Welcome to my weekly blog post where I give thoughts on dramas I’m watching but not recapping.
This week I finally got back into recapping, and posted the first 2 episodes of Oh No! Here Comes Trouble. This is a truly excellent show that I would not hesitate to recommend to people who don’t have any interest in Asian dramas.
Today I’m going to do something a little different, and instead of doing the final reviews of the two Chinese firemen shows I just watched, I’m going to pit them against each other.
It’s the competition no one asked for:
Fireworks of My Heart – 我的人间烟火 – 2023 (Pictured – Right)
A recently aired Chinese rescue-romance drama with 40 episodes.
A fire chief and an emergency doctor reunite 10 years after a failed high school romance, saving lives and getting to know one another again.
VS
A Date With The Future – 照亮你 – 2023 (Pictured – Left)
A recently aired Chinese rescue-romance drama with 36 episodes.
A High School girl is rescued by a young man after an earthquake and promises to meet him again 10 years later. It’s 10 years later, and he doesn’t remember her.
I don’t feel too bad about pitting these shows against each other because they have a lot in common.
- They both recently aired
- They are both adaptations from novels with that feeling of heavy editing for TV/censorship purposes
- Both have too many episodes
- They both have characters conveniently teleporting to locations with no internal logic so that dramatic events can occur
- They both revolve around the only fire station and hospital that exist in a large metropolitan area so that everything can occur at these two places
- They both have lead characters that cause life-threatening disasters to appear near them
- They both have cars parked in the fire road and angry drivers
- They both have firemen dealing with PTSD
- They both have earthquakes
- They both have male leads getting buried under rubble.
- They both have lead characters meeting again after a long period apart (along with 80% of all dramas)
- They both have rescue dogs
- They both have female leads with unreasonable mothers
- They both have other things that feel more spoiler-y so I’ll spare you
So which one should you watch? Or should you watch both? Or neither?
The answer is probably the last one because neither show is particularly good. But if you’re dying to watch a Chinese fireman show, here’s how I saw the differences.
The writing is mediocre with both shows, but it’s worse with A Date With The Future. When not a firefighting show it was an uninspired trope-y romance.
The second couple, a younger fireman and a cold doctor with trauma in her past, I liked almost as much as the main couple. The third couple was the abusive rival for our female leads love and the poor actress who fell in love with him because he was there. Since he never demonstrated any loving action towards the actress, various other characters gaslit her by telling her that he really cared for her. I did not enjoy any of their scenes.
Our male lead lost a lot of grumpiness as he fell more in love and I missed that aspect of his character. Our female lead and everyone at her work became worse at handling her evil coworker as the episode count increased. This evil character’s actions were so blatantly evil that the only explanation for them allowing her to continue and falling for her evil is that they all got stupid.
By contrast, Fireworks of My Heart made a little more sense. The female lead’s parents were the evilest parents I’ve seen and allowed to stay in her life with the usual “but they love her” handwaving of these dramas, but at least they had motivations and a logical reason why they could continue to be evil without everyone around them being dumb. The brother of the female lead was a pathetic and twisted man with a butterfly obsession and an interesting subplot that felt worth my attention.
From what I understand, the actor playing the brother in Fireworks of the Heart is getting a lot of attention in China. This makes sense, as he is the best actor of the leads on the show. The female lead is fine, but Yang Yang is visibly working on his acting on screen. He also has a slim build and a habit of holding himself like the dancer he is, chest high and presentational. William Chan in A Date With the Future is the more believable fireman.
As far as the rescue scenes, which were the most interesting part of both shows to me, I prefer A Date With The Future’s. They were interesting and easy to understand and I found myself engrossed in seeing how they would get out of them. My main criticism is that the main characters often took actions during the rescues that didn’t sit right with me, and felt more dangerous than smart.
But I prefer that over the heavy nationalistic glory and self-importance that permeated not just the rescue scenes, but the entirety of Fireworks of My Heart. The rescue scenes weren’t bad in general, they were filmed more cinematically, but they were often less interesting because they focused so much on the glory and nobility of the firemen and citizens facing hardship. This isn’t to say what firemen do isn’t important and noble and the kindness of the average person isn’t touching, but I didn’t need the show to constantly tell me that with swelling music and slow motion and hero shots.
Fireworks of My Heart also had more moralistic scolding of ‘bad’ characters by our main characters. This isn’t unusual in Chinese dramas, but it was definitely on higher display here. I don’t need to listen to Yang Yang scold people constantly.
If you want more dogs, A Date With the Future has more dogs.
At the end of the day, I probably enjoyed Fireworks of My Heart more. It had less cringey, sloppy writing and out-of-character-so-plot-can-happen moments. But the moralistic, nationalistic tone makes me resent it more.
So, probably don’t watch either. But I won’t judge you if you watch both.