The Flash season 3 episode 17 review: Was ‘Duet’ a worthy musical?

With a song in our heart, we bring to you now the first review of “Duet,” otherwise known as The Flash season 3 episode 17. This was an episode that brought a lot of wonderful stuff to the table in terms of great singing (Melissa Benoist! John Barrowman!), and also a great guest star when it comes to Darren Criss!

Yet, did it do enough when it comes to the actual story. In looking back on “Duet,” the one thing that feels like a miss was unfortunately the biggest part of the episode. The whole story of star-crossed lovers Millie and Tommy wasn’t that great once you got past the fact that they were actually Iris West and Mon-El. We almost wish that in the dream world that Barry and Kara were joined by their actual counterparts, mostly because there’s something that would’ve been fun about seeing the actual Malcolm Merlyn singing.

Still, having Joe and Martin Stein serving as both gangsters and a married couple was fun.

The other big critique we have is that we wanted to see as much Criss’ Music Meister as possible, and there really wasn’t all that great of an opportunity to see the two parties share screen time with their former Glee actor. That was one of the real selling points for the story going in.

How did Barry and Kara end up getting transported out of their musical-laced dreamworld? That was all due to Kid Flash, Cisco, and Mon-El capturing the Meister out in Central City. He later told Iris that if she really loved Barry, she could find a way to save them. That happened with Cisco vibing Mon-El and Iris to the musical world where (interestingly) true love’s kiss was enough to get them out of the world. Then, the Music Meister claimed that the entire purpose of his mission was to teach everyone to love each other. He wasn’t so much a villain as a psychiatrist who had a very demented way of getting people to work through their issues. The best, sweetest moment may have been seeing Barry actually sing to Iris at the end, where it wasn’t a dreamworld anymore. Then, he pulled out the ring.

THAT PROPOSAL WAS WONDERFUL. We can’t forget the rest of the episode, but it makes up for some of the complaints we had.

Overall

We don’t want to be a cynic here because the music was all wonderful and the idea of this was fun. We’re just not sure that the story was great enough to merit it. The show tried to make it meta by saying that this was meant to be a typical musical, but there were so many tropes even outside of that like true love’s kiss. Also, having the Music Meister be a good guy in the end made us wonder why we needed to go through all of this at all since these relationships probably would’ve worked out anyway. Episode Grade: B.

What’s coming on The Flash season 3?

If you head over here, you can get a preview for everything that’s going to be coming up on the next episode!

What did you think about “Duet”? Was it worth all the hype? Share in the comments! (Photo: The CW.)