However, I find "Mission Control" to be perfectly usable. The name is a little dumb, but it's basically just expose with multiple desktop switching added in. What's the "all flash" part you are talking about?
* You can't drag a window from one monitor to another using Mission Control, even though it will highlight the space you're trying to drop on.
* You can't move Space 1 to another spot or remove it, for no particular reason.
* When activating mission control from a fullscreen app, it shows the windows from Space 1, yet you have to swipe left to go to Space 2.
* It forces you to have different backgrounds per space/monitor, even if you don't want to. Changing your background globally is a huge pain.
Additionally, Mission Control is simply much more laggy-feeling. I could easily switch between apps and spaces with no hesitation in Snow Leopard. In Lion, for whatever reason, it was that decided it was important to eliminate this in order to do a fancy slide effect. Lion also gives you the ability to set a unique wallpaper for each desktop, which is nice for some people, but it forces my computer to refresh the items on my desktop each time I scroll into another space.
I just wish they'd done it from the beginning.
It's only terrible because Apple forced all users to their Revision A software. Axing MobileMe and iOS development tools before Mountain Lion cleaned the mess up wasn't a nice move.