Headscratchers / Best Friends Whenever

• So, acknowledging that the fact that this is a Sitcom and therefore the Rule of Funny applies, I have a question. In "A Time To Cheat", Barry has absolutely no clue how his invention caused Shelby and Cyd to time travel, but in the Pilot, he mentioned that it was a possible outcome of them messing with it. Logically, he must have some had some reason to believe that in the first place, so how does he not have a single guess about what might have caused it?
  • He knows his machine caused the time traveling but he doesn't know that it hit multiple items before hitting the girls. All he did in "A Time To Cheat" was set it to 400 before zapping himself with it. But I don't know how we knew his machine could cause time travel - I guess that part is where the 'rule of funny'/"it's a disney sitcom don't overthink it" type of thing applies.
  • I got the impression he was simply stating that the ray could have done nearly anything to them, and was over empathizing to make the point how dangerous it could have been. And ended up being accidentally right.
• The second alternate timeline in "The Butterscotch Effect" establishes that Barry met Naldo because he missed out on meeting his favorite scientist when he was a kid, so how did he and Naldo meet in the first alternate timeline where he didn't miss out on that experience?
  • Its possible that Naldo was still at the high school after Barry left the lecture and they met up, where as in the second time line Barry probably left shortly after missing the lecture (having had no reason to stay).
• In "Shake Your Booty", Cyd and Shelby get their 70's outfits from the lost and found, but where do they get their 70's hairdos? They made a joke about the outfits but they couldn't include a line about the hair?
  • In "Shake Your Booty", Barry calls his dad to ask if his mom isn't Shelby. Wouldn't it be more appropriate to ask what his mom's name is?
    • Yes, but it was a 5 second joke. Rule of Funny applies.
  • About "Shake Your Booty": was it a closed time-loop? Barry and Naldo see Cyd and Shelby's pictures peppered throughout the yearbook in the present, but were they in the pictures the whole time? If they looked at the yearbook the day before, would they have seen themselves? Did they go back and change the past, or did they go because history said they already went back?
    • Its never confirmed either way, but it seems they did change the past. They would have certainly noticed the pictures before they went back otherwise. Jump to the 50's is another example with their Grandma Rita apparently having already seen two time-traveling teenage girls in the 50's and the inference that history would change if they didn't go back and set her up with his husband Paul.
• There were far easier things Cyd and Shelby could've done to stop Janet without causing her to hunt them down: Why didn't they take a small object (there were plenty of small objects within their reach, or jump to their present to get a small object), pass the first trap, and then throw the object at the lamp? They could then leave before Janet came in. Or, why didn't they jumped forward to their time, get Barry to invent an EMP (because Barry can invent a lot of unusual things within a short span of time, like the laser), and use the EMP to knock out all electronics (including all the lights, and the security systems)? After doing so they could then travel forward to their present before Janet sees them. The future of them not living together will just be a minor issue they can fix later on.
  • Yeah, but then the whole "escaping Janet" arc would have ended too soon. Using an EMP in Janet's neighborhood 1991 could also have unintended consequences on the present day. Also, none of these solutions account for Janet finding the tachyon particles and learning about time travel.
  • However, their power was draining with each attempt, and by the time they figured out all the traps, it didn't allow for enough tries to escape Janet. Cyd & Shelby don't know when Tachyons will be left behind as it's presumably random unless they travel outside of their lifetime, but they've left them in the present as well according to "Shake Your Booty". Times they didn't leave them behind include the jump back to the present after trapping Janet in the ropes, and most(if not all the jumps to the 1500's in the second season).
• The bigger question is, why don't Cyd and Shelby warn Barry about Janet? They've traveled through time to see how terrible Janet is, and Barry is their only friend who will believe them about their adventures through time.
  • They used the "why we can't tell you is because it's too dangerous for you to know" excuse. They don't want him to know he was frozen in suspended animation in the dystopian alternate universe due to learning Janet had a "tachyometer" as their only other reason.
• Why wasn't Janet's disappearance reported as a missing person of interest? Given how high profile she was and the fact she ran a million dollar company, surely many people would have noticed when she never returned to work after going to confront the girls at their high school? It can't have escaped public notice that if someone walks into a building, then doesn't walk out again, it's obvious something happened to them while they were inside, unless everyone saw how evil she was and basically canceled her after what happened, but wouldn't that reveal to the world what happened with Cyd and Shelby and their time travel for a bit, unless they covered it up somehow before season 2 started. Another fact to consider is that no one remembered anything that happened from the past few days once Future Cyd & Shelby reset the timeline, causing no one to remember "anything that happened", as the school resets to a normal day afterwards.
• When Janet gets the time travel powers temporarily and puts her hands together to time travel, how come it takes so long for her to time travel to start up? The first time Cyd and Shelby got the power, it took a few hours for it to come into full effect once they were hit by the laser, but for Janet, it takes a long time when she is actively trying to jump, just enough for Cyd and Shelby to escape the bodyguards' grip and jump-jam her? And why did her power get drained, but Cyd and Shelby's didn't? One theory is since Cyd and Shelby have had the power longer than her, it could've become stronger or more powerful over time or more fully developed.
• When Future Cyd and Shelby supposedly send Janet to jail through the time rift that leads to the future, how do they end up getting her in jail? If they erased the timeline where Janet got the powers, and none of that ever happened, they would have no proof of her doing anything wrong to anyone, and therefore, no reason for her to be in jail, which would cause them a lot of problems to have the evil Janet in their time period. The only excuse for this is "the future isn't written" from future Cyd and Shelby.
• Why did they choose completely different actresses with very different faces to play the Adult Cyd and Shelby? Aside from their hair, the Adult Cyd and Shelby look nothing like teen Cyd and Shelby. Cyd and Shelby are like, 15-16 years old in the present, so it's not like they're gonna have completely different faces and voices when they're adults, which for them is only a few years away. Why didn't they use the same actresses but make them taller, maybe give them a new hairstyle or something to tell them apart, (like they've done for other times, such as Shelby with bangs two years in the future, or Cyd in middle school who had short hair) and then, use special effects to make them look like they're in the same room?
• How did Janet Smythe change the country to some sort of dictatorship in her Dystopian Smythe-iverse? Even with time travel powers, if she went back in time to change the country's history, that wouldn't be possible without completely changing history and risking her own life changing or possibly making it so she was never born. It's implied that her taking credit for every modern invention led to her being super rich and famous and then she was ruling the country, but how could she feasibly change the United States from a democracy to a dictatorship just because she was super rich and famous? There are many super rich people who have invented things right now and in real life who could never do this. Does this imply she had the power to hold some sort of hostile takeover of the US Government in the Dystopia?
• The time rift opening randomly. There's some way to open it as we've seen in season 2, but why did it open randomly the second time after Janet's departure? It's never explained and just seen as a way to serve the plot.