Okay I guess I am going to rant about the fuck condo because I have feelings, and three (3) people said to go for it. Inspired by this post. (Blanket disclaimer that I want everyone to enjoy things how they enjoy them, this is just my personal nitpick that I'll never let go of until the day I die.)
Shane gets the condo because of his shame and internalized homophobia, AND ALSO to protect the hookups with Ilya. He can't have Ilya seen at his home, he's getting nervous about hotel meetups, but he also CANNOT stop their hookups — he can never ever let that go. So this change not only diminishes the extreme fear and shame he’s feeling, but it totally undermines Shane's insatiable horniness and absolute inability to deny sex with Ilya, despite the shame (as does the 2-year gap, but that’s a whole other thing).
Adding that gap and cutting the condo takes away Shane's fundamental characteristic of loving sex with Ilya so much that it overpowers his deep deep fear of being gay. So in the show, this positions him as wanting a real relationship much earlier in the timeline than he does in the book. Leading to the virginal-sub of all time characterization in fanon, which just isn't #myShane.
But ALSO! Cutting the condo also changes Ilya. It undermines Ilya's yearning and loneliness in the HR years. Ilya's loneliness gets a little lost in the show, with Svetlana as a real friend, not just an occasional hookup. In the book, it's so obvious in how much Ilya romanticizes Shane's life. He sees Shane's happy family from afar and tells himself he doesn't need or deserve that, while he secretly longs for it so hard. So, Shane keeping him emotionally AND physically at arms length only enhances Ilya's self-denial and makes the tuna melt scene so much more vulnerable in the book. And despite Ilya’s bone-deep yearning, even when Shane is finally wanting to be something more, Ilya is STILL reluctant to go to the cottage because he thinks it will be an indication to Shane that he wants to commit. And that makes the Skip kiss even more impactful, because it's the push Ilya needed to let himself *have this.* (And even then, they both go to the cottage expecting that this will be the end, a last hurrah kind of thing.)
Without this clear indicator of where Shane has been withholding and where Ilya has been silently wanting more, the show presents Shane as wanting a relationship since before Sochi, and Ilya as a withholding asshole who can’t make up his mind and keeps Shane hanging on.
And it kind of muddies the waters, when the book perfectly sets up the conflict in TLG: Shane's internalized homophobia & shame & insistence on secrecy (to his own comfort level) -vs- Ilya's resistance to emotional vulnerability and honesty with Shane despite his deep desire to be seen and loved loudly, because Shane has been hiding him away since 2013.
One of my favorite moments in HR is when Ilya reveals he's been longing to be with Shane in his real bed for YEARS, and it’ll always be a moment I wish we got to see. What I wouldn’t give to see Hudson’s beautiful face reacting to that reveal!
And I’ve never tried to make a tv show, so what do I know? But I fully believe they could have creatively figured out a way to adjust the sets enough to make it believably another place. They rented that whole house that was the set for Shane's apartment — they could have finagled it.
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