)
Could you imagine Lisa Rinna tooting on the upcoming season of U.S. Traitors? Tara Lipinski letting one rip? Make yourself a bowl of beans and binge Celebrity Traitors this weekend.
It’s Officially Time
The drag queens have parodied Christmas with musical numbers referencing bondage and butt plugs. The holiday season can officially begin.
Sure, I default to whenever Mariah Carey tells me, “It’s tiiiiiiime,” but the real kickoff to Christmas, for me over these last few years, is when RuPaul’s Drag Race legends Jinkx Monsoon and BenDeLaCreme come to New York on their annual holiday musical tour.
The Jinkx and Dela Holiday Show is an appropriate mix of satirization of our Christmas derangement and earnest embrace of it. Obviously, I cackle like a hyena each year while watching it, but, reliably, get a wee-bit misty when the leads start talking about the, to be corny, “reason for the season.”
Mariah may be the Queen of Christmas. But I’m grateful that we have two Drag Queens of Christmas on the throne, too.
Hello, Hello, Hello
I don’t know what I did to land on the Nice List this year, but Santa is giving me the ultimate gift: new episodes of The Comeback.
The two seasons of the HBO comedy starring Lisa Kudrow, airing a decade apart, are among the few examples of what I would definitively rule “perfect television.”
This week, the premise of the long-awaited (me putting tally marks on my apartment wall like I’m in prison) third season was revealed. Kudrow’s Valerie Cherish will star in the first-ever sitcom entirely written by AI.
I can’t even. I need it now.
2025, All Summed Up
Sydney Sweeney played a game on The Tonight Show where Jimmy Fallon needed her to guess that three Labubus doing the 6/7 meme were dancing behind her at a drive-thru for McDonald’s. I’m just going to let that sentence sit there.
More From The Daily Beast’s Obsessed
The 25 best TV shows, movies, and pop culture moments of 2025. Read more.
We walked a bit in Shakespeare’s shoes in honor of Hamnet being released. Read more.
You’ll never believe who showed up on Pluribus this week. Read more.
What to watch this week:
Fackham Hall: How did it take this long to get a Downton Abbey satire? (Now in theaters)
100 Nights of Hero: A fantasy movie unlike any you’ve ever seen. (Now in theaters)
Vanderpump Rules: We’re as surprised as anyone: The reboot is actually very good! (Now on Bravo)
What to skip this week:
Five Nights at Freddy’s 2: This may actually be one of the worst video-game movies ever. (Now in theaters)
The Abandons: Netflix tries to create its own Yellowstone…and epically fails. (Now on Netflix)
