Near perfect pilot, in my opinion. Dennis Quaid and Michael Chiklis are in top form, and the production design is beautiful. It is a CBS crime series first and foremost, but, in this episode at least, it also has a certain anxious and compelling undercurrent: Las Vegas' troubled transition into modernity. I see big potential here (with the Quaid/Chiklis dynamic in particular) and hope the ratings are strong.

You lost me there

I am a bit curious about this one because the creators keep saying that it isn't a procedural and CBS has allowed them to do more than story-of-the-week episodes (a format I loathe and have never successfully followed a show with). I'm just skeptical because of the network it is on.

Also, there would be the issue of me never being able to watch this live ("Parenthood" takes priority), and CBS still being stuck in the stone-age when it comes to allowing their shows for digital distribution.

I would be skeptical of this show's placement on CBS too, but CBS has allowed The Good Wife to be the wonderfully vibrant program that it is for four seasons.

True, The Good Wife is an exception to the rule (need to catch up on that one someday - I watched until about the middle of season 2). For the most part though their dramas bore me to tears.

Loved the pilot but, looking at the promotional shots, I sure hope they use some of that and develop a better sense of the 1960's, out in the desert, The West, old times.

The mod 21st century and SDT 4:3 camera work, crane shots and fast editing did Not represent the era at all. It was just another modern crime show. Slower, except for action scenes, is better at the 60's. The deputy that pulled up was strictly an 80's Preppy or Valley Boy. That character did not exist above ground in the 60's. Instead, he would have been a cool jerk or a Steve McQueen wannabe. Or like a younger Robert Duval or Dennis Hopper in a "Nightmare in the Sun", an early 60's movie based in the desert.

I was hoping for more of a American Graffiti or In Cold Blood style of camerawork and editing, something that knows how to use a 16:9 aspect. Even the street locations in Hitchcock's Psycho would be better at representing the era, they were the 60's, as would Burma Shave signs, Stuckey's, curio shops with their carney Giant 6 Foot Jack Rabbit of animal pelts and chicken wire or stuffed vultures and live rattlesnakes. Capt. Spaulding's drive-in was patterned after the curio shops in "House of 1000 Corpses". It was fairly factual to the roadside desert stops in the 60's, except the real shops were crazier with the stuffed animals.

Still, I thought it was pretty good though there wasn't enough dust and sand on the roads or embedded in the face of the Hell's Angel, scratched shades or sand-beaten denim.
Where was the denim jacket with the Hell's Angels insignia on the back I wonder?