We thought we were watching a hockey show.
We were not.

On the first episode of Season 2 of Barely Edited, Bianca is joined by her first guest, Erica, where they spiral into the cultural phenomenon that is Heated Rivalry — the slow burn, the secrecy, the tension, the cottage scene, and the fact that none of us are mentally stable about it.

Why are women simultaneously turned on and emotionally devastated? Would we tolerate an eight-year situationship in real life? Is this romance… or just a red flag with good lighting? And why does knowing certain moments were improvised make it ten times sexier?

We break down obsession, domination, fantasy vs. reality, whether Shane is toxic, whether Ilya carried the emotional weight, and why women — not men — are the ones who turn stories like this into cultural events.

If you’ve developed a Russian accent in your own home, can’t get the soundtrack out of your head, or considered ice skating “for the plot”… this episode is for you.

We came for hockey.
We stayed for the tension.

Now we’re just trying to survive the wait for Season 2.

Somewhere between sober culture and scrolling culture, we lost the plot. This episode follows that thread — how going sober became the new cool, how being online became a full-time identity, and how we quietly forgot how to log off.

I talk about the rise of self-diagnosis, comparison, and jealousy as background noise, and how living online long enough changes the way you feel in your own body. And when you zoom out far enough, it all points to the same thing: why making friends feels harder than ever, why adult friendships feel fragile, and why so many people are walking around feeling disconnected without knowing how they got there.

This is a conversation about the friendship recession — the emotional cost of never signing off, and the quiet loneliness that comes with it.

This episode is a holiday-season panic attack disguised as a podcast. I ride shotgun through seasonal depression, Black Friday/Cyber Monday marketing insanity, and the endless flood of sale emails that turn “retail therapy” into retail trauma — because saving money never looked so triggering.

The anxiety of trying to survive while working nights, missing daylight for weeks, Uber becoming my makeshift chef, and realizing cooking three meals a day is a luxury even for people without kids. I talk about the grind, the burnout, and the creeping materialism — like the internet turned us into collectors of things instead of creators of memories.

Somewhere in the chaos, I get into the dating-app fatigue, the fantasy of meeting someone organically again, and the hilarious way married women gravitate toward me while I’m out here explaining, once again, why I’m actually not a lesbian. I touch on taking Plan B, questioning who the hell my pre-internet self even was, and dreaming about taking this podcast to a stage one day — Unwell, if you’re listening, hello.

It’s messy, overstimulated, under-slept, and weirdly comforting — the perfect holiday-season meltdown.