SOME SPOILERS AHEAD.
This episode was really weird…and ridiculous…but mostly weird. Not ridiculous in a bad way, just in the sense that I couldn’t take it seriously (I know I’m not meant to) and I couldn’t help but laugh at the ridiculousness of it. It was like AU fan-fiction, but canon. And I’m pretty sure that the pairing of Iris and Mon-El and Joe and Martin had to come from some slash fiction that’s floating around somewhere on the internet.
The episode wasn’t at all bad and although I did laugh, I had a hard time watching it because it was just so weird. This coming from someone who, though not deeply into Hollywood musicals, does actually enjoy them (well, more like film adaptations of stage musicals; The Phantom of The Opera is my favourite). I couldn’t get past this happening on an episode of The Flash, with these characters, in these roles, doing these things. The strangeness of it was distracting. I never settled into it and just took it for what it was and I really, really wanted to. I did have fun with it though.
I didn’t bother to watch this week’s episode of Supergirl (“Invasion” taught me that her episodes aren’t actually part of the crossovers; they’re not tricking me into watching that show again), but the set up for how Kara and Barry ended up in the musical world worked and I guess it makes sense given that Music Meister is a powered individual on two shows that revolve around people with powers.
It was funny seeing Martin and Joe as gangsters and so out of left field that they were a couple. I liked that even AU Joe has the same kind of relationship with AU Iris that Earth-1 Joe has with Earth-1 Iris. That at least stayed the same.
I didn’t think of West Side Story when they introduced AU Iris and AU Mon-El’s forbidden love, I thought about Romeo and Juliet but it and West Side Story, are almost the same thing (West Side Story is inspired by Romeo and Juliet after all). I was surprised that after the musical number “More I Cannot Wish You”, between Joe, Martin and Malcolm, that they still decided to “go to war” over their children being together. Like Kara and Barry kept saying, things in musicals are just easier and I thought that that had been settled. Perhaps that time it was too easy.
Kara and Barry seemed to forget that they no longer had their powers. Why else would they have run into the street amidst a hail of bullets. I didn’t think they’d get shot and I want to give kudos to the writers for having characters stand in the middle of on-going gun fire and get hit, but that was just a set up for Mon-El and Iris to swoop in and kiss Kara and Barry awake (this is not Once Upon A Time). It was so cliche that at the moment when they thought the people they loved were dying, they said they things they wanted to say but couldn’t. And it magically fixed the rifts in both of their relationships (but that was the point I suppose; musical episode).
I knew that was the direction this episode was going in – that Kara and Barry’s experiences in the musical world would heal their broken love lives – when they made their respective speeches to Martin and Joe and to Malcolm. I didn’t that that was the entire point of this episode or what Music Meister had been planning for them all along; to teach them a lesson about love. It was so cheap and corny and unnecessary. I don’t like that that is what this episode was for. It’s supposed to be a fun, lighthearted, cheeky episode and yet they dragged their B.S. CW relationship drama into it. The musical part of the episode was fun until that was thrown in.
I liked the musical numbers, especially the last one, “Runnin’ Home to You”, that Barry sang to Iris. As cheesy as it was it was very, very sweet and that scene was the best part of the entire episode. I would have preferred if they left their real world relationship drama out of the musical part of the episode and just book-ended it with this. We all saw the proposal coming and it was far better than the last one. It was definitely the easiest part of the episode to swallow, just because there was no ridiculousness going on, but it was still really weird since Barry was singing. Unlike the rest of the episode, though, I was able to move past the weirdness and just enjoy it.
I liked “Super Friends” as well. It was funny and the chemistry between Kara and Barry has always been great. Their banter in between was lovely.
Random thoughts:
- Barry: “Everything’s better in song.” No, not everything.
- How do people keep breaking into Star Labs??
- Are they sure this is the plot they’re supposed to follow?
- Have they been wearing tap shoes this entire time?
- How did he get out?!
- This isn’t Once Upon A Time!
- Someone punch him in the face please.
- What was this episode even?
The Flash airs Tuesdays at 8 PM on The CW.
