This post will contain spoilers for the season finale of Heated Rivalry, now streaming on HBO Max, but not for a while, and I'll put another warning before we get there.
By many estimates, I'm not the target audience for Heated Rivalry, the Canadian drama about two closeted pro hockey players carrying on a clandestine affair over the course of many years. Though I'm half-Canadian myself, the good old hockey game has never been my spectator sport of choice. I'm not opposed to romance-forward stories on the screen or on the page, but nor is it a genre I inherently gravitate towards.
So why have I, along with so many more micro-targeted viewers, become so fixated on Heated Rivalry since it arrived on HBO Max a month and a half ago? Why has it become yet another instance of me falling for a show that was by design Not For Me(*)? Why don't we drop the puck and see what's been happening?