Many here have already given many of the reasons for the series only lasting the one season. To summarize: 1. Too expensive to produce (more on this later, as this could very easily have been fixed, even at the time before affordable CGI, and indeed this is the point of my Comment). I seem to recall that it was one of the most expensive series (on a per-episode basis) ever on TV up to that time, rivaled only by the original "Battlestar: Galactica," and much of that (in both cases) was the SFX budget.
2. Bounced around the schedule, often unannounced, sometimes at the last minute. Of COURSE people can't watch it if they can't FIND it! There were no TiVos or auto-updating Internet versions of the TV Guide back then, either.
3. Lousy timing and luck, historically speaking. Pre-empted several times by Gulf War I news. Not quite as bad as the news-related bad luck that afflicted the earlier superhero series "The Greatest American Hero," whose main protagonist had the same last name as the man who, while the series was still airing, became notorious for shooting then-President Ronald Reagan.
4. Inconsistent use of comic book elements. It seemed that the network execs couldn't make up their minds over whether the Flash should battle ordinary criminals or bring in some of his Rogues' Gallery from the comics (The Silver-Age "Barry Allen" Flash has arguably THE single richest Rogues' Gallery of ANY hero in the history of comics!). We did see Captain Cold, The Trickster (who was portrayed more like The Joker, and in fact Mark Hamill's portrayal of The Trickster is very likely what convinced WB animation to use him as the voice of The Joker in the outstanding animated Batman series and spin-offs from the mid 1990s up to and including the "Justice League" animated series of the early 2000s), and Mirror Master. We also saw a kinda-sorta "Reverse-Flash" (a clone of Barry on the TV series).
But other excellent Rogues' Gallery members were ignored entirely. One in particular, one of the greatest, Gorilla Grodd, was mentioned off-handedly by the stoolie whom we often saw, in the episode "Deadly Nightshade" (in which the Golden Age Central City hero "The Nightshade" {note to an earlier commenter: NOT "The Prowler"!} came out of retirement and worked with The Flash to help hunt down a new, murderous vigilante who was using the Nightshade's name and costume to kill criminals), as a HUMAN gang-lord "up in Helltown." Presumably, he was big and tough, perhaps built somewhat like a gorilla, so "Gorilla Grodd" was just his mobster nickname.
That angered me to no end. I realized that doing a real GORILLA Grodd would be difficult and expensive for the special effects of the time, and that a TV audience wouldn't likely accept the concept of a hidden city of sapient apes in Africa, but I didn't consider that good enough reason to just write the character off like that! So, shortly after the series ended, I wrote a fanfic episode (available on the Internet if anyone's interested) which introduced a version of Grodd that would (A) be cheaper to use in an episode, and (B) had an origin that was more palatable to an adult TV-watching audience -- I even tied Grodd into the series continuity so tightly that his existence explains many of the continuity problems with the series itself (such as how come Dr. McGee knew so much about how to treat Barry Allen in the pilot, saving his life from the effects of his altered, rampant metabolism).
Anyway, back to #1: I said that the effects budget could easily have been fixed, and it could have, right from the git-go. You see, back when the series was announced, the producers received an offer from Mike Jittlov (http://www.wizworld.com), a special effects wizard of the time who had earlier produced a music video (later expanded into a feature film of the same name, about the making of the video) called "The Wizard of Speed and Time" which had special effects WAAAAY better than were on "The Flash" TV series, and which were WAY CHEAPER to do! Indeed, he did most of them IN THE CAMERA! He NEVER used a computer or other such gear! But, the IDIOT PRODUCERS TURNED DOWN HIS OFFER to do the SFX for the series! He was even willing to do it for SCALE!
2. Bounced around the schedule, often unannounced, sometimes at the last minute. Of COURSE people can't watch it if they can't FIND it! There were no TiVos or auto-updating Internet versions of the TV Guide back then, either.
3. Lousy timing and luck, historically speaking. Pre-empted several times by Gulf War I news. Not quite as bad as the news-related bad luck that afflicted the earlier superhero series "The Greatest American Hero," whose main protagonist had the same last name as the man who, while the series was still airing, became notorious for shooting then-President Ronald Reagan.
4. Inconsistent use of comic book elements. It seemed that the network execs couldn't make up their minds over whether the Flash should battle ordinary criminals or bring in some of his Rogues' Gallery from the comics (The Silver-Age "Barry Allen" Flash has arguably THE single richest Rogues' Gallery of ANY hero in the history of comics!). We did see Captain Cold, The Trickster (who was portrayed more like The Joker, and in fact Mark Hamill's portrayal of The Trickster is very likely what convinced WB animation to use him as the voice of The Joker in the outstanding animated Batman series and spin-offs from the mid 1990s up to and including the "Justice League" animated series of the early 2000s), and Mirror Master. We also saw a kinda-sorta "Reverse-Flash" (a clone of Barry on the TV series).
But other excellent Rogues' Gallery members were ignored entirely. One in particular, one of the greatest, Gorilla Grodd, was mentioned off-handedly by the stoolie whom we often saw, in the episode "Deadly Nightshade" (in which the Golden Age Central City hero "The Nightshade" {note to an earlier commenter: NOT "The Prowler"!} came out of retirement and worked with The Flash to help hunt down a new, murderous vigilante who was using the Nightshade's name and costume to kill criminals), as a HUMAN gang-lord "up in Helltown." Presumably, he was big and tough, perhaps built somewhat like a gorilla, so "Gorilla Grodd" was just his mobster nickname.
That angered me to no end. I realized that doing a real GORILLA Grodd would be difficult and expensive for the special effects of the time, and that a TV audience wouldn't likely accept the concept of a hidden city of sapient apes in Africa, but I didn't consider that good enough reason to just write the character off like that! So, shortly after the series ended, I wrote a fanfic episode (available on the Internet if anyone's interested) which introduced a version of Grodd that would (A) be cheaper to use in an episode, and (B) had an origin that was more palatable to an adult TV-watching audience -- I even tied Grodd into the series continuity so tightly that his existence explains many of the continuity problems with the series itself (such as how come Dr. McGee knew so much about how to treat Barry Allen in the pilot, saving his life from the effects of his altered, rampant metabolism).
Anyway, back to #1: I said that the effects budget could easily have been fixed, and it could have, right from the git-go. You see, back when the series was announced, the producers received an offer from Mike Jittlov (http://www.wizworld.com), a special effects wizard of the time who had earlier produced a music video (later expanded into a feature film of the same name, about the making of the video) called "The Wizard of Speed and Time" which had special effects WAAAAY better than were on "The Flash" TV series, and which were WAY CHEAPER to do! Indeed, he did most of them IN THE CAMERA! He NEVER used a computer or other such gear! But, the IDIOT PRODUCERS TURNED DOWN HIS OFFER to do the SFX for the series! He was even willing to do it for SCALE!
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