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The show opens with an 11 year old Barry Allen coming downstairs to see a swirling yellow and red thing encircling his mother. Suddenly he is teleported a few blocks away from his house. By the time he makes it back home, his mother is dead from this mysterious presence.

Flash (pun intended) forward to a now 20-something Barry Allen. He is a junior forensics analyst for the Central City police. He’s a scientist (Batman’s a scientist!) and he is excited for the opening of a Star Labs in his town with a new particle accelerator. He ends up missing the opening day and returning to his lab only to see an explosion in the distance (the particle accelerator) and an energy wave pass through the city. Some of the energy collects above his lab and he is struck by lightning, and then rushed to the hospital (who knew to call an ambulance for him? He was alone).

At the same time his adoptive father is running down a lead on a couple of bank robbers who drive a Mustang (product placement). The perps manage to escape in a plane, but not before the same energy wave hits their plane, destroying it and leaving the two presumed dead.

Barry Allen awakens from a coma nine months later and has the abilities of The Flash (i.e. super speed and super reaction time). He works with a few people from the now defunct Star Labs (the explosion really spooked the investors) and not only starts to learn his own abilities, but also learns of the existence of other meta-humans that were created as a result of the particle accelerator gone bad.

When a man who can control the weather starts robbing banks (you might say he is something of a wizard at it) Barry has to decide if he is going to use his newly found powers for good. He has a short conversation with Arrow about it, and ultimately decides to go all super hero and become a vigilante.

Overall I thought it was a pretty decent pilot episode. I’m much more of a Batman fan, but I enjoyed The Flash pilot a lot more than I enjoyed the Gotham pilot. Gotham is apparently all about silly cameos and corrupt cops, while The Flash has a lightheartedness to it that makes it fun. I couldn’t really get into Arrow, but I’m definitely going to be following this sister-series.

Things I noted;

• The mysterious death of Barry’s mother is obviously going to be a major plot point. Particularly since it makes a viewer think that Barry himself could potentially be responsible.
• Barry has already revealed his secret identity to five people. This means he tells his secret faster than Batman. I wonder if that will become an issue down the road…
• We’ve already seen a major antagonist of The Flash perish. Comic Tv shows and movies seem to hate recurring villains, I guess that is why they die so often.
• The explosion, which potentially affected lots of people, opens the path for many meta-humans to appear in The Flash and in Arrow.
• We see a news article 10 years in the future which says that The Flash mysteriously vanished during a crisis. Is this the kind of crisis that could span infinite Earths?

It seems like it is a good time for fans of the supernatural. There are plenty of current TV offerings. Here is what some of the regulars of SciFi.SE Chat room have to say about them, presented in no particular order.

Supernatural – Two brothers follow their father’s footsteps as “hunters” fighting evil supernatural beings of many kinds including monsters, demons, and gods that roam the earth.

Keen – Two brothers traveling the US, fighting monsters. Essentially a weekly horror TV series, with a monster of the week. Layered on top is a season-long arc, which is referenced almost weekly, with arc-centric episodes every 3-4 episodes.

Grimm – A homicide detective discovers he is a descendant of hunters who fight supernatural forces.

BESW – I like it. It’s cleverly self-mocking without being self-indulgent, its premise is similar to many other shows and books on the market but they’ve managed to freshen it up, the characters are interesting, and even when there’s a bad episode Monroe makes it worth my time.

True Blood – Telepathic waitress Sookie Stackhouse encounters a strange new supernatural world when she meets the mysterious Bill, a southern Louisiana gentleman and vampire.

Keen – Trashy vampire romance novels turned into a supernatural soap opera. A guilty pleasure.

Jack B. Nimble – I saw a comment for True Blood that says it is a show about sex which just happens to have vampires.

Once Upon A Time – A woman with a troubled past is drawn to a New England town where fairy tales are to be believed.

Jack B. Nimble – A lot of twists on the classic fairy tales. Who would have thought everyone was so connected? Originally StoryBrook felt like a very small town. As the story (and fairy tales) progress the population seems to be growing exponentially.

Keen – This one is harder to describe at a high level. It has a weird premise and structure. I’d say it’s a fantasy series that mashes up Disney films with some public domain fairy tales and stories, then dumps the lot of them into the real world.

Once Upon a Time in Wonderland – In Victorian England, the young and beautiful Alice tells a tale of a strange new land that exists on the other side of a rabbit hole.

Izkata – Skip out on the tie to Once Upon a Time, since there’s no overlap (yet).

Warehouse 13 – After saving the life of the President in Washington D.C., a pair of U.S Secret Service agents are whisked away to a covert location in South Dakota that houses supernatural objects that the Regents, an Authority above and outside any government, have collected over the centuries. Their new assignment: retrieve any lost objects and investigate reports of new ones.

BESW – Seems to be back on track after some time exploring various styles and themes that weren’t working for it. The reveal that one of the characters has a real-life terminal disease seemed a bit over-dramatic but it’s being handled well.

Donald McLean – I’ve been watching Warehouse 13 since the beginning and I like it quite a lot.

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D – The missions of the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division.

 Jack B Nimble – It would be hilarious to find out that Tahiti is a sponsor of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

 Sleepy Hollow – Ichabod Crane is resurrected and pulled two and a half centuries through time to unravel a mystery that dates all the way back to the founding fathers.

Keen – A cop/fantasy procedural with monsters of the week. The show’s fast pace and clever writing keeps it entertaining as it piles insanity upon insanity. Highly recommended.

Haven – A shrewd FBI agent with a lost past who arrives in the small town of Haven, Maine, to solve the murder of a local ex-con only to discover that the curious enclave is a longtime refuge for people with supernatural powers that holds a lot of secrets, including to her own past.

BESW – Haven has always been interesting to me (surprising since I don’t like Stephen King) but for a couple seasons that was mostly because I was fascinated by how much they could promise to reveal and then backtrack on at the last minute. However, they’ve started answering so many solid series-long questions that I’m wondering if they’re powering up for a series-ending finale. I’m somewhat concerned they’ll get renewed anyway and have to invent new plots to keep going.

There are other shows on TV dealing with the supernatural, but these are the ones that members of the SciFi.SE community chose to comment on.

• All show descriptions were pulled from the plot summary listed on their respective IMDB pages –  http://imdb.com.