What rating would you give Heated Rivalry, Seaosn 1, Episode 2: Olympians?

I think the word Victor is looking for is “smutty” rather than trashy.

Also, Ilya wasn’t bored while his father was talking to the minister. He was fully dissociating. Just like at the end of the episode when Shane was leaving - again Ilya was dissociating. He is so damaged and hasn’t figured out how to deal with it, let alone how to communicate with Shane about it.

Neither of them are good communicators, and they both do things that hurt the other. But this is not an abusive relationship.

Don’t forget that Shane held Ilya at arm’s length for over two years, so the abuse runs both ways.

The show you’re thinking of was Queer as Folk.

A real relationship would have been impossible right, with who they are. By this point, they have a purely sexual relationship with maybe a bit of a crush with each other or even caught a bit of feelings with all that texting. But really, they know each other on surface level. They barely talk with each other except for the flirting.

Shane might be more needy. Ilya is bisexual, we can see that with him being with Svetlana, he can be with women publicly without any pretense. Shane we haven't seen him with any other women. We can assume he's fully gay, and Ilya is his sexual awakening so their time together might have bigger impact on him. He is also very careful, he's young, like all men, he likes sex but it's very dangerous for him to be with other men with how big he is as a celebrity in Canada and he is the face of his franchise. For him, the only person he is safe to be with is Ilya. So yeah, it might hurt him that he's been ghosted but our guy is begging to get laid!

That post-coital scene, Ilya drew the boundary of what their relationship is and Shane, I think fully understood. That first unsent friendly message "See you next summer" is him accepting that they will go on doing this accepting that boundary. "We didn't even kiss" He's not upset that they didn't kiss. He's upset that he cares they didn't kiss. He has to build better defense around his feelings.

ETA: As for Ilya, he might care for Shane but it's impossible. More so being Russian. I think their first time together, he caught feelings but being in Russia he realized the impossiblity. The bathroom scene with Sasha propositioning him, we saw that Ilya is no longer the person who "likes trouble", especially where they are. But he still checked Shane's texts. He still cares but choose to concentrate on his career after that devastating loss in the Olympics. It worked and it did ended up gaining him a cup.

I hate victor 😒