I can probably answer some of the questions.
Garo, unlike SHT, has no fixed teams to film the story.
Other than the chief director and the chief backstory writer there is no consistency while filming the episodes. Directors and script writers don't sit down to chat about how things should be filmed and what should be heavily emphasized after the last episode. There can be time-frames between episodes, with last episodes being filmed months before the early episodes by completely new crews.
Garo is a nursing school for new directors and staff, who are friends of Amemiya. As the chief director Amemiya sits there to watch, but never interferes the filming. Episode directors are free do whatever they like to the episodes, and later becomes their portfolio for more jobs in their later career.

And wasn't TOWSITD a case of Amemiya trusting one of these other directors with a whole series, which is what led to it having a tighter overall plot?

Actually there aren't much of a change like the previous series, except of having a different chief director. Time scheduling was about the same (Nagasawa Nao and a couple others filmed their part 9 months after they wrapped up the final episode). Plot-wise Amemiya left everything to the backstory crew to have fun with, so not much sudden new 'ideas' popped up and disappeared from time to time.
I say TOWSITD is probably the only Garo series which chief director actually worked closely with the backstory team (according the the numbers of tweets about private messages).

I think it is better to treat Garo as a stage show.
Some directors prefers to have if filmed like heros on attraction sites stage, while some made it more like a regular TV show with some stage acting elements.

Solid "Horror of the week" episode this time. Not the most creative in terms of visuals or plot, but very solid and decent overall. We had another Shougeki Gouraigan actress as the Horror this week and she did well. I'm not sure if I found all her giggling cute or annoying, but at least she got stabbed in the end. I was hoping for that so much during the last few Gouraigan episodes. :lol

I liked the scene with Raiga, Crow, and Mayuri at the end. It almost felt like the cast had chemistry for a minute. Almost.

Will they show Kouga & Kaoru in the series?

Amemiya has said he has no intention for them to appear.

This week Raiga's teacher shows up.
Yeah the guy in sliver who wields double sword.

Watched episode 16 today and it was probably the best episode since episode 9. Not to mention it has the coolest looking Horror since the horror movie one. And the fight scene was pretty awesome. However, is it just me, or do the Horrors of this season seem pretty weak? They all seem to be killed quite easily.

This week's episode brought a rather large smile to my face :D

So every season of Garo has the childhood flashback episode; it's pretty much mandatory. Kouga had two, Ryuga had one, Rian had one, and now it's Raiga's turn. Usually these turn out to be above average episodes and some, like Makai Senki's, turn out to be series standouts. So how did Makai no Hana's turn out?

This was, hands down, not only the best episode of the series but also easily one of my favorite Garo episodes ever. I'm not going to say anything in detail, not even in spoiler text, for anyone who's reading this thread before seeing it. But I will say that I also had a huge smile on my face throughout this one and I even got a little misty eyed during the credits. This whole episode was fantastic. Absolutely fantastic.