How “Heated Rivalry” Made Queer Romance Mainstream (Full Transcript)

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: I just want to know where the conversation is going to be going. And also, season two of the show is going to be, like, explode.

[00:00:08] Speaker 2: What I hear you saying, Ira Madison, is that you want to know where the puck is headed.

[00:00:13] Speaker 1: --ERIC LAUGHS --Ayyy. Yeah, you know, I want to see if the biscuit lands on the basket. Okay? Yes. We did get through this conversation

[00:00:24] Speaker 2: with surprisingly few sex jokes, and for that, I commend you.

[00:00:28] Speaker 1: I don't know hockey pun, so...

[00:00:30] Speaker 2: --ERIC LAUGHS --It's okay.

[00:00:32] Speaker 1: That's not my culture.

[00:00:37] Speaker 2: So, I was like, okay, I need to talk to someone about this. And the responses when you say the words, heated rivalry, that's all you have to say. They are telling, okay? Now, either dead silence, which happened to me on a TV set this morning of straight men wearing suits talking about Venezuela, we're talking dead silence. What is that? Is an actual phrase that was said. But then among the young women I know...

[00:01:06] Speaker 3: --ERIC LAUGHS --Mm-hmm.

[00:01:07] Speaker 2: ...it is, oh, what? Thoughts? And then there's, like, a movement of gay men that are like, okay, fine, I watched it, and I have thoughts, and maybe dreams. You know what I mean? Bittersweet reminiscence. So, it sort of is a show that demands a response. And I wanted to start with that. Let's just start with the premise. Closeted gay hockey players who have a fiery sexual love affair over the course of, what, 10, 15 years. That's what the books are about, a series, and that's what the show is about. But why do you think people respond to it?

[00:01:55] Speaker 1: What's so interesting about this show is that obviously people are responding to it because the men in it are hot. You know, Connor and Hudson are gorgeous. Francois and Robbie, who play Scott and Kit in the secondary storyline, are gorgeous. Who you're referring to by their first names

[00:02:15] Speaker 2: as though you are friends. --ERIC LAUGHS --You do not know these people, Ira. --ERIC LAUGHS --Which is an important point. It's an important point.

[00:02:24] Speaker 1: It's an important point here. I do know Francois personally. Oh, what?

[00:02:28] Speaker 2: Como, I got to rewrite the intro. That's the only thing I care about now.

[00:02:33] Speaker 1: --ERIC LAUGHS --They are gorgeous, you know? And, um...

[00:02:38] Speaker 2: And Connor Story, is that his name?

[00:02:41] Speaker 1: Connor Story, yes.

[00:02:42] Speaker 2: I hear he is the child of two bodybuilders.

[00:02:45] Speaker 1: It makes sense.

[00:02:47] Speaker 2: He is genetically designed to look incredible.

[00:02:50] Speaker 1: Look at the body. I think Hudson Williams came in and was like, he's excited for season two because they didn't have time. It's such a small budget and it happened so quickly, right? That they jumped right into filming. And he was like, I wish I had had time to work on my glutes a bit more and get my ass up in this shower in the sex scene, right? Because from the jump, if you look from the first episode, people were talking about, look at Connor's ass. And people were like, how can I get that? Like, I feel like from the jump... You can't.

[00:03:28] Speaker 2: That's why this is the public service we're providing here, is that it is genetic and that you cannot.

[00:03:34] Speaker 1: But also, they're hot. The story is sexy, it's a fun romance. And also, it was inspiring, things like that. You know, I feel like my Instagram feed immediately jumped to fitness influencers showing what you need to be doing in the gym so you could work your butt out, you know? And I think that it's woken up so many aspects of culture that I really haven't seen something like this in a minute, particularly since culture is so fragmented.

[00:04:11] Speaker 2: Yes, and I think you pointed out in your writing that it is, one of its episodes, is like the second highest of all time, like...

[00:04:19] Speaker 1: On IMDb, the highest rated, like, after the Ozymandias episode of Breaking Bad, which is legendary here, you know? And even shows that were big like that, I compared the show to Sex and the City, a bit just in the fantasy of it, but also Rachel Reed, a bisexual woman, who wrote the original Game Changers series that this is based on. It's a little... And being adapted by Jacob Tierney, a gay man, reminds me a bit of Darren Star and Michael Patrick King adapting Sex and the City and, you know, writing these women characters, you know? It's sort of creating this fantasy world that people really want to be a part of. And you see how much Sex and the City has permeated culture, even to this day, right? Like, I used to live on Perry Street.

[00:05:08] Speaker 2: Every time you put girls in an apartment. Yeah, you have to be compared to this show.

[00:05:13] Speaker 1: I mentioned it in the piece, I believe. I used to live on Perry Street in the West Village, like two blocks from the exterior to the Terry Branch Hall brownstone. And still, every day, it was crazy getting past it. In college, I also worked at Magnolia Bakery. And so, like, this is years ago where people were coming in for the cupcakes and the Sex and the City tour. But it's reminding me a bit of, now, Mad Men didn't get the ratings that this show got, which is actually a surprise to most people. Mad Men was actually not a high-rated show. Mad Men was not that high-rated show. Let's just... It permeated culture, right? In the sense that Banana Republic had Mad Men clothing. Like, people were talking about Mad Men style in the workplace. You know, and people were discussing the episodes online. And I think it's been really a minute since we've had a television show where we can discuss it in different avenues of culture. Bitness, sex, you know, women's interests, like, gay men's interests, et cetera. Like, even the bigger shows, like A Succession, or, like, maybe Game of Thrones a bit. You know, even those can only go so far within the culture. You know, there's not, like, the Game of Thrones diet.

[00:06:34] Speaker 2: You know why? Because those shows are about power. And these shows that we like, and by we, I'll say women, and, um, LGBT, are about feeling powerless. Like, if you know what it's like to live with limitation, to me, that was one of the things that I've been mulling over, which is this world of women who write gay romance, and the world of women who read it, and, like, what it is that we're all responding to, other than physiques, okay? And my number one theory is, uh, we know how to live in a world in which you are in a cage, or limited in one way or another. And number two, intimacy, which television, movies, they do very, very, very, very poorly. Um, authenticity is hard, but intimacy is even harder. And by the end of these episodes of this show, what you are seeing is sex that is, um, intimate enough that you look away, because you feel like, this is a moment I shouldn't see. Not because it's gay men, but because you're like, oh, my gosh, this is like a real moment some people are having. And I realize I hadn't felt that since, um, Spike Jonze's the movie Her, where there's a sex scene between the main character and his AI chatbot, and it's done completely in the dark. You're just listening to it. And I was in the theater like, I, I, I don't, I shouldn't be here. Those are all my theories. You say if they're wrong.

[00:08:02] Speaker 1: Yeah. No, I, I completely agree. I mean, for one, think about where we are in culture now. I mean, first of all, there's that, is having a boyfriend embarrassing article, right? That went viral this year. And it is the fact that trying to date, and, you know, as a millennial, what I am, you know, Gen Z trying to date, it's like, oh, people older are trying to date. It is, it is a mess, you know. It's hard. You're constantly talking about how dates are bad, interactions are bad, and intimacy is something that we don't even have in our own lives, you know. It's, I remember the, it was obviously the little controversy that came out when Jordan Firstman from I Love L.A. just sort of said that this doesn't resemble real gay sex in a way. And, you know, I think that's what's happening right now. Sex in a way. And I found that that was actually so telling just from the perspective of what we expect as gay men. You know, you expect like this hookup that you have with this person. Um, maybe you'll never hear from them again, or maybe you'll run into them in your tight queer circles. And, you know, maybe you'll say hello or hi, but that intimacy isn't there. And this takes this meeting between these two. They don't even hook up the first year that they meet each other, you know? Like, they have this intimacy and the hookup later. And it's over years, and they keep coming back to each other, and the romance of it, um, it might seem crazy, quoting Toni Morrison right now. Um, but I was reading, um, Playing in the Dark last night. Um, and she was talking about romance, you know, as sort of like this, um, construct, um, in American literature. And the American literature version of romance is sort of about Americans' fear of being outcasts, uh, failing, of powerlessness, their fear of, like, nature, and their fear of the absence of civilization, their fear of loneliness. And I feel like this show responds to loneliness that people are feeling right now.

[00:10:14] Speaker 2: I'm so glad you're saying this. So to help people along, or if you decide to engage in this, one of the characters is a celebrity in Russia where he fears he cannot go back if he is outed in any way because of the way the culture and the law treats lesbian and gay people. Uh, and the other one is a kind of a perfectionist who's lost the plot. He doesn't know how to be himself. And at the end of the day, it's hockey, and there aren't any out hockey players. So we know that...

[00:10:43] Speaker 1: And canonically autistic as well. Oh, I forgot about that. Neurodivergent.

[00:10:47] Speaker 2: So you see all these depictions that you're at home watching in something that's very glossy and fun. And I was thinking of, like, The Hunting Wives, which is also glossy and fun, and which also has same-sex sex. And it is a completely different feeling. Like, everything about it is so surface, so performative, so being... I joke that it's just, like, only fans. You know what I mean? It doesn't commit. It's just not for anything except for...

[00:11:16] Speaker 1: It doesn't commit to the romance. It wants to be Desperate Housewives. It wants to be Desperate Housewives, and it's just desperate, unfortunately.

[00:11:24] Speaker 2: Like, if you typed into the AI, what if the Desperate Housewives start kissing? Right. That's the show that would be made.

[00:11:31] Speaker 1: Mm-hmm. And I think you brought up Chrono Stories character, Ilya, who is Russian and afraid to come out. I think the last part of that Tony Morrison quote is, you know, romance is also about the, um, aggression of both external and internal, and it's about romance frees you from that. We're watching this show, and there's this idea that the homophobia exists, um, but we're not seeing people hurling slurs at them.

[00:12:02] Speaker 2: It's not an after-school special.

[00:12:04] Speaker 1: No, it's not. And even, um, and the internal, you know, um, stuff, we see that, but not too much, because the show's called Heated Rivalry, right? And we don't even really see a lot of this alleged rivalry in the actual show. When you read...

[00:12:22] Speaker 2: We see it alluded to in press conferences.

[00:12:24] Speaker 1: Right. You know, it's... I've been actually reading the series, Rachel Reid's series. And the series gets into, like, the homophobia in the NHL. The series actually gets into the real rivalry between, um, Shane and Ilya. Like, they actually do have this hatred and anger towards one another that boils into, um, romance. It is the real enemies-to-lovers trope that exists in romance. And the show sort of glosses over that a bit, but necessarily so. They had six episodes.

[00:13:02] Speaker 2: You know, last year, when Jonathan Bailey, who's the actor in Wicked, he was in Bridgerton, he got the Sexiest Man Alive cover for people. And he had said in an interview, that as an actor, he was activated by Brokeback Mountain. So, this movie comes out in 2005. He's a young man in college, and he is like, I now, I need to learn more about queer cinema. And he, like, gets into this whole world. But it made me think of the fact that when that movie was being made, there was a lot made of the fact of the A-list actors who had turned it down for a variety of reasons. The names that came up or were rumored at the time, Brad Pitt, Matt Damon, Leonardo DiCaprio, Mark Wahlberg, who allegedly thought it was too graphic in its depictions of sex. And it was a big deal. It was brave for these two straight actors to portray a pretty staid love affair between stiff cowboys, stiff upper-lipped. Sorry, this is the kind of episode where everything is going to be inappropriate. But it was, everything about it was sort of, um... prestige and glossy. And this is just like, people call it just hockey smut. Like, you know, like, Ethan Jacob Tierney is like, yeah, like, this is just a sexy, fun thing. But are we in a better position in the culture to embrace what it's doing? And the people who are in it, and the actors themselves. Like, I for once felt a distance between Brokeback Mountain and now.

[00:14:42] Speaker 1: Yes. I mean, first of all, Brokeback Mountain woke it up for so many gay men of a certain age. You know, I think, like, the final essay in my book is about Brokeback Mountain.

[00:14:54] Speaker 2: Oh, really? Why didn't you let me lecture you on Brokeback Mountain, Ira Madison III? You should have been like, shut up.

[00:15:01] Speaker 1: You were cookin'. You were cookin'. Um, but Brokeback Mountain... There's also the shame that's in it, though, too. You know? And it's glossy, and it's prestige, but it's also, it's sad to watch. It's super sad. It's a romantic tragedy, you know? And, um, this is not. It follows the tropes of, like, male-male romance novels. Like, it has the happily ever after, or, um, happy for now. And obviously, the series ends with, um, them driving off into the sunset. But it gives a happy for now, um, moment. Because it's not happily ever after yet. They haven't come out yet. Uh, they have not, um, been able to live their truth yet, but they are happy with one another. Uh, and they've been open and honest with one another. I also think what's different, too, about this moment in time is these boys are everywhere. Okay? You have people... You have celebrities on the red carpet, like Miley Cyrus recently, who was like, I want to do the music for season two. Everybody is talking about Heated Rivalry. They're making their late-night debuts. They are going to be presenting at the Golden Globes. It is back then, it was a little bit of, I don't want to do this gay movie, you know? Like, what's it going to do to my career? What's it going to do to my career? Even, remember, Will Smith had talked about how he was urged against playing gay, uh, for Six Degrees of Separation. Back in the day. Meanwhile, these two come out in this show. It is a phenomenon instantly. A million, over a million Instagram followers instantly. People are talking about it. The magazine covers crazy. Which it, people really need to understand how crazy the whole media blitz for this show is, too. Because when you are interviewing a celebrity, right? Like, like Timothee Chalamet, or Marty Supreme, or Michael B. Jordan for Sinners, it is, you get them on your cover, and that means that the other magazines aren't getting them on the cover. You know, like, that's the get. You know, you have to reach out and get them. Because this show was only six episodes, because it was such a media blitz, because everybody was talking about it, every outlet wanted a piece of the pie, and every outlet did not care that... GQ didn't care that New York Times just did something about it, you know? They didn't care that them did something about it. It doesn't matter anymore. It was everybody wanted their piece of heated rivalry, and the fans just continued to eat it up on social media. And I think just with seeing how these two are embraced right now, I would be shocked if there weren't a ton of actors calling up their agents, being like, where's my heated rivalry?

[00:18:00] Speaker 2: It's time. It's time. Where is my heated rivalry? Yeah. Well, can I go back in time for a minute? I think one of the things, um, when you grew up at the age I did, like 80s, 90s, um, number one, Rock Hudson and the death of Rock Hudson was a turning point in the conversation about AIDS. And Rock Hudson had been this actor who was so known for being a romantic lead. So I think of that as an inflection point. Later, you have some, like, you know, new queer cinema and all kinds of things that kind of create a niche environment. But I think people forget that Hollywood enforced silence... -...on gay and lesbian actors, right? They had immorals clauses. They used private detectives to follow people around. They demanded that they be in lavender marriages. There's some cultural, uh, overhang here in our history that would make it hard, right, for a Jonathan Bailey to exist even ten years ago. Because it's this idea that somehow no one will believe that a queer person could be a romantic lead of anything. That they needed to somehow be believable. Whereas to me, I'm like, mm, it's called acting. Like, literally, the point is as long as you're convincing, you're in, you know? Like, I don't really need to be the... I don't need that level of realism. Um, and anyone who has watched Bridgerton knows that Jonathan Bailey was very good at looking like he's in love, you know? He could probably do it with a plant. He could probably do it just like a phone.

[00:19:34] Speaker 1: Girl, I'll be a plant.

[00:19:35] Speaker 2: Yeah. -...-... But just think about how we were in this age where it was like, it's not marketable, it's not bankable, it'll hurt your career. And the top grossing actor of last year... was an openly gay man. The hottest actors of the moment are men portraying gay men in a love story. And now, things have changed. Now it's like people ask them about their sexuality and like, they don't want to say.

[00:20:06] Speaker 1: Yeah, um, it's so interesting. Which is a twist. Yeah, you know, what's so funny, I mean, you brought up Ron Hudson, right? I mean, his manager was outing his other clients to keep Ron Hudson out of the papers, you know? Are you serious? I didn't know that. Yeah, look that up. It's like, he was, the papers, they knew the T, they knew the word on the street about Ron Hudson, obviously. And, you know, you had to give something to the gossip columnists to get them to not report on Ron Hudson. So, the girls who weren't stars were getting thrown under the bus at the time. But, um, yeah, Jonathan Bailey is still fantastic, you know? And he's been in Wicked, he was in that Jurassic Park movie, which I saw.

[00:20:48] Speaker 2: Yeah, but the premise was that we, as straight women, would not believe these men could be romantically.

[00:20:54] Speaker 1: Right, I think that this is sort of that tipping point, you know? And I think that a lot of people have discussed whether or not a coming out story is retrograde and whether or not we're going backwards in queer representation, and I would argue...

[00:21:09] Speaker 2: Are you talking about Stranger Things right now, Ira? --No. --Just say Stranger Things, okay?

[00:21:15] Speaker 1: Um, but I think it's actually a step forward, you know? It is, we haven't had gay romance on television. And in film, really, you know, we get a lot of realistic thing, indie things, we get stuff that is painful, traumatic, but what about the romance? And it's not just the romance, it's drama. It's high drama. I have written on many queer shows that have been canceled, um, all of them by Netflix, my op, and, um... I'm so sorry. It's okay, you know, Uncoupled, starring Neil Patrick Harris, which was a comedy about his marriage ending and being back out there in the dating world. And that was sort of in the vein of Sex and the City, right? But that was not giving fantasy, it was comedic, and it was about, you know, how hard it was for him to get into, like, the modern dating world. What's really different about Heated Rivalry is it is not, at its core, a comedy. It's a romantic drama, and that is just what we have not had.

[00:22:26] Speaker 2: I was crying. I was crying watching this show.

[00:22:29] Speaker 1: I was crying. People have been crying. I've been re-watching it. Um, I can't remember the last time I was re-watching a show right after it aired, you know, it reminds me of fucking like in high school.

[00:22:44] Speaker 2: Going back to Brokeback, which now I know you know about. We all know about Brokeback. We're all on the mountain. Yeah, but not in the footnotes, okay? So, the thing about Brokeback Mountain that I remember and that people will notice on re-watch is you have these women characters, Michelle Williams, um, and Hathaway, and their characters are disgusted, ashamed. They feel as though they've been duped. And there's all of these emotions that fall into the trope of, um, being gay, being bisexual is duplicitous by nature. And being closeted is about being duplicitous instead of it being seen as this struggle. And what happens in Heated Rivalry that I find fascinating and that I think other women might be responding to is we're not the villains of this show. And in fact, they're people who are allies not to pump themselves up, but to say to these men, -"I will be with you." --Mm-hmm. In whatever form our relationship needs to take. And they even models ways to have a conversation with somebody where you might realize, like, well, wait a second. I'm not sure I'm the right partner for you or the right gender for you. And I don't think I've ever seen that on TV or anything. Just like, how should you have that conversation where you don't want to be hostile, but you want to say, hey, am I sensing something? Is there something you want to talk about? Is there something you're struggling about in your life? And, um, that's what I re-watched is the two scenes with their sort of female partners, so to speak.

[00:24:27] Speaker 1: Yes, Rose, shout-out to her for that great conversation she has with Shade. And then, but then also, shout-out to Elena, who, um, is Kip's best friend and champions him to be in a relationship with a man who is out of the closet. And say, you deserve more. Yeah, you know, you deserve sunshine, as she said. Um, she said he deserves sunshine, and you do too. She said that to Scott Hunter, giving me, first of all, giving me scandal flashbacks. With, I want to stand in the sun. Come on.

[00:25:00] Speaker 2: Yeah, but it's somebody, you go to someone who your best friend is dating, and your best friend's dating this hockey player, and you're so excited for him, and you're the one, as the friend who goes to the hockey player, and says, you might be amazing, but as long as you keep my friend in the closet with you, this is not good for you or for him. And I remember thinking, that is a very sophisticated conversation to be having on this, like, very random little Canadian TV show.

[00:25:26] Speaker 1: It's also very tender, and also very motivating as well, because it's not the friend going, this isn't a good relationship for my friend. You need to break up with him. This isn't a good relationship for either of you. I want the best for you as well. I'm actually not shocked that this little Canadian show is just doing it, because the Canadian shows, I mean, we remember Degrassi.

[00:25:53] Speaker 2: HAHAHA. The problem is, there's been too many years of, like, not as good Degrassi. Sorry, haters. Um, in my opinion, I'm a very old school Degrassi person. And, like, I know the Drake era Degrassi has its fans.

[00:26:09] Speaker 1: Yes.

[00:26:10] Speaker 2: But...

[00:26:11] Speaker 1: Schitt's Creek.

[00:26:13] Speaker 2: Okay, that's fair.

[00:26:14] Speaker 1: You know, Schitt's Creek was a very, um... That had a lot of beautiful, tender moments with David and his partner, you know? Like, it was a comedy as well, you know?

[00:26:29] Speaker 2: But you're saying there's something to the smallness that allows them to cook, so to speak, without a lot of other chefs in the kitchen.

[00:26:37] Speaker 1: Yeah, I was about to say, there's not too many cooks, you know? There's not executives with, you know, their opinion on, like, how this is going to relate to middle America, et cetera.

[00:26:49] Speaker 2: Larry Wilmore said on this show, sometimes anything good that gets made, it is a miracle, you know? It is a grain of sand that becomes a pearl. Um, and you, and sometimes it's just luck. And I do think there's some luck in how this show was able to, um, survive and then thrive. I mean, especially when I listen to the long list of shows you've worked on, right? And that all would seem to have the ingredients. But this feels like between the massive audience for romance novels that exist right now, that are sort of propping up the book publishing industry, and their embrace of this as intellectual property and as well-executed intellectual property. Like, they did the books right. I think that was a great jumping-off point to get where we are now, where I'm watching Andy Cohen and Anderson Cooper giggle about it... with Stephen Colbert on New Year's Eve.

[00:27:44] Speaker 4: By the way, Evie is, Evie is, Evie is the top in their relationship, I found out this year. Oh, my God, what is that? Yes. What? It's true. But I'm a bossy bottom. Yes. Stephen Colbert is a bossy bottom. Yes, he is. You're not, this is... Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Has heated rivalry made everybody insane? Yes.

[00:28:12] Speaker 2: Yeah, it was explicit. I was like, what is happening right now? Stephen Colbert is like, what is happening right now? And of course, what was the kickoff point? Heated rivalry. Just two words.

[00:28:27] Speaker 1: You know? And there's already been, I think there was another male-male romance novel that a gay man wrote, actually, that was greenlit into, I think, like a Hulu or Netflix film right after the success of Heated Rivalry. And I think there's gonna be more. There's gonna be a tournament.

[00:28:47] Speaker 2: A tournament. Oh, no.

[00:28:49] Speaker 1: You know, I am sure that there are tons of execs with these books, you know, well, there are tons of assistants with these books on their desks, and they're gonna be writing coverage to send to their bosses.

[00:29:01] Speaker 2: Heated rivalry, but with football. Heated rivalry, but with chefs. Heated rivalry, like I can see the machine preparing to turn them out.

[00:29:10] Speaker 1: I, man, I'll watch them all. I've watched every Sex and the City knockoff back in the day, you know?

[00:29:17] Speaker 2: Oh, yeah. Yeah, that's fair.

[00:29:19] Speaker 1: Couchmare Mafia, Lipstick Jungle.

[00:29:21] Speaker 2: Oh, no.

[00:29:22] Speaker 1: Come on. No, no.

[00:29:25] Speaker 2: Those shows were bad. Those shows were really bad. Yeah. I can't. I can't. Okay, well, one of the things I want to end with is just, as a kid who grew up watching a lot of TV, as a person who writes about it, who writes TV, for you, what has been the most, like, fun and what's been the most emotional thing you have felt as this little cultural firestorm has kicked up?

[00:29:55] Speaker 1: What the most fun things has honestly been the debate. I really actually enjoy...

[00:30:01] Speaker 2: Which one?

[00:30:02] Speaker 1: The debates amongst gay men about whether or not the show is good, whether or not the show is retrograde. Like, the people who don't like it, I'm enjoying those takes as much as I'm enjoying the takes from people who do like it because that means it's part of the cultural conversation. You know, if people were ignoring it, that would be worse.

[00:30:26] Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, nobody's talking about Marty Supreme like this. You know what I mean? Well, no, I'm serious. People don't talk about... I'm hearing people talk about plot nuances.

[00:30:38] Speaker 1: Oh, yes, okay. They're talking about Timothee Chalamet.

[00:30:41] Speaker 2: Yeah, they're just talking about the A-list of it all or it's a good, bad general. But when I talk to someone about this, they say, you know, in episode four, in episode five, when they have this particular conversation, when they're like, I'm actually shocked at the amount of... To me, that's always the highest compliment, even when I do a news story. Do people ask me about me or do they ask me about the story? And with this, I find, depending on the person I'm talking to, they often bring up, once we giggle, once we get past the giggle over the sex, they point something out.

[00:31:14] Speaker 1: Yes, well, in this day and age, media literacy is always shocking. So I am happy that people are... discussing the nuances of it. Yeah, like I said, it reminds me of when I was younger and was watching, you know, like, the Buffalo Vampire Slayer. And I'd be, like, discussing with friends, like, this episode, this episode, you know? It's, you discuss that with a show you really love. So that's been the most fun part of it. And, I don't know, like, the sweetest part of it has just been just, like, watching it. I'm a romantic person, you know? Like, I grew up on melodramas, Hollywood melodramas, watching it with my grandmother. I watched soap operas with my grandmother. I still watch Days of Our Lives to this day on Peacock.

[00:31:56] Speaker 2: Oh, I still watch General Hospital.

[00:31:57] Speaker 1: Right, you know? And, like, Pedro Almodovar is my favorite director. And that is, like, big melodrama. And I just am so excited that there is a... really popular queer version of that. And hopefully that will give, um, inspiration to other queer writers. And just also give an opportunity to other people already telling these stories. Maybe people will be seeking them out now. And so, um, yeah, I'm just happy about the whole thing, to be honest. I'm very uncynical about this entire thing right now, which is a shock for me, you know? Oh, really? Yeah, you know, but, um, listen.

[00:32:40] Speaker 2: I don't feel cynical about it at all.

[00:32:42] Speaker 1: Oh, no, no. I mean, I'm shocked that I don't feel cynical. Yeah. I think for me, part of it is,

[00:32:47] Speaker 2: uh, queer television, there's always been this conversation about it, and whether or not it's transformational for the culture, right? A little bit of, like, Ellen is not just Ellen. You know what I mean? Like, it becomes this... Will and Grace is not just Will and Grace. Like, the idea that sometimes these depictions, particularly for this community, um, because I don't think it happens with, like, every Black TV show that comes on, right? It was sort of like the Cosby show in a different... And then we were like, okay, we're good. We know you can be doctors. Um, but somehow... with these other shows...

[00:33:25] Speaker 1: But never again.

[00:33:26] Speaker 2: Never again. Yeah, yuck. Um, but I feel like with queer actors in cinema and, like, how that conversation happens, each time there's an inflection point, it feels really like it moves the boulder a bit more. Mm-hmm. Because I know, like, there's gonna be teenage kids watching this, right? And, like, this will be their queerest folk. Or whatever the thing is. And it will mean something to them.

[00:33:55] Speaker 1: Yeah, and the fact that it's a television show is important, you know? Television is... Thank you. ...for the masses, you know? It is not an Oscar-winning film like Moonlight, which I love, obviously, but that is obviously going to be a film that is seen by a smaller section of Americans. Um, not even just because...

[00:34:20] Speaker 2: And there's a reference to it in the TV show, which I love. I was like, security, I see you.

[00:34:24] Speaker 1: Yeah, and not even just, um, because it's queer, a queer storyline, just because it is, like, an indie movie, you know?

[00:34:34] Speaker 2: Exactly. But I know what you mean. TV's in the ether. So if you're in a classroom and you hear kids talking about this show, and they're talking about it positively, that's like, to me, one more conversation that can be had...

[00:34:47] Speaker 3: Yeah.

[00:34:48] Speaker 2: ...without the scaffolding of pain, homophobia, confusion. Like, that's something television can do sometimes.

[00:34:55] Speaker 1: It was over winter break, obviously, when the show, like, picked up. So, the next conversation I want to be hearing about regardless of heated rivalry is, are the kids discussing it in school? You know, I remember when the OC debuted, it debuted in the summer. Seven episodes debuted in the summer before we started school again. And then I got to school, and it was, the girls talking about the OC, but it was also, like, straight guys on, like, the basketball and football team talking about the OC. Like, we were all watching it. And so...

[00:35:28] Speaker 2: And the Poptimists writing critiques that were like, this class drama set in California. I'm like, it's not that deep, but yeah.

[00:35:36] Speaker 1: I don't know, because there's a podcast, Empty Netters, right? Which has been straight men recapping the show and having a fun time watching it. And, yeah, I just want to know where the conversation is going to be going. And also, season two of the show is going to be, like, explode.

[00:35:55] Speaker 2: What I hear you saying, Ira Madison, is that you want to know where the puck is headed. -♪ Hey. ♪ -♪ Hey. ♪

[00:36:03] Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, I want to see if the biscuit lands in the basket, okay? Yes.

[00:36:09] Speaker 2: We did get through this conversation with surprisingly few sex jokes. And for that, I commend you.

[00:36:15] Speaker 1: I don't know hockey puns. So...

[00:36:18] Speaker 2: It's okay.

[00:36:19] Speaker 1: That's not my culture. So... It's not your ministry.

[00:36:24] Speaker 2: That's what I was going to say. That's not my ministry.

[00:36:26] Speaker 1: Yes.

[00:36:27] Speaker 2: Um... Okay, well, thank you so much for doing this. And tell everyone where they can find you. Is it a substack? Is it, like, give us the... The contacts.

[00:36:38] Speaker 1: Uh, I do have a newsletter at iramadison.substack.com. I... But mostly, check out my book, Pure Innocent Fun Essays. It's in bookstores now.

[00:36:51] Speaker 2: Okay. Ira, thanks so much.

[00:36:53] Speaker 1: Thank you.