It's a good show, and I hope they are well received enough to get a second season. Probably the first half of the season is spent on character development, which I could understand seeming to drag a little bit, but you have 8 leading characters with their own story lines, plus the story of how they're all connected.
The main characters are all very likeable and fairly complex, so it really takes time to get to know them before jumping straight to being able to visit and share with one another and after watching it all, I think they spaced it out pretty perfectly.
I would agree that the sex may be a little much for some, but I wouldn't consider it gratuitous. There could literally be no more intimate relationship than the one that's supposed to connect them all and the most universal way to try to communicate such thorough intimacy is with sex. The orgy scene mentioned in a previous comment may definitely be too much for some, but I think the point of it is to illustrate how they're all pulled in and share the experience completely and are powerless to control it. They're shown as participants because they're each simultaneously on all sides of the sexual equation; then shown after the fact to have each (with a couple exceptions) been going about their day.
By the 8th episode, everything is fairly established and each character is dealing with their own situations while the main plot just keeps building. From that point on, you're pretty much just going to want to watch it straight through and when it's done you'll hopefully want a second season as much as I do.