Hayate no Gotoku (heheh, it's a pun)

I get a huge kick out of Hayate the Combat Butler.  Apparently a bigger kick than most, but I'm having such a good time, I don't care.  This show is having just as much, if not more, than I am, so we're a good match.

If you don't know, Hayate is the heartwarming story of a poor boy with loser parents who leave the country to flee their debts and, as a parting gift, sell their hard-working and responsible son's organs to the yakuza.  At his wit's end, Hayate considers kidnapping a young heiress he finds wandering around, but then he ends up saving her and getting hit by a car, and because she kind of misunderstood his kidnapping attempt as a confession of love and has a little crush on him, she hires him to be her butler and pays off his debt.

There are so many allusions to anime, manga, and video games that I really can't begin to describe them all.  Suffice it to say that there is an Evangelion reference so hilarious that I probably would have bought the first boxed set just so I could own that one episode.  Also, the opening episode's encounter with Santa is pretty much worth the price of admission.

I will admit that I really, really wanted some ADVid notes a la Excel Saga for this show because I know that I'm barely catching half of the references, and I know I'm missing almost all of the puns. I sort of wish it had a dub, so I could listen to it again while doing other stuff around the house, but I don't think I'd wish that ridiculously fast dialogue and all those jokes on any voice actors.  Plus, no one could do those intros better than Norio Wakamoto.

And it's still funny, possibly because it's moving so fast.  Manic is probably a good descriptor of the pacing most of the time.

Something about it all reminds me of Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei (The Power of Negative Thinking). (I mean, more than just the fact that the guy who created Hayate used to be an assistant to the guy who created Zetsubou-sensei, a fact which Zetsubou's cranky creator frequently makes pointed grumbled references to.)  They share a similar zany, moving-too-fast, incredibly wrong and funny, self-aware comic sensibility.  Or something.  You should see/read them both.  They are probably unrivaled in madcap (self)mockery.

I've seen mixed reviews for Hayate (mostly for the anime), and I'm curious about why people's mileage varies so much.  A lot of people dislike the value (no dub but the price per episode is too high).  I wonder if for others it's about expectations?  Difficulty keeping up?  Something else?  Do you have an opinion either way?