You just described half the people I've known over my lifetime. Why would I expect socially advanced humans to grace the screen just because they happen to be in space?
And that was the very reason I couldn't stand BSG. Petty, self-serving, over-wrought people doing stupid things. I know art imitates life, but I'm loath to watching sad people do painful things on my computer screen when I can do that just by walking around downtown. It takes work to be happy and successful in life, and I want to see some decent examples, not a bunch of fictitious people mired in misery. I want to see people being their very best. That's why STTNG was so great! (Though, those old episodes seem extremely dated and abrupt today).
SGU, with all its high production values, was a huge leap over the super-fluff SG series, but where it won out in increased attention to detail, both social and technical, it lost through being so hopelessly derivative. It seemed like a production company's attempt to cobble together aspects from fan favored items, (BSG in a big way, and that Summer Glau clone who was even playing a character like River and that Terminator). The whole thing was disingenuous. Any good things in it were accidental bits of story which evolved on their own, though so many of the script ideas were Star Trek re-treads asking the question, "What if inadequate, burned-out miserable people were faced with Star Trek problems? Maybe the public will like that. They sure ate it up in BSG."
The one thing which did interest me was a bit of meta-story.
If the old SG1 McGyver crew were to have been dumped on the Destiny, they would have wrapped up the whole adventure in one or two episodes. They wouldn't have gotten stuck out in space for months on end. Why? Because they were happy and brilliant mythical figures and they would have found solutions. There was an episode where Young was being upbraided by McGyver for dragging his ass on the mission, and I was thinking, "Yeah, if McGyver had been there, none of this crap would have happened." -Now, I know it was not done on purpose, but it struck me that maybe when characters are happy, advanced and brilliant, their adventures just seem fluffier and more up-beat as a direct result of the character's outlook. Perhaps misery is linked to ones level of social advancement? I mean, honestly, can you see any of the old SG1 crew acting like selfish, whiny pricks?
Me neither.
The annoying part was that just as the characters in the show began showing some decent qualities, just as they were pulling together, and just as they were beginning to question the nature of reality itself, that's when the show got canned.
-FL