I had nothing else to watch & needed something for my workout sessions. That's the reason why I picked this up against my better judgement. As an experienced cdrama watcher I expected very little from a drama about firefighters & firefighter plus a journalist's romance. Unfortunately `A Date with the Future` is worse than I thought. Saying that everything's wrong with it is a bit hyperbolic, but there is so much wrong I won't be able to get to everything with my rather dispirited review writing here...

The comment section talked a lot about FL being a stalker, I think my fellow MDLers do have a point, though I thought this was not too bad compared to Go Go Squid, or what's worse the second ML(the firefighter, not gege) in this very drama! Since he is the real stalker here & he has done so many absolutely horrible things to chase the clearly uninterested girl that he would have deserved a restraining order or more. However this is a Chinese drama and so the stalkerish behavior plus the insane amount of forcefulness won him the girl..

The workspace related things were pretty bad for both leads, the firefighter department had an incredible amount of posturing & various direct propaganda related speeches in every single episode. The TV station did not have too much screen time, but of course they went completely off the rails there too.

Then there is the usual surgeon is good at every medical disciple, the firefighter is good at fighting not only fires, but criminals with knifes as well & the reporter is also extraordinarily multitalented being a better dog trainer then the professionals at the rescue team and she gets promoted to team leader at the TV station just by doing nothing but reporting on her boyfriends firefighting activities etc etc..

There are several really boring, silly and to me uninteresting action scenes of course, home made bombs, getting locked into the cold room, earthquakes plural.. (plentiful time spent in the hospital of course)

There was this scene when the ML & FL were hugging each other to sleep while having a burning candle in a glass jar close to them on the floor. I found it ironic how bad of a messaging that is in a show about firefighting.
Let's talk a bit about the dogs too. I generally don't like dogs as a cat person, but I have some doubts about animal handling & safety in this show.
Also at one point the team was called to "quickly" help with earthquake relief, but before going they held an effin parade in front of their buses. Like what the heck, people are dying, but you all are just parading there spinning left and right saluting to this or that, reciting speeches about unity..

Admittedly the main couple had some good moments, but I don't think the actors had particularly good chemistry & overall I wouldn't call this very good. There is an absolutely super annoying teary eyed `ge` second love interest for the FL & he only gives up in ep30. At least all his scenes are very fastforward buttonable, since he is not at all integral to the story. There is also a noble idiocy breakup, at least it happens early enough on & it's not very long, but jeez it was so awful.

Frankly I'm a bit surprised this passed censorship. Firefighting -and to a lesser extent even the military- is portrayed as an absolutely shit job that nobody should sign up for. Then again what do I know, perhaps in China they have the problem that there are too many people aspiring to become firefighters or even soldiers.

It goes without saying that I feel I have wasted my time, should have rewatched something instead for the nth time.