My plan is to look up which Arrow episodes the Flash actor appears in and watch those.
Good idea... although we'll have to look up
all the Flash actors. Apparently there were a few episodes of Arrow after the initial Barry Allen guest appearance where STAR Labs folks showed up (I only watched episodes leading up to the Flash appearance in Arrow, then stopped watching).
By "freak of the week", I mean "all the bad guys come from the same event"....like Smallville and the meteor rocks. It was "the big explosion" here for the first 3 episodes. Tonight they went a different way...thank god.
Gotcha. Kind of like Static Shock... but for a sudden appearance of lots of meta humans (or whatever the story calls them) there should be an explanation, and "big weird science explosion" fits the bill. But yes, having an ordinary guy who is suddenly forced to deal with extraordinary people with extraordinary devices is pretty cool.
Feels like they are trying to appeal to teen girls with that. (no offense to teen girls...but I'm not one)
Well, on the plus side, Barry did kiss Felicity, so maybe the "one true love" thing will be dropped for a while... sure there's reasons in the actual story for Barry to be in love with Iris, but the real reason is that they're together in the comics, which constrains the story in certain ways.
Regarding romance, the CW (and the WB) has always seemed to me like that is a demographic they're going for. I think it adds some interesting story hooks, and if it adds viewers who are drawn in by romance plots rather than the super hero aspect I assume most people are watching for, that's fine too.
Interestingly:
http://www.thewrap.com/cws-the-flash-premiere-is-the-most-watched-program-in-network-history/Lastly, from a storytelling perspective, I think it has more emotion to have Barry attempt to save his mother and fail (or choose not to because of the future consequences!) than to have it simply as a fait accomplis and he only has revenge/justice to go forward with. He still has those options if he goes back in time as well, and there's more drama.
Yeah, I like KennonGL's idea that it's actually Reverse Flash who removes kid Barry, and Barry realizes he has to kill his own mother to preserve the timeline.
Regarding the theory that Wells is Reverse Flash, I think that it actually is in keeping with him wanting to keep Barry safe. If he's driven by revenge, for whatever reason, making sure Barry is around to go back in time and kill his own mother is a rather delicious sort of revenge.