Given Lindelof's involvement, I'm not surprised the show has a lot of similarities to Lost - how normal people cope with the idea of supernatural phenomena, sanity in an insane world, ambiguous motives for a tribe of "others."
I'm not holding out hope that the reason for the "departure" will be explained quickly or will be satisfactory for a lot of viewers.
The performances are really good though so far. Last week's episode - the dude who played the preacher was top notch.