start out with great fanfare and hype, peters out to irrelevancy, dies a slow miserable death (despite high-caliber acting, peace to Jeffrey Wright)

There's just not enough here, at least not in the pilot.

The plight of the artist getting jerked
The ingenue who discovers a new talent and gets jerked
The has-been businessman who wants to cash out and gets jerked

All of these plotlines have potential to be interesting

But the pilot wraps them all up in Marty's grittayy style and it comes off forced

I'll check ep 2 on demand, not must see tv for me. If ep 2 is grittier than the 1st I'm out