YMMV / The Flash (2014) S3E17 "Duet"

• Base-Breaking Character: Music Meister, carrying over from his appearance from Supergirl (2015) and intensified here. Some fans liked him because he's played by a Glee alum and gets the musical going, other fans are not happy that he's the Music Meister In Name Only, with a completely different power set, motivation, backstory, physical appearance, and outfit.
• Broken Base: The reaction to the episode is polarising, to say the least. Most fans are split between absolutely detesting musicals in all shapes and forms (including this one)^note Despite the fact that similar monster-of-the-week shows such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Fringe have previously pulled musical episodes off to a mostly positive reception, with the former also topping many Best-of episode polls, and thinking this is a fun musical/crossover episode to counterbalance how serious both shows have gotten. Case in point, this is the only episode of either shows to have scored below a 7/10 on IMDb and most of the user reviews are either 1-star or 9- or 10-star reviews.
• Critical Dissonance: Most critics loved the episode. The fans? Not so much.
• Fanfic Fuel:
  • A breacher going around the Multiverse fixing relationships by sticking people in dream-musicals (among other possibilities)? Ship repair just got a new manual.
  • Not to mention fics involving the Music Meister already knowing Kara and Barry. Or rather, their alternate Earth doppelgangers.
  • And then there's his offhand mention of how it could be a "space opera." Star Wars crossover fics just got a whole new dimension.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • Music Meister spends the whole episode trying to patch things up between Barry/Iris and Kara/Mon-El, when the finale of their respective seasons ends on a sad note for both of the couples. In the case of Kara and Mon-El, it never really gets better.
  • The fact that while all this was going on, Oliver was currently being tortured by Prometheus into admitting he enjoys killing people, and the Legends went on a mission to one of the bloodiest times in human history.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • The musical version of Joe West is gay—for Cecile's reaction, look no further than Key & Peele, where Cecile's actress appears on a double date with another woman and both Key and Peele, and Peele's character accidentally outs himself.
  • Barry's Superman imitation becomes this after Elseworlds, when it's revealed that Barry has never actually met Superman, just going off of Kara's description of him.
• Magnificent Bastard: The Music Meister is a being of unknown origins, who seeks to teach Kara and Barry a lesson regarding love. First appearing in "Star-Crossed", he allows himself to be captured by the D.E.O., in order to put Kara in a trance and then escapes to Earth-1. Arriving at Star Labs, the Music Meister easily takes out Wally West, and traps Barry in the same dream as Kara. There he informs them that if they die in it they die in real life, and gives them vague instructions on how to escape. Revealed to be draining their powers, he uses them to try to rob a bank to draw the other heroes out and is constantly changing powers through the fight to keep them on their toes. Allowing himself to be captured again, the Music Meister gives Mon-El and Iris hints to save the two heroes before they die. The Music Meister ends the episode revealing it was all a Secret Test of Character, and calming singing "Put a Little Love in Your Heart" while he leaves.
• Memetic Mutation: People have joked about how this hilariously sweet episode of The Flash and Supergirl aired on the same week as one of Arrow's most depressing, brutal hours of television.
• Narm: Seeing Malcolm Merlyn, Big Bad of the first season of Arrow, part of the villain team on Legends of Tomorrow, former leader of the League of Assassins, and overall badass, as a singer. Though it helps that John Barrowman is well-known as a musical star, with Malcolm being rather Playing Against Type for him.
• Narm Charm:
  • Barry's second proposal is very over-the-top, complete with a serenade, but it's so in-character for him that fans loved it anyway.
  • "Super Friend" is over-the-top, cheesy, and loaded with puns of varying quality about Kara and Barry's powers—and it completely works.
  • In a way, the whole concept of the episode could be considered this; it's cheesy, corny, and silly, but also lots of fun.
• Romantic Plot Tumor: Many fans are pissed that the episode centers on Barry and Kara's love lives. Especially jarring in Kara's case, as while Barry and Iris were broken up for a week In-Universe, Kara and Mon-El were only broken up for a day, so a lot of fans were annoyed that they made a big deal about Kara dumping Mon-El only for them to get back together so quickly.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: Music Meister fans are pissed about the incredibly unfaithful "power-stealing parasite with hypno-eyes" adaptation of the character, who in the end is not even a villain but more of a trickster. The character even admits his powers are not even song-related and the dreamworld Kara and Barry end up in could have just as easily been "a war film or a space opera."
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • While the episode thankfully avoids the biggest problem of most shows that try to do a musical episode, that said why wasn't Tom Cavanagh who has an extensive resume in musical theater given a song?
  • Even more so Chris Wood, Mon-El's portrayer, who actually plays a central role in the overarching plot of both the dream and the episode itself isn't given a song despite his musical background as well.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Despite using the Music Meister, one of the biggest Ensemble Darkhorses from Batman: The Brave and the Bold, none of the songs from his episode are ever used and they only sing covers and a couple original songs. Expanding on that, the Music Meister, despite being the antagonist (even if he acts as an Anti-Villain here), never has a Villain Song, even though "I'm the Music Meister" would've been perfect.
• Win Back the Crowd: After several weeks of doom and gloom, we finally have a fun episode with all the wackiness of the Silver Age. This is even lampshaded by the Music Meister himself, commenting on how Barry has been in a funk lately.