Have We Reached Peak 'Heated Rivalry'?

The show was everywhere, now its stars have taken the baton. How sustainable is it?

“I was a woman possessed,” Cady Heron declares about halfway through Mean Girls, accurately clocking her descent into psychosis.

“I spent about 80% percent of my time talking about Regina and the other 20% of the time, I was praying for someone else to bring her up so I could talk about her more… I could hear people getting bored with me. But I couldn’t stop.”

I have been thinking about Cady’s obsession with Regina as it relates to Heated Rivalry, the hit series-cum-global phenomenon that came and went over a five-week fever dream that has left many of us in a state perhaps best described as post-orgasm; not quite ready to get up and towel off but also aware that we can only live so long in the afterglow.

It makes sense, really, considering the burgeoning cottage industry that’s sprung up since the show ended its run less than two weeks ago. Like many, I’ve found myself rewatching the show and clinging to every fresh piece of meat adjacent to the show that’s been thrown our way. Ember & Ice was quite satiating in giving us entirely new content that felt spiritually successive to the show, but it was even more fleeting than its predecessor. We successfully bullied Quinn into releasing the “Extended Quinn Interview with Hudson Williams & Connor Storrie” and have gotten up out of our seats in anticipation of their late-night debuts (Hudson just did an interview with CNN and will appear on The Tonight Show on Wednesday, while Connor will be on Late Night With Seth Meyers on Monday).

We’ve gotten newly released videos of the boys reacting to Episode 6, Hudson appearing in a music video and yesterday we got Connor presenting the nominees for the Actor Awards alongside Janelle James. Having trouble keeping up? Fanpages are posting Hudcon (their portmanteau) schedules.

And then there’s the influx of photoshoots — GQ Hype, Behind the Blinds, Interview, Cultured, Numero Netherlands, Timid Mag.

When Jennifer Lopez followed Hudson Williams, it made news.

Connor Storrie changing his Instagram story font also gained traction.

All this has been quenching, for sure, but it did get me wondering: When does the life cycle end?

Please don’t misinterpret this as me wanting to yuck a yum that’s given me and so many others such joy. As I previously wrote:

“I’ve loved how much Heated Rivalry has made me (and I wager others) feel a part of something at a time when isolation and loneliness are so corrosive.”

But like Cady Heron, one can only stay possessed for so long before there’s no coming back — or in Cady’s case, watch as your obsession gets streamrolled by a school bus. I’ve long been fascinated by the life cycle of a phenomenon, especially these days when Heidi Klum’s once-iconic “one day you’re in, the next day you’re out” feels surprisingly generous in times as immediate and “bus, club, ‘nother club” as these.

What’s unique about this instance is both how truncated the series timeline was (it premiered less than six weeks ago) and how long we’ll have to wait for more. “It can’t be the same time next year, because this time last year I’d written five of these, and this time this year I’ve written zero of them,” series creator Jacob Tierney recently told Variety. “So it’s going to be a little bit later, but it’s still going to be soon.” This is in line with other major tentpole shows like The White Lotus and Stranger Things in no longer being able to keep with the once familiar cadence of television as we knew it. So it’s both how light the meal was and how long we’ll have to wait for second helpings (despite the overwhelming sentiment that this food was exquisite) that makes me consider the lifeline of the aftershock, which seems poised to outpace the show’s actual air dates.

It’s all very novel in a rapidly shifting television ecosystem, which used to see shows take summer breaks as opposed to multi-year hiatuses. Television seasons used to generally be spread across 22-24 episodes, already a far cry from today’s new normal which favors tighter, more condensed storytelling. Beyond that, the episodes themselves used to be more spread out to maximize the shelf life of a show’s run. Take the final season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, for instance, which premiered in September and concluded in May. It was because of this presence in three quarters of the year that shows, especially shows targeting young adult audiences, felt so formative. They grew up with us. Some shows still stick to the old ways, notably Grey’s Anatomy, but largely the landscape (thanks or no thanks to streaming) tends to favor condensed seasons. The Pitt’s first season was comprised of 15 episodes, the latest season of Severance and The Bear were 10, the latest season of Reacher was 8, as was the debut season of I Love LA, and Heated Rivalry joins The Rehearsal in being a 6-episode watch.

I spoke about this shift in a recent episode of Shut Up Evan with guest Sarah Michelle Gellar. “I know that as a television fan — and I am a big television fan — I don’t feel like 6-episodes is enough.” At that point I turned to the camera and said: “You hear that Heated Rivalry?” And yet, everything around the show, the ancillary content arm, has made the world of the show feel both luxurious and endless. Yet, inevitably, there will come a time when we’ll have picked every piece of meat off the bones of this series as we wait impatiently for its return. Is that day soon approaching? (Tweets like: “The sauce containers at Shane’s cottage used in the burger scene with Ilya are Pgyong 350ml plastic syrup dispenser squeeze bottles, available at Walmart,” tell me that maybe we are.)

“Of course I’ve thought about this, because those butts are in my brain,” writer Rheeqrheeq Chainey told me over Instagram voice memo when I asked for her thoughts.

“There is something to that echo chamber slash silo we enter into when queer smooth brain hits with tryptophan and goes to the new year. And it is something to worry about. I think the guys have made really smart decisions in terms of how much exposure, but it’s not sustainable and it all depends on what their next move is. What are they going to give us for fashion week coming up? Which of them have projects in the chamber that could make its way out in a timely manner? We are living in a world where people lose interest really, really quickly. I don’t think gay mania will allow that to happen (shout-out to Katya) but it’s definitely something I hope their teams are prepared for — even though they couldn’t have been prepared for us to latch onto this as deeply as we have. I think the show will be shelved in our memories soon and it’s up to Hudson and Connor and the people they’re paying 25% to craft something interesting in the meanwhile.”

And that’s really where I, too, come down. I think the show’s memory will begin to wane as it fades further into the rearview. And I think that might be a good thing. I think it will give Jacob Tierney and co. time to put their heads comfortably above the water and not feel the intense pressure from a fandom fiending for more. In the meantime, I have every belief that Connor and Hudson (and let’s not forget François Arnaud and Robbie G.K.) will seize on this moment (as they have been doing) and allow this fandom to feel taken care of while also putting the necessary pieces in place to give their careers longevity and staying power.

If we’ve reached peak Heated Rivalry (at least for now) — and I’m not saying we have! — it’s comforting to know that its imprint, from its stars to the lessons Hollywood might learn from it, are only just beginning their ascent.