The Responsibility of Reality in Media

When contrasting two similar shows on Netflix, I was presented with this question: "Who's responsibility is it (for any given genre) to establish a sense of reality?"  Is it the responsibility of the producers, and screenwriters to present a story that seems realistic enough to engage the audience? Is it the responsibility of the viewer to step inside the story and welcome it as reality. Are the two parties expected to meet somewhere in the middle?

Now not all T.V. genres rely off a sense of reality.  Some T.V. series are designed to be much more realistic than others.  Curiously enough one genre that seems to have encountered a surge in realism are super hero T.V. shows and series.  The two shows I want to contrast is Arrow and The Flash.

Both shows are hosted by the same network with some of the same producers and screenwriters.  The shows often overlap as the plot lines are intertwined.  Since these shows share so many similarity, I found it surprising that one TV series is far more realistic.

I started off watching Arrow.  Oliver Queen (aka Arrow) is a rich vigilante that uses the skills he learned while shipwrecked on an island to target corrupt businessmen and criminals in his city.  Think Batman with a bow.  Oliver Queen doesn't have any super powers in the typical sense of the word.  He's obnoxiously rich and has archery skills that are suspiciously high for only five years of training, but there is nothing super about him.  As the series progresses Oliver encounters villains and heroes that also have borderline super powers such as super strength (Slade), superb aim (Deadshot), and super hacking skillz (Felicity), but nothing is completely outside the bounds of reality.

I'd say the only super hero (in the classical sense of the word) that Oliver encounters is Barry Allen (aka The Flash).  An powerful explosion from a supercollider gives Barry Allen super speed.  Barry quickly acquires the nickname as The Flash because he runs fast enough to produce nothing but a flash.  Surely enough Barry's ability is beyond what is realistic for any human being.  Tyson Gay can't sprint up the side of a building.  Similar to Barry, many other people in the city received super powers that are beyond the bounds of reality from the same blast. While the series remains internal consistent, there are many super powers and gadgets that seem to blatantly defy some of the most simple laws of physics.  For example Cisco, a scientist that aids Barry, designs a gun that freezes anything to absolute zero. I'll spare you the lecture in thermodynamics, but inform you that such a weapon is impossible to produce.  Even to freeze someone to a temperature anywhere near absolute zero in an environment that is not isolated would require such an enormous amount of energy that it would be utterly impractical to design.

So my question to you is which approach is more appropriate for this genre?  Should the media be designed such that it appears reasonably realistic to the audience? Or should the audience step into the reality presented in the media? 

I believe this responsibility should be shared in varying proportions.  Sometimes it is nice to be challenged to accept the fantasy of a series of fact despite my analytical side and sometimes it nice for my analytical side to have nothing to complain about.