It was very, very unusual to see DS (or any daytime serial) promoted in prime time and those commercials were everywhere.
It was rather frustrating to see them bring up old plot threads, like Petofi and Josette for no real purpose. The Josette angle is dealt with later on. Sort of. But the Petofi thread never is. It would be interesting to see where the Leviathan story was going to go, had it not been derailed by extreme viewer dissatisfaction and the impending movie.
As for Sheriff, I think we've all seen stranger first names than that. There was someone who worked in my agency whose actual fbirth name was Major. And that was no Catch 22!