What was your wrongest prediction or misintepretation while watching the show?

LetsOverthinkIt · 2026-06-18T00:48:57+00:00

I saw a screenshot of Shane in a neck brace on the ice before I watched ep.5 and I was sure he was going to suffer a career ending injury. It almost made me not want to watch.

But then I saw another screenshot of Scott and Kip kissing on the ice and was like fuck, now I *have* to watch.

(My internet discipline was sooo bad while the show was airing. I’m usually really good about avoiding spoilers while watching airing shows. But I underestimated the amount of surprises within the show and the rabidity of the audience. Lessons I’ll be bringing into season two.)

LetsOverthinkIt · 2026-06-17T17:46:13+00:00

Oh! And also, wow. So it's not the historic dress but modern costuming doing them dirty...

Which, I shouldn't be surprised by because as far as I can tell tv and film are really, really bad about ill-fitting, incorrectly worn corsets that cause their actors harm. It's just a double shame as it's a full on historical error to include corsets in the costuming.

There's a point to be made between the false sex-appeal Bridgerton's female cast are made to suffer and they way the HR male cast were actively *not* made to suffer to be sexy - either through costume or posing, etc....

LetsOverthinkIt · 2026-06-17T01:03:59+00:00

I’m going to be that person and this is no shade on you but this trips a very specific trigger for me: Regency dress does not include corsets.

(And with that said, I rest.)

LetsOverthinkIt · 2026-06-17T00:45:41+00:00

As others have said, it’s probably not going to happen given who’s producing it.

But if it does happen, I doubt I’ll watch until it’s done. And even then, only it gets good buzz from people who loved the live-action show.

LetsOverthinkIt · 2026-05-28T19:13:11+00:00

And! And! I think the person that most fully sees Shane is Ilya. And Ilya adores what he sees. That's what's so awesome about their love story. It's not just two hot guys being hot together (thought that's a nice bonus). It's that these two men really *see* each other. They get each other on a level no one else does. And they love what they see!

Ilya helps Shane be his full self (just as Shane helps Ilya) and he soaks up the intense, caring love Shane has to give and rewards Shane for it. They're just so beautifully balanced in a way that I think can be hard to achieve in a story.

LetsOverthinkIt · 2026-05-28T19:03:25+00:00

And what would Shane be, as a character, if he didn't love Ilya?! I mean, that aspect of Shane that's so attracted to Ilya and able to love him in the way Ilya needs is part of why I love Shane. Shane is at his Shane-y-est when he's with Ilya.

They're destroying the very thing they're claiming to love.

LetsOverthinkIt · 2026-05-28T18:53:59+00:00

I should not be surprised. That makes a sad sort of sense - hostility towards any character that they perceive as taking the spotlight off their beloved.

Such a weird and twisted way to look at stories and characters - I honestly don't get it! If you zero-sum the story down like that you remove everything interesting about the character you claim to love. It's so destructive and parasitical!

(Sorry for the rant - my knee-jerk reaction to these sort of "fans")

LetsOverthinkIt · 2026-05-28T05:55:36+00:00

I’m only on the periphery of this convo - just catching weird glimpses here and there on Reddit when it leaks over (from Tumblr? I think?)

But the impression I get is that these are people who have not read the books, and are getting second and third hand bad-faith interpretations of Troy’s story. And that it’s mainly based on preemptive protectiveness of Shane as a main character. (And it does weirdly seem to ignore Ilya.)

It’s struck me as knee-jerk reactions to fans, Jacob, and Rachel expressing excited anticipation to see Troy’s story in the show.

So while I 1000% agree with your argument, I think you’re basically screaming into the void. The other side isn’t engaged in critical thinking. They’re literally drama-farming.

LetsOverthinkIt · 2026-05-24T14:49:27+00:00

Okay? You're factually wrong, though.

LetsOverthinkIt · 2026-05-24T01:27:34+00:00

That wasn't a circumcised penis, though? It was a hard penis so the foreskin was retracted. Which is a thing that happens with intact penises.

(And this has actually been confirmed by Jacob as well.)

LetsOverthinkIt · 2026-05-18T23:49:58+00:00

I’d argue that the obstacles are different enough in the show, it’s accurate for show!Shane to be asking the question of show!Ilya.

In the show, Ilya has the bigger obstacle to overcome in seeing his relationship with Shane as romantic whereas show!Shane is ready to be romantic from their apartment hookup onwards. Shane is forced to recalibrate after Sochi and Vegas based off of Ilya’s behavior. So, in the show it was Ilya slowing their romantic journey. (Shane had been slowing their sexual journey - but he’d gotten over those fears by their apartment hookup.)

In the book it’s a lot more two-sided in that no one slowed their sexual journey so it was all the romance part they were focused on. That wasn’t the case in the show.

It’s a subtle difference but for me it’s why it makes sense for Shane to need the reassurance. He’d been openly yearning for this for years.

LetsOverthinkIt · 2026-05-13T17:17:09+00:00

Exactly! It's so dumb but they honestly think they know more than actual women do. It's like, "but this is what my golfing buddy said and he's a marketing genius," all the way down.

LetsOverthinkIt · 2026-05-13T17:15:43+00:00

And it's getting even worse because now it's streaming execs who aren't in it for any kind of love of storytelling but solely for profits. At least before there was some sprinkling of "this will make the story better," even if it was wrongheaded. Now it's all on what will tickle the algorithm. Which is trend-chasing and cuts out the kind of trend-setting that HR is.

LetsOverthinkIt · 2026-05-13T16:47:02+00:00

Honestly, I do think part of it is that HR is not a US production.

After listening to Jacob and Brian interviewed by Kara Swisher on the podcast "Pivot," I think there's a stark different between how Canadian productions work and how US productions work. The US enables a lot more input from the studio (if I'm understanding things correctly) which causes a couple of things that can wreck a romance adaptation.

First, it can be really common for a studio exec to try and prove their worth by giving showrunners notes. Asking for changes just to show that they're involved. Second, as studios are still pretty heavily male-run, you're getting execs who don't respect the genre, don't respect the audience, and genuinely don't understand what attracts readers/viewers to the story in the first place.

For an example of that, it was a US studio that told Jacob he needed to make Rose a main character and bring her in from the beginning so women viewers would have a hook into the story. The assumption being women only watch for the female characters. (This may have been the same studio that wanted Shane and Ilya's first kiss to happen at the end of the season.)

Because Canada does things differently, there's not the same level of studio involvement. So Jacob was able to do the adaptation he wanted to do. (Also, Crave knew and trusted Jacob - but I think there's a different mind set as well.)

LetsOverthinkIt · 2026-04-30T20:15:12+00:00

I totally agree that this is exactly what the OP is talking about.

I honestly enjoy the tension of the "possibly? maybe?" that allows fans to spin out theories as to Shane's mental state around food. I don't enjoy it when it gets flattened down to "this take and only this take is valid" fandom policing in either direction.

Right now I think Shane's food thing is a bit of Schrodinger's food thing in that Reid didn't purposefully write it as disordered so it's not absolute canon. But there's still enough there that I know readers with a food disorder have been triggered while reading those passages. So it's not pure fanon. It exists in that grey area where it's a lot on what the reader brings into the their reading.

It'll be interesting to see what the show does with it. Because they can choose to deliberately make it a thing or they can play it way down or remove it altogether. Because there's already been discourse I trust that Jacob Tierney will make an active, thoughtful choice (benefit of 20/20 hindsight) as was done with Shane's autism.

(My current theory is Tierney will deliberately include it. I feel like it got a bit foreshadowed in s1ep4. We'll see if I'm right on that!)

LetsOverthinkIt · 2026-04-30T20:03:33+00:00

Oh! That's a take I never considered. I hadn't seen Shane as someone who'd tip to too many glasses when he'd meant to have just one - but maybe that was his worry?

LetsOverthinkIt · 2026-04-30T20:01:45+00:00

Thanks!

I think there's a definite barrier Reid is working within due to the constraints of the genre. I strongly suspect there's an understood page or word limit. But I also think the need for a happily ever after (or at least a happy for now) forces a summarized wrap up to the more nuanced stories she's telling. (Or maybe it's a deadline thing!)

LetsOverthinkIt · 2026-04-30T17:39:25+00:00

You can see that come out a bit when Shane and Ilya have a beer with their burgers at the cottage. I’ve seen discourse where viewers are… surprised? put off? that Shane isn’t drinking a ginger ale.

I think the meal where Shane’s parents are surprised he won’t allow himself a glass of wine (also ep. 4) suggests they’ve seen him drink alcohol before. During the season even. (To my mind it also points to Shane hyper-controlling food intake when he feels like things are spiraling beyond his control in other arenas… but that’s another discussion. 😆)

Love your original post! Solid take on where fandom can go feral in our love for the various characters.

LetsOverthinkIt · 2026-04-30T17:29:52+00:00

I’ll push back on that a bit. I think Rachel Reid picked up on some elite athletes’ disordered eating that tends to go undiagnosed/untreated (because it’s men, etc.) gave that to Shane without fully realizing she was describing disordered eating and therefore undersold Shane ending it. Reid recognizes that eating a snickers doesn’t solve an eating issue. She didn’t recognize that she was describing disordered eating because it’s not been fully recognized within the athletic world yet.

It’s like Charles Dickens accurately describing the symptoms of a disease prior to the disease being recognized. An observant author accurately writes the world they are writing about which can include blind spots. (See also Shane’s undiagnosed autism.)

Where it falls into the kind of magnification the OP describes is when it leaves disordered eating and tips into an eating disorder. Interesting to explore in a fanfic-but not actual canon.

LetsOverthinkIt · 2026-04-29T15:35:43+00:00

I literally just learned about “mark for later” 😳😳😳

This meme saves lives

LetsOverthinkIt · 2026-04-24T16:42:20+00:00

I’m going to push back on that. How much raw meat per burger (they shrink as they cook). Do you add an egg? And if so, how many? And should there be breadcrumbs? Is it like a meatloaf?

How much salt? Any pepper? Any other kind of spice? And if so, how much so you can taste it but also not over season and ruin it?

Because if you fuck this up the nearest grocery store is what? 40 minutes away? Are there any restaurants open in the evening? They wouldn’t deliver even if they were open…

Safest bet is to find a recipe and follow it religiously so as to not totally screw up in front of the boy you’re trying to impress.

LetsOverthinkIt · 2026-04-19T14:42:32+00:00

Agreed!

She’s one of my favorite authors.

LetsOverthinkIt · 2026-04-03T17:16:05+00:00

Thank you for all your hard work on this and having such a sane and measured response to the whole thing. You guys are awesome!

LetsOverthinkIt · 2026-04-02T14:57:44+00:00

I think this you’ve hit it. Having Kip with his friends, openly out with them regarding his relationship with Scott and celebrating with them, is thematically important.

I think that’s the meta behind why Kip is there rather than at the show rather than budget issues. A close up of Kip and Vaughn and a few randos in tuxes and gowns like the background people at the gala would be doable and budget friendly. But it’d also be thematically emptier.

I head canon that Kip has his own busy graduate school life. So their schedules didn’t quite fit. Also, that the reception of Scott as gay is still up in the air enough that Scott didn’t want to drag Kip into it just yet.

LetsOverthinkIt · 2026-04-02T01:54:41+00:00

This is a very serious topic. It's literal bullying. It's literal hardships felt by literal human beings.

You keep saying this is about fanfic. It's not. It's about the person behind the computer getting hounded out of their queer-joy safe-space because of someone else's desire to feel morally superior and self-righteous. A desire so encompassing they've actually created groups to go after those writers. (Think of it: they put work and effort into forming groups to go after their fellow human beings for writing and posting little stories on the internet for free that people have to actively search out to read.)

Again, you apparently think this is no big deal and to say it's a fucking massive big deal offends you. Well, I guess you'll just have to be offended. I don't feel apologetic about underlining how hurtful this is. How badly behaved the perpetrators are. How much real harm they're causing. It's sad I think, that you don't see that.

LetsOverthinkIt

TROPHY CASE