Plot
The arrival of an unknown alien ship may spell trouble for Kara's relationship with Mon-El. At the same time, Winn's winds up in trouble with the law thanks to his new girlfriend, Lyra. And then a new villain called The Music Meister attacks...
Influences
The Mayhem Of The Music Meister! episode of Batman: The Brave And The Bold, the Star-Crossed episode of Justice League: The Animated Series (title, plot based around lovers from two worlds finding out the other lied to them.) and every rom-com where the noble woman manes the idiot man want to be better.
Goofs
Why doesn't J'onn use his telepathy to determine whether or not Lyra is telling the the truth about her endangered brother and her reasons for committing the theft?
How does The Music Meister know about Barry Allen or how to work the inter-dimensional extrapolator? (Presumably he gained the knowledge telepathically after locking eyes with Kara.)
Performances
The episode is a nice performance piece for Jeremy Jordan, who gets to take center stage for most of it.
As cheesy and cliche and "rom-com" as the Kara/Mon-El scenes are this week, Chris Wood and Melissa Benoist still have amazing chemistry together.
Artistry
The special effects sequences are top notch, with Kara's confronting the ship and the destruction of Daxam flashback standing out.
The make-up for Mandrax is a little more intensive than what we usually see for aliens on this show.
The ending musical sequence is well-shot.
Super Trivia
Despite Kara having been fired from CatCo in 215, the opening narration still describes her as a reporter working for CatCo.
Winn describes Lyra as a "she-hulk" when she breaks a lock with one hand. She-Hulk is, of course, a super-strong superheroine with the Marvelous Competitor of DC Comics.
Teri Hatcher - who plays Queen Rhea - played Lois Lane on the 1990s drama Lois & Clark.
There are two notable DC Comics characters who also had the name Rhea. One of them was Rhea Jones - a member of the Doom Patrol who fought crime under the codename Lodestone. As her name implies, she had magnetic powers. The other Rhea was a character in New Teen Titans - apparently the Rhea of Greek Myth - who was really an alien who inspired the myths of the original Titans. This Rhea also saved an infant Donna Troy from a fire and bestowed a measure of power upon her.
Kevin Sorbo - who plays King Lar Gand - is famous for having starred in the 1990s Hercules: The Legendary Journeys.
In the original comics, Lar Gand was the original name of the amnesic Daxamite who was named Mon-El by Clark Kent after his rocket landed on Earth. He also used the names Valor and M'Onel while serving as a member of the Legion of Superheroes in various alternate realities.
The painting which Winn is accused of stealing is Vincent Van Gogh's The Starry Night. Painted in 1889, it is one of the most famous paintings in Western Civilization and has been part of the collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City since 1941.
Lyra's species is identified as Valerian. There is a Valerian race on Star Trek that are trade partners with The United Federation of Planets.It is also the name of a flowering planet, whose roots can be used to make mild sedatives.
A passing reference is made to the planet Rimbor Five. In the original comics, Rimbor was part of the United Planets in the Legion of Super Heroes books. Rimbor had a reputation as a lawless world where crime and corruption were commonplace. It was the homeworld of LoSH member Ultra Boy and was populated by several different species, including humans.
The Music Meister was originally created for the cartoon Batman: The Brave And The Bold. A powerful telepath who was bullied for his love of singing and musicals, he discovered that he could control the minds of other people by singing. This resulted in the people under his control bursting out into song, as if they were in a musical production. The episode in which he appeared - The Mayhem Of The Music Meister! - was nominated for an Emmy and frequently places in the top rankings on lists of Television History's greatest musical episodes.
Technobabble
The DEO picks up a homing signal on a teleportation beam.
The Guardian's shield is made of titanium alloy capable of deflecting laser blasts that can cut through a trailer.
Winn analyzes the inter-dimensional extrapolator that Cisco Ramon built for Kara back in L207 and declares that it is working fine.
Dialogue Triumphs
(Kara and Mon-El have just beamed down from Mon-El's parent's ship.)
Mon-El: So, you survived the first dinner with the fam...
Kara: You're a liar!
Mon-El: I'm sorry, okay?! Can you really blame me for wanting to be just Mon-El - a regular guy from Daxam?
Kara: Ohhhh - wow.
Mon-El: With how you feel about Daxamites, if you had known that I was the crown prince, would you even talk to me?
Kara: You didn't even give me the chance!
Mon-El: I tried to tell you so many times, okay? I really did.
Kara: What? Is that supposed to make this better?
Mon-El: Me being the prince doesn't change anything. Not how I feel about you...
Kara: This changes everything! It's bad enough you lied but you being the prince? I thought you were just born on a cruel planet but you lead it! You benefited from its cruelty! What about that Kryptonian emissary? Your guard... Do you even feel guilty?
Mon-El: Of course I do...
Kara: (shaking her head in disbelief) I can't even look at you.
(Kara flies up into the sky as Mon-El watches her sadly.)
Alex: Kara, maybe Mon-El is an evil prince. But maybe he's just a guy who is ashamed of his past and he's looking for a fresh start?
(An informant agrees to sell-out Lyra for Hamilton tickets - a price Alex agrees to. As they walk away...)
Winn: Hamilton? How you going to pull that one off?
Alex: The guy who plays King George is from Rimbor Five. He owes me a favor.
J'onn: Miss Strayd-
Winn: - needs our help!
J'onn: - is an admitted con artist.
Winn: Her brother is in danger!
J'onn: Have you ever met this brother? Or could this possibly be just another con from a woman who knows how to play you?
Winn: (slowly) I believe her.
J'onn: I know you do. But I can't afford to.
Lyra: This was your plan all along?!
Winn: I mean, if I had told you half of National City's heroes and a squad of DEO Agents were going to show up, were you going to come along?
Lyra: Keeping secrets? (smiles) Looks like I'm rubbing off on you.
Continuity
As the episode opens, Kara and Mon-El are watching Game of Thrones together.
Kara loves musicals and thinks that Funny Face is the most romantic movie ever.
Lyra is strong enough to break a padlock with one hand.
We discover that Mon-El is Prince of Daxam - not the royal guard that he claimed to be.
Queen Rhea refers to the events of 209 and how a Dominator ambassador informed them that their son helped orchestrate a slave revolt.
We find out that the sequence described by Mon-El in 204 was a complete lie. His escape from Daxam was facilitated by his bodyguard ushering him away from a one-night stand, ignoring people in need, killing a Kryptonian emmisary and stealing his rocket.
Alex remarks that Winn has a type. The last woman he was involved with sexually became Silver Banshee.
Valerians do not show up in photographs or on video cameras.
Alex finds two other similar heists in the past nine months - a Rodin stolen from the Modern Arts and Culture Museum in National City and an original Warhol taken from the Art Institute of Metropolis. Both of the suspects in those cases claim to have been set up by a girlfriend.
Worris is one of the regulars at the alien bar who both Alex and James have pumped for information in the past.
The Valerians in National City hang around a trailer park near Blackmore.
The actor who plays King George in the National City production of Hamilton is an alien from Rimbor 5 who owes Alex a favor.
Winn says he was a theater geek in high school.
Lyra has a brother named Bastian who was smuggled onto Earth with her. The two were refugees following a ten-year war on Starhaven, where their parents starved to death. She claims to be unable to sleep alone in the dark because of her nightmares of being locked below-deck on a spaceship for six weeks.
Lyla admits to real affection for Winn but claims she had to use him to steal the painting in order to pay a debt her brother owed.
Lyla's buyer is a fence named Mandrax - he was another Fort Rozz escapee.
Lyra's last name is Strayd.
Winn forgives Lyra for setting him up. It is unclear if she plans to say in National City because of this but Winn says that any woman who would go through the lengths she did to say her brother is someone worth forgiving.
Kara dumps Mon-El, despite his big romantic speech about how she makes him want to be better a better man.
Mon-El tells his parents he is not returning to Daxam with them and further tells them not to return to Earth.
Winn says that he's pretty sure he and Cisco Ramon would be best friends if they lived in the same dimension.
The Music Meister says he was looking for Kara, is aware of the existence of Barry Allen and knows how to work the the inter-dimensional extrapolator.
Location
The Music Meister's psychic dimension
The Bottom Line
A predictable, cliche-driven episode that works purely because of the charisma of the cast. Jeremy Jordan does a fantastic job holding the focus of the episode as Winn while Chris Wood and Melissa Benoist make their rom-com break-up subplot work.
That being said, I'm annoyed that after all that had been done to establish Winn and Lyra that they have her turn out to have been manipulating him because it's lazy writing. I'm also not sure what's worse - James being absent from the show for weeks at a time or episodes like this where he only shows up to get his butt kicked.
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