The Flash - 'Duet'

The old razzle-dazzle

Okay folks, it's crossover time. Not sold? Would it help if I said musical crossover time?

J'onn and Mon-el bring Kara across to Earth-1, where our mysterious villain appears in STAR Labs. Barry and Wally confront him, but the villain apparently has super speed too. Wally, still rattled from his run-in with Savatar, gets smacked down and Barry is put under the whammy and finds himself in the club where Kara is singing 'Moon River'. It's a decent enough rendition(1), but our heroes soon learn that they are powerless nightclub singers in the employ of a gangster named Cutter Moran (who looks just like Malcolm Merlyn,) who wants them to perform original material. As they try to puzzle this out, the architect of these shenanigans – dubbed the Music Meister by Barry – pops up in somewhat intangible form. He tells them that this world was created from their minds and their shared love of musicals, and encourages them to follow the script and sing, doing his own musical number ('Put a Little Love in Your Heart') to get them in the spirit.

In the real world, J'onn joins Wally and Cisco to track down and capture the Music Meister, despite the fact that he is drawing off and using Barry and Kara's powers. Kara and Barry are recruited by Digsby Foss (Joe West) and his partner (Martin Stein) to track down their missing daughter(2) Millie (Iris). They find Millie with Tommy Moran (Mon-el), son of Cutter, and the two declare that they are in love. In order to expedite the resolution of the movie, Kara and Barry encourage the two to tell their parents how they feel. After initial anger, the three parents sing a touching number from Guys and Dolls ('More I Cannot Wish You') and then quietly declare war on each other.

 

Daddies' little girl.

The Music Meister tells Iris and Mon-el that he can't save Kara and Barry; only they can, if they love them enough. Kara and Barry prepare a jaunty original number ('I'm Your Super Friend'), but then the gang war breaks out and everyone gets shot, including Barry and Kara. In the nick of time, Cisco is able to vibe Iris and Mon-el into the dream. The dying Kara accepts Mon-el's apology and forgives him, and Barry and Iris reaffirm their love, and everyone wakes up just fine to find the Music Meister free and explaining that he just wanted to help them all realise their love, because he always roots for the good guys. Kara, Mon-el and J'onn go home, and Barry serenades Iris ('Running Home to You') before proposing for the right reasons.

I am so much in two minds about this one. Musical episodes are a crapshoot and I for one prefer original songs to jukebox in a TV show. The jukebox numbers here – 'Moon River', 'Put a Little Love in Your Heart' and 'More I Cannot Wish You' – are well done, but it's the unbridled joy of 'I'm Your Super Friend' that really works best, and I'd have liked to have seen more of the songs specifically tailored for the show. Also… I have to say that I am not loving the idea that on top of being gorgeous and the centre of their universes, Barry and Kara have some sort of extraplanar being looking out for their romantic wellbeing (or indeed that Kara is supposed to be objectively better off with Mon-el at all.)

 

Musical episode and medical drama.

The Music Meister himself is an oddity, and oddly similar in both appearance and method to Mr Mxyzptlk. In fact, with his claims to be rooting for the good guys and suggestion of extradimensional viewing of events in the lives of the characters, he's kind of like Bat-Mite, if Bat-Mite was a shipper, and I am so against the idea of introducing fifth-dimensional shippers into the Arrowverse (although I confess I kind of wanted him to go over to Star City after this and get all up in Oliver's grill about something.)

'Duet' is no 'Once More With Feeling' or 'The Bitter Suite', but it's certainly no 'Lyre, Lyre, Hearts on Fire' either. Ultimately, I think its greatest failing is that it doesn't come up to the standards set in the Batman the Brave and the Bold episode, 'The Mayhem of the Music Meister', which crowbarred in a previously unseen Batman/Black Canary/Green Arrow love triangle(3) and was still awesome as anything.

(1) It's tough to try to follow a performance which convinced three generations to blank out Mickey Rooney's egregious yellowface and some of the most dubious romantic politics of a decade when recalling Breakfast at Tiffany's.

(2) Which is a nice touch, I felt.

(3) And you know how I feel about love triangles.