When Parenthood ended its six-season run on NBC earlier this year, it seemed like the end of an era for a familiar TV staple: the network family drama. Friday Night Lights and My So-Called Life are in the past, and while shows like ABC Family’s The Fosters, HBO’s Togetherness, and Hulu’s Casual picked up the torch, the networks seemed to have stepped out the game. And then . . . Enter the CW. The network once associated with teen soaps and supernatural adventures delivered top-notch family dramas last year in both the telenovela-tinged Jane the Virgin and The Flash. What’s that? The Flash? You thought that was just another superhero show? Think again.

Executive producer Greg Berlanti is no stranger to the family drama, as a veteran of Brothers & Sisters and Everwood, and he’s now bringing that familial vibe to the youth-oriented superhero boom. On CBS, Berlanti’s Supergirl is all about sisters, mothers, and aunts, while The Flash has father figures coming out of the woodwork for our speedy hero Barry Allen (Grant Gustin). There’s Harrison Wells (Tom Cavanagh), Jay Garrick (Teddy Sears), Henry Allen (John Wesley Shipp, a.k.a. the original Flash, a.k.a. the dad on Berlanti’s old show Dawson’s Creek), Dr. Martin Stein (Victor Garber), and, most crucially for the show’s success, Detective Joe West, played by Broadway veteran Jesse L. Martin of Rent fame.

“I actually have a job because they decided to do something different in the TV show than in the comics,” Martin says about his entirely show-created character who is raising both adopted son Barry and the object of Barry’s affection, Joe’s biological daughter Iris West (Candice Patton). “I knew that I would be doing a lot of parenting on the show. I just didn't know what the effect would be on us as actors, on the show in general, and on the audience. We've gotten to do some really amazing things as far as fathers and sons, and fathers and daughters.” And for all the paternal energy happening on The Flash, Berlanti’s new show, Supergirl, is all about sisters, mothers, and aunts.

There’s a long-standing tradition of orphans and adopted fathers in superhero comics. And to a certain degree, Joe West is picking up the mantle of Pa Kent and, to a certain degree, Batman’s butler, Alfred. But while Barry—who spent the first season trying to figure out who killed his mom—certainly has that dead parent wound that helps form so many superheroes, no foster parent in comics history has been quite as lovingly hands-on as Joe West.

As a law-enforcement officer, Joe is often part of the superheroic adventures and, as an everyman and audience proxy, Martin is regularly saddled with asking the science-savvy Flash whiz kids to slow down and explain everything to him. “It's my role, I'm the guy that doesn’t know, and has to be told,” Martin agrees, saying we shouldn’t expect him to ever shed his Average Joe role. Will Joe ever get powers of his own? “I was told that I never would,” Martin said, with some relief.

But the Joe role serves a much more important narrative function. As any Flash viewer will tell you, there’s a moment in nearly every episode where Joe has a heart-to-heart with a younger character that inspires tears in the show’s devoted audience. (Sound familiar, Parenthood fans?) Now that Earth 1’s Harrison Wells has been unmasked as a bad guy, Joe has taken his protégés Cisco (Carlos Valdes) and Caitlin (Danielle Panabaker) under his wing, making him a father figure for pretty much everyone on the show. “I’ve been doing this thing for a long time, so I have an emotional tool box to work with,” Martin says of his ability to make viewers cry. Martin says he’s even inspired some tears on set: “I just had a moment yesterday where I was having a heart-to-heart with Barry, and our camera man just completely teared up. It was really kind of amazing.”