It's pretty much a given that any new TV series is going to have a period of adjustment as the actors settle into their roles and the writers hone the show's voice. With superhero shows, it may take a month or two (in the case of Arrow), or it could take the better part of a season (in the case of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.). The Flash was unique in its first season in the sense that it never really needed to find itself or grow into something better. It simply started strong and continually got better over the course of seven months.

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Much of the credit rests with the fact that the Flash was hardly starting from scratch. This show is the first spinoff of Arrow and its growing superhero universe (though clearly it won't be the last). It features many of the same producers as Arrow and several writers responsible for Arrow's stellar second season. Not only did The Flash not have to waste much time establishing its universe, it didn't even have to introduce viewers to its protagonist. Grant Gustin debuted as a pre-speedster Barry Allen midway through Arrow's second season, culminating with the accident that created the Flash. By the time this show came around, viewers already knew Barry, what made him tick and what fueled his particular quest.All of that helped The Flash race right out of the gate, hit the ground running, and other assorted speed-related puns in its premiere episode. For whatever fears I may have had about Gustin's physicality or leading man potential in his early Arrow appearances, he rapidly grew into the role of Barry Allen once the spotlight was placed on him. Gustin brought a winning blend of youthful energy, latent pathos and Peter Parker-esque awkwardness to the table. He gave us a Barry Allen that's impossible not to connect with. Barry is immensely likable. He's less intense than Stephen Amell's Oliver Queen. He's driven by tragedy but anchored by a small family unit. He's faithful to the comic book Barry Allen but tempered by a bit of Wally West's humor and everyman appeal.One of the main reasons for The Flash's success, though, was its supporting cast. So much of the drama and the emotional core of the show centered around Barry's ties to his core circle of friends, family and allies. There was his adoptive father, Joe West (Jesse L. Martin). There was his adoptive sister/unrequited love, Iris (Candice Patton), a dichotomy that never came across as creepy or incest-y as it could have. There was his newfound father figure/mentor in Dr. Harrison Wells (Tom Cavanagh). There were his new friends/partners in metahuman-busting, Dr. Caitlin Snow (Danielle Panabaker) and Cisco Ramon (Carlos Valdes). And rounding out the core cast was Eddie Thawne (Rick Cosnett), Barry's colleague and sometimes rival/sometimes ally.The show exploited these various relationships to great effect. Above all, the father/son relationships between Barry/Joe and Barry/Wells were the source of great drama. Martin and Cavanagh were the MVPs among the cast. Martin brought a crucial warmth to his role as a concerned father and a man simply baffled by the increasingly bizarre state of life in Central City. Cavanagh, meanwhile, helped mold Wells into the show's most captivating figure. It quickly became apparent that Wells was far more than he seemed, eventually emerging as the primary antagonist of Season 1. But thanks to Cavanagh's performance, it was always apparent that Wells cared for Barry even as he plotted and schemed and tormented the hero.Caitlin and Cisco became increasingly compelling characters in their own right as the season progressed. Caitlin, initially cold and a little haughty, grew as her relationship with Barry blossomed and her past relationship with Ronnie Raymond (Robbie Amell) came to light. Cisco was largely a comic relief character at first. And while he remained the show's most reliable source of comedy, he too was fleshed out and developed a father/son connection to Wells of his own.Iris and Eddie were a little more uneven when it came to their respective roles within the show. At times it was easy to forget about Eddie given his tendency to drop out of view. However, he definitely became an integral player in the final couple months of the season. I appreciated how the writers never took a one-note approach with Eddie. He may have been Barry's romantic rival, but he was never written as a bully or a jerk, just a guy with his own set of hopes and desires. As for Iris, there were some episodes where she filled what seemed to be a mandatory quota as far as superhero relationship drama. The Barry/Iris/Eddie love triangle definitely had its moments, but some weeks it came across as pointless filler. The big offender was "Out of Time," which featured a terrifically epic climax but dull build-up.The premiere episode, "City of Heroes," did a fine job of laying out the cast of characters and basic status quo for the show. The idea that the STAR Labs particle accelerator created a new wave of metahumans alongside the Flash offered an easy way to start building a roster of villains and put Barry's growing speed powers to the test. The one real nagging flaw in these early episodes was that the villains themselves rarely received the focus and attention that the heroes did. Too often there wasn't enough sense of who these people were beyond their metahuman powers and what drove them to terrorize Central City. This isn't a problem unique to The Flash by any means. It's something Arrow has struggled with a lot over the past couple years.Luckily, it wasn't long before The Flash began moving away from the "villain of the week" approach and building larger, overarching storylines. Bigger villains like Captain Cold (Wentworth Miller) and Heat Wave (Dominic Purcell) were introduced, paving the way for the Flash Rogues. The show played its part in expanding the CW's superhero universe, introducing Firestorm and crossing paths with Arrow at several points. The mid-season finale, "The Man In the Yellow Suit," offered the full introduction of the Reverse-Flash and set the stage for a conflict that would drive the show all the way until the season finale. As that conflict developed, the question of just who Dr. Wells was and what he had planned for Barry became paramount. Wells symbolized just how much the show was willing to play with expectations and shake up the traditional comic book mythology. I noted in my review of the premiere episode that the show was showing signs of being too predictable for seasoned comic book readers. It wasn't long before that concern faded away.Looking back at these overarching conflicts and how they were developed over the course of the season, it's clear that The Flash succeeded because it managed to adopt the serialized nature of superhero comics so well. Each new episode offered its fair share of twists and surprises, culminating in a dramatic cliffhanger that left viewers craving the next installment. It served as a reminder that, in many ways, TV is an inherently better medium for superheroes than film. A weekly series can do serialized storytelling in a way a couple superhero movies every year can't.Of course, the main advantage with film is that studios can't devote far more time and money to bringing these heroes and their powers to life. The Flash may not rival the spectacle we've seen from movies like Avengers: Age of Ultron or Man of Steel, but by the standards of a network TV drama, it was pretty impressive what the show was able to accomplish this season. Each week, Barry's speed powers were conveyed very well, whether he was battling foes at super-speed, vibrating through objects or simply patrolling the city. It wasn't just a matter of showing a red blur and leaving it at that.The show started out big with the premiere episode, pitting Barry against the first Weather Wizard and a massive tornado. Even that was chump change compared to later conflicts. Barry's battle with the second Weather Wizard culminated with the hero stopping a tidal wave at supersonic speed. But the most impressive technical accomplishment was more subtle. The late-season episode "Grodd Lives" introduced viewers to Gorilla Grodd, a completely computer-animated villain who looked far more convincing than we had any right to hope. And if all of this CG wizardry required a healthy dose of Microsoft product placement to make it happen, so be it. There was the occasional episode where the editing or special effects weren't quite up to snuff (Pied Piper's debut in "The Sound and the Fury" comes to mind), but in general the standard was set very high.It's also worth noting that, while The Flash built out of Arrow's relatively grounded superhero universe, the show was never afraid to be more ostentatious or comic book-y than its sibling. When you have a hero who can jog faster than the speed of sound, what's the point of keeping things too realistic? Whether the show juggled time travel, telepathic gorillas or weather-controlling super-criminals, it always managed to celebrate those more colorful elements of the DCU while making them work in the context of this world where metahumans are a new phenomenon and most people don't know what to make of them. The humor played a huge part in keeping the show grounded and not too caught up in its own drama. There are various reasons you can point to for why The Flash was a better show than Arrow this season, but the generous dose of humor in the former and the utter lack of it in the latter was a big one.Apart from the finale, perhaps the strongest episode of Season 1 was "Tricksters." That episode paid terrific homage to the short-lived 1990 Flash series as Mark Hamill reprised the part of the prank-obsessed villain the Trickster and former Flash John Wesley Shipp was given his most in-depth role as Barry's father, Henry. Not only was "Tricksters" a fun love letter to the old show, it proved that this series can venture into full-on camp territory without losing sight of itself. At this point, The Flash could probably pull off a musical episode and no one would bat an eyelash. Given Gustin's history on Glee, I kind of want to see that happen.Ultimately, though, it's the finale episode that stands out as the crowning moment of Season 1. The show bucked the usual trend by getting the physical confrontation with Reverse-Flash out of the way in the penultimate episode (via a team-up between Flash, Firestorm and the Arrow, no less). "Fast Enough" wasn't concerned with the visceral element of the Flash/Reverse-Flash rivalry so much as the psychological one. The finale was intensely emotional, forcing Barry to decide just how much he was willing to sacrifice to save his mother. Just about every actor delivered their best work of the season. It was a tremendous payoff to a year's worth of build-up.The finale ended the season with a big question mark of a cliffhanger. The cliffhanger was a little aggravating in the sense that it was abrupt and inconclusive (which to an extent is true of all cliffhangers). I do wish The Flash had followed Arrow's example of ending each season with a certain degree of finality. However, the great thing about the way the season wrapped is that now the door is open for practically anything. The finale touched on the idea of the multiverse - other worlds inhabited by other Flashes like Jay Garrick. Perhaps even an alternate world where Shipp's Barry Allen is still active. Season 1 did a great job of establishing a superhero formula and building upon it. Now there's no telling what will change when Barry comes out the other side of that singularity.