But exactly what are his particular regional accent and/or particular grammatical influences? The episode doesn't reveal any of that, and this is California after all. The land of "new beginnings" and all that.

The dialog was probably a little off, but the rage it implied I think was genuine. And I don't think it was played for laughs.

Everything's derivative in some way or another, but I like to give them the benefit of the doubt for at least attempting to be original up front at least. If not, everything just immediately becomes a stale comparison to something else, and then you become merely derivative too.

When Vaughn's character says the now infamous "never do anything out of hunger, not even eating" There is a pause between hunger and 'not even eating'. It is intentionally a silly thing to say and it is meant to convey the fact that Vaughn's character is nervous and his mind is elsewhere. This is made more explicit…

The subsequent "skid" once he came to his senses was not shot well at all though.

I've watched it several times now, and it gets better every time, so I'm sold, for now at least.

On second and third watch, noticed the major phallic (tree) callout in Morse's scene as well. And the scene absolutely did remind me of the Mad Men finale again, which might have been the most insipid POS I've ever seen. I guess that's why I'm obsessing over it.

Hmm… California Central Valley rail corridor up for consideration; major money (legal and otherwise) lining up in anticipation; small corrupt city manager is revealed to have influence to exercise; said city manager turns up missing, then dead; major money (mostly extra-legal) has problem with said absence and…

I almost took the David Morse New Age compound interlude as a perverse Mad Men finale cross check, but then came to my senses and realized that it probably was exactly that. Fortunately, I remembered my trusty beta blockers were nearby shortly thereafter and decided to check out again for the night. Bye bye!

I was actually hoping that he would. I'm a redhead. Go figure.

It was pretty phony, wasn't it? Noticed it too.

Never was blown away by ANY of Season 1, personally. Matthew McConaughey in particular.

And I swing just the opposite. I thought it rang exactly true in an America where hackneyed pieces of dialog spoken with incongruous regional accents might be the new normal. Which might have been exactly the point.

Me thinks you might be expecting too much?

I guess I don't "get" this critique, as I found this episode to be mostly not objectionable, if not at least par for the course entertaining. As an opening episode in an 8 hour series, I've learned not to expect much in the way of major plot or character developments, and I'm fine with that. Likewise, I never once…

Guess I'm one of those you can't imagine then. Of course I'm also over 50, so go figure. It might be a little over the top as a social satire, so we'll see how it goes for the long run, but it looked good to me on first take. It's certainly no more cynical than the insipid Mad men finale.

This WAS a variation on the Soprano's cut to black. Call it the Cut to Coke ending.

Would have made more sense.

In other words, he went with the easy and obvious ending. Tells me he really didn't know what to do otherwise.

Rumor has it he sought treatment in some New Age compound up in Big Sur right after Charlie went all whacky with his murder shit. Something about a fear of being locked in a refrigerator…