Keller has grown on me a lot; I like Jewel Staite, and my initial meh-ness towards Keller had more to do with some of the clunky ways she was characterised initially. There's nothing wrong with having a character who's less experienced and uncertain in their role, but some of the ways they highlighted that in the first half of the fourth season didn't work so well for me: in 'Missing' Keller's homesickness is contrasted with Teyla losing her entire people and comes across as trivial when it doesn't have to (because they ARE in another galaxy; the woman's allowed to be homesick). In Quarantine she talks about the difficulty of growing up a prodigy, which, again, fine, except she's telling this to Ronon, who has enough reason for angst in his little finger than the entire regular cast put together. That stopped in the latter part of s4, and I warmed to her a lot more.

I have no desire to see any serious romances on SGA between any of the characters; I get all my 'shippy needs from fic and vids, and I don't need or really want the show to go there. In Angel fandom, I was an Angel/Cordy shipper, but I was perfectly happy to read and write fic for the pairing without wanting to see it happen in canon, and when it did happen in canon, it wasn't (imho) handled terribly well. And SGA is just terrible at handling ongoing relationships -- Kanaan isn't a character at all, just a handy babysitting plot device.