Man, I found myself living in southern Arizona for a few years and this show nails it. The people it portrays, well I've met their doppelgangers all and they are dead on accurate. The place, it REALLY sucks. But there's a weird surreal quality to the desert that grows on you, and that quality is captured by the show as well.
What else? The old people from all over the midwest and Canada that basically just come there to die, the young people looking for a way out, and the rest of them, misfits and raggedy hooers and gun toting simpletons and desert crazies...they're all real.
I used to have to try to explain what living in southern Arizona was like, now I just tell people to watch this show and they'll get it.
It's just about perfect.