Simply put, it really treats the viewer about as disrespectfully as any show I have ever seen. There is no real point to anything that happens in the first season. Dialogue is mostly oblique and meaningless, and the use of several main characters in diverse circumstances around the globe is about as clumsy a method of telling about a global catastrophe as I can think of. Certainly we didn't need such a device in "The Road": it just seems obvious after awhile. But skipping around is certainly a great way to avoid revealing you have no real story to tell!