That's overly harsh. The first episode was somewhat hard to follow. Certainly harder to follow than most television. There was also plenty of horse racing jargon in episode one as well. It's indisputable. If a viewer got turned off by those two things then I completely understand. A lot of people do not watch television that makes them work. Most people view television as vapid entertainment.
You call it overly harsh, I call it distressingly accurate.
I didn't find the pilot hard to follow at all, and there was plenty of horse racing jargon in
every episode. The thing is, that jargon was explained if it related to the plot. If it wasn't explained, then it wasn't a crucial point to the story. So who cares if some terms fly over your head? This is the problem. People whined about that because they want every single thing brought down to their level and meticulously explained. If they had their way the show would have been a complete bore. It would have been like Inception where every episode is centered around explaining shit. Shit that is ultimately window dressing to the actual drama at the heart of the show. You say people don't want to work, I agree but I also say they are simpletons. I never once felt like I was working while watching Luck, and I certainly don't consider myself a genius.
But yes, I agree that easily digestible tripe is what is most popular. A movie like
A Serious Man will never be as popular as
Transformers. Even if
Boardwalk Empire was on network tv it would never do
American Idol numbers. HBO shows are like a refuge from all the braindead bile that the average viewer enjoys, so to see them scribble their angry rants because Luck made their tiny brains hurt by asking them to pay attention for more than 3 minutes is amusing to me. I look at Luck and I see brilliance. I look at the complaints about being inaccessible and I see petulance and stupidity.