A lot of people will tell you they relate to Ilya Rozanov. It’s part of the reason Heated Rivalry gained the traction it did; people could see themselves in the characters both on and off the ice. Some viewers found a kindred spirit in Shane Hollander, others in Scott Hunter, or Kip Grady. For me, it was Connor Storrie’s portrayal of bad boy Ilya Rozanov that had me crying in the club.
I’m speaking from my own experience, of course. I remember watching it for the first time in December after seeing it explode all over the internet. I was completely enamored by the first episode. Yes, it was sexy, but the chemistry, honesty, and intimacy were unparalleled. Give that intimacy director a raise! I thought, Whoever they are, they know what they’re doing.
Then that scene happened.
Ilya is on the phone with his brother, Alexei, for the second time. When Ilya asks how their father is, Alexei snaps at him, saying they can all live without him. Ilya tells him that the last time he spoke to their father, he asked him to bring home bread. Cue my ears perking up. Don’t tell me it’s what I think it is. The episode ended without any further mentions of Ilya’s father, and I eagerly moved on to the second.
Oh boy. It’s episode two and Grigori can’t remember the name of the country Russia’s team lost to. Grigori aks if Ilya’s mother tied his bowtie, and then Ilya patiently but sadly reminds him his mother is dead. Goddamnit. Grigori tries his best to recover, but his ego is clearly shaken. I know that look.
So yes, I’m one of those people who sees themselves in Ilya Rozanov. Was I once a closeted bisexual? Yeah. But I also lost my father to dementia at the young age of 25.
At the end of sophomore year, my mom sat me down and explained that my dad had been diagnosed with mild cognitive impairment, a condition that is often a precursor to dementia or Alzheimer’s disease. I was just shy of my 20th birthday, and I was terrified. My grandpa, my father’s father, had had Lewy Body dementia. Is that what my dad would get? My mind immediately started racing.
She explained that it wasn’t a guarantee that he would develop Alzheimer’s. Even if he did, he could be in the mild cognitive impairment stage for years before his symptoms got worse. In reality, we weren’t so lucky. My father, only in his sixties, rapidly declined. His doctor at the local memory care clinic diagnosed him with frontotemporal dementia. If that sounds familiar, it’s the same type of dementia that Bruce Willis was diagnosed with in 2023. It’s a brutal disease, manifesting in behavioral symptoms like mood swings and compulsive behaviors, among others.
And it acts fast. My dad passed in December 2021 after only five and a half years. At the time, I was living abroad teaching English and had plans to return for the holidays. I was luckier than Ilya, however. The incredible hospice nurse assigned to us knew it would happen soon and told my mother to call me home. He passed one week to the day I arrived home.
When your parent has dementia, you start noticing how often it appears in movies and television — and how badly it’s depicted. I put most of it into two categories: hacky comedic relief or a lazy plot device. I say lazy because it’s done in a very palatable, textbook way. Confusion, memory loss, sadness;the person’s level of decline changing based on the needs of the plot.
Red’s dementia arc in Orange Is the New Black comes to mind. It bounced all over the place from mild memory loss (forgetting her recipes in the kitchen) to not even recognizing Frieda in the final episode of a season that covered roughly three months.
My favorite, though, is what I call the “Magical Alzheimer’s Patient.” These are characters that have moderate to severe dementia but are magically lucid at a pivotal plot moment. Bonus points if they only serve as a way to give the main character or love interest depth. Think Richard Jenkins’ character in Friends With Benefits (2011).
My reaction would range from mildly annoyed to tearfully upset. There were times I thought about writing letters to the creative team asking them to please, please, please pick any other disease. I felt like I couldn’t escape reminders of my father’s condition.
So when I saw that dementia was about to play a part in Heated Rivalry as well, I braced myself for impact. What stupid tropes will get my blood pressure going, and will they be enough to make me want to give up on the show altogether?
But here’s the thing: they actually did a really good job with it.
Its strength is in its subtlety. It’s a part of Ilya’s inner life outside of the main romance plot, it’s not a major part of the show.
Here’s what I thought they did right:
In the opening montage of Episode 4, we see Ilya at home giving his father medication and a glass of water. It’s just enough to let us know that his father is at the point of taking medication and Ilya participates in his caretaking. Later in the same episode, Ilya is at Shane’s apartment when he gets a call from his father. As viewers, we can tell from Ilya’s half of the conversation that Grigori is starting not to recognize people by name. “Is Polina there?” Pause. “Polina, she is your wife.” We also see him and Alexei argue when Ilya discovers that his brother has left their father home alone.
That earned some authenticity points from me. Arguing amongst the family members who share caretaking duties is a very real part of it. Seeing the way Ilya tried to shake it off as best as he could before he returned to Shane in the living room also hit home to me.
Oh, but the emotional doozy that is the hotel scene in Episode 5. Ilya and Shane finally talk about their feelings, and Ilya finally tells him that his father while unsuccessfully fighting back tears. This scene wrecked me. I mean, there were ugly tears. I felt every bit of it. Starting with “My father is very old-fashioned. And sick.”
“Oh, like cancer?”
“Dementia.”
That’s when the tears started flowing. How many times had I had that same conversation? When you’re in your twenties, people don’t expect dementia as an answer. It’s incredibly alienating, dealing with something common with people twenty or more years your senior. You cope as best you can while most of your peers are living comparatively normal lives and not balancing their parents’ mortality in the back of their minds. I used to call it my invisible cement backpack I carried with me. Five years later, my back is finally straightening out.
That’s half the reason it’s so hard to tell people; it’s an incredibly misunderstood disease. The other half is bracing for how people will react. People mean well, but the gasps and exclamations of “Oh my god, how sad!” always made me feel uncomfortable. Like I had to comfort them. The worst, of course, was when people would ask, “Does your father still remember you?” (Please, please don’t ever be that person.)
Shane’s reaction, though? Very validating. He doesn’t openly gasp; he doesn’t ask questions; he just acknowledges that it’s awful and does his best to comfort him with physical affection. He doesn’t try to offer any words of wisdom. He’s just there, allowing Ilya to cry into his chest. I can’t imagine Ilya’s internal sigh of relief. As far as we can know as the audience, Shane is the only one Ilya has told about his father’s illness. If Episode 1 was the first time Ilya noticed his father’s symptoms, he’s been carrying this by himself for six years. It made my eyes well up when I thought about that. I had a good support system who tried their best, both friends and family. They might not have always understood or known what to say, but at least they were there.
Regarding family, my heart broke for Ilya but also Alexei over the course of the episode. Alexei is not an overly sympathetic character, but I know that resentment he held towards Ilya. With Ilya away in the U.S., Alexei was Grigori’s main caretaker. He took care of his father in the last five months of his life, when his dementia would have been at it’s worst. Watching someone slowly slip away from you is a pain you don’t understand until you go through it yourself.
If Episode 4’s hotel scene wrecked me, the tunnel scene demolished me. I saw myself more in this scene than in any other. Especially when Ilya said, “I wish it could be different. I wish he could know me.” That’s something dementia takes away from you while your loved one is still here. The ability to well and truly know each other; to share things; and to have difficult conversations. If it was cancer, Ilya and his father might have had these opportunities, but not with dementia.
My father was “old-fashioned,” as Ilya says, too. Don’t get me wrong, I loved him, but our relationship was not always easy. I wish it could have been different, too. I wish he could have known the person I was becoming.
Unlike Ilya Rozanov, I wasn’t falling in love with anyone at the time. I told myself I did not have it in me to date someone seriously while my emotions were so tied up with what was going on. Before his diagnosis, I had asked my mom to tell my dad that I was bi. The thought of telling him myself filled me with anxiety. My dad surprised me, though, by having a much more relaxed reaction than anticipated. Still, we didn’t talk about it and his diagnosis came only months later.
Even after, my dad would use “he/him” pronouns referring to potential future partners for me. I didn’t correct him. What was the point? He didn’t have the same capabilities he did then and with offensive comments or aggressive outbursts as some of his symptoms. Why potentially upset us both by reintroducing that information? I wish it could have been different, too. I wish he could have known me, too. But wishing doesn’t bear fruit.
Despite all this, Ilya still admits that it kills him that he wasn’t the one to take care of his father. Ilya and his father have a strained relationship. Carrying those feelings of empathy while simultaneously carrying those memories of mistreatment is a balancing act like no other. Pair that with the struggles of anticipatory grief, the distress that comes when you’re facing a loved one’s terminal illness. When something like this happens, you don’t just forget how your parent treated you. I think my therapist put it best when she said, “It’s hard to care for someone when they didn’t do the best job caring for you in the way you needed.” Our grief contains multitudes. Like Ilya, my love for my dad won out any ill feelings between us.
This is the last we hear about Ilya’s father or his illness. “The Cottage” makes no mention of it; however, I cheered for Ilya all the same. He’s grieving, but he is still opening his arms wide to the possibility of love and a future with Shane.
Heated Rivalry does not market itself as a show about dementia or even about grief; it’s a love story. But they still handled it with care. It was never poked fun at; it never felt forced or mechanical; in fact, it was barely on screen. But I saw myself in Ilya’s struggle. His struggle to be vulnerable, and his struggle to cope. Maybe I’m projecting, but we see Ilya partying a lot in Russia and we know he’s a ladies’ man based on comments from other characters. God knows I spent enough time partying and sleepng with randos while my dad was sick. When I look back, I know that was just me trying to cope by finding someone to hold me for the night. Ilya gets all that and more.
Twenty-something bisexuals who have lost their emotionally distant fathers to dementia are an incredibly niche audience. It’s not often you get to see something that really speaks to your experience. Rachel Reid and Jacob Tierney will always have my gratitude for creating something in Ilya Rozanov that spoke to mine.
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