'The Flash' Recap: 'Duet'

Written by John Edward Betancourt

THIS IS THE EMERGENCY SPOILER ALERT SYSTEM...YOU ARE ADVISED TO READ AT YOUR OWN RISK...

If there's one thing that superhero stories continue to find themselves under fire for, it's not having enough fun and in all honesty...it's a fair criticism of these stories. As this era of super hero domination continues to grow, the tales have become bigger, tougher and downright darker and while we certainly eat it up week after week, there's nothing wrong with hoping for a little joy when it comes to these incredible adventures. 

Heck, even The Flash and Supergirl have not been immune to darker storytelling, in fact we've seen it all over their respective seasons this year. Barry has been dealing with the consequences of Flashpoint since day one, and when you add the potential death of Iris into the mix, it's been quite the somber season for the speedster and poor Kara has seen the relationships in her life hang together by a thread all season long all while working to foil Lillian Luthor's disturbing and disgusting plans for the aliens of National City. So with these characters basically at their lowest points right now, one had to wonder what kind of ugly challenge would await them in this year's crossover. But instead of taking us down another dark road, 'Duet' did quite the opposite, finding an opportunity to make these two worlds a little better for both the fans and its heroes with one delightful, and highly anticipated musical episode.

The plot for this one was simple. The Music Meister, who was introduced at the end of Monday night's episode of Supergirl came to Central City with a few goals on his mind, to send Barry to the same place he sent Kara, and to use the powers of both heroes to rob Central City blind and well, he most certainly succeeded in the first goal because that's where we spent most of our night, trapped with Barry and Kara in early 20th Century America, neck deep in a sea of gangsters...and song while our titular villain tried his best to rob the city before being captured by Cisco, Wally and J'onn and well...as it turns out, the whole thing was a long, drawn out plan to get Barry and Kara to understand what they had in Iris and Mon-El respectively so that the duo could heal their broken hearts and find true love before The Music Meister disappeared to another world to help someone else and when all is said and done, what a blast this episode turned out to be.

Every single second of this episode was just downright fun. I can't even count how often I found myself laughing heartily at the gags and jokes unfolding before my eyes and to top it off, the musical numbers were a joy as well. I mean, you know you're in for a treat when there's a song entitled 'Super Friend' and it's sung by two powerful superheroes. Plus, who knew so many actors on this show could sing? Jesse Martin who plays Joe belted out a lovely tune, as did Carlos Valdez who plays Cisco and Grant Gustin held his own as well and we can't talk about the cast and their singing abilities without discussing the wonderful cameos this episode produced since John Barrowman stole every single scene he was in as both actor and singer and even Victor Garber who popped up as a variant of Martin Stein in this episode was able to carry a lovely tune.

But what truly made this episode so incredibly special? The fact that the bad guy, wasn't a bad guy at all. It was quite the twist to make the Music Meister nothing more than a man dedicated to making people happy and while his methods may be extreme and upsetting...they're certainly effective. Either way, this episode was such a welcome break from a pair of tough seasons for both lead characters and it was so nice to sit back and enjoy a silly and fun episode that also happened to feature quite the lovely ending as well and we should enjoy this one for as long as possible, because despite the joy, we both know big battles wait on the horizon for both Barry and Kara since Lillian Luthor is still out there and Mon-El's mom will not be pleased about the two of them fixing their issues and of course...Savitar is still waiting out there for his showdown with Barry. So if you'll excuse me, rather than worry about all of that, I'm off to iTunes to buy a copy of 'Super Friend' so I can put that sucker on repeat. Until next time. 

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