and I like, too, that HL's romance isn't will-they-or-won't-they UST-driven, or raging with jealousy and broken promises; I love that Duncan and Amanda and Methos are BFFs as much as lovers...

*nodnod* I'm actually amazed at how squarely HL managed to hit some pretty specific buttons of mine for relationships while avoiding my very closely related "do not wants". I loathe jealousy/cheating plotlines, but I have a longstanding love for couples who are clearly in love while absolutely not following the picket-fence-and-kids trajectory, or even conforming to traditional ideas of marriage and relationships, such as "you must live in the same country with your significant other" or whatnot *g*. Basically I just love relationships that are all about people finding their own kind of happiness without being too concerned about what society says they're supposed to be doing, and relationships (romantic, platonic, or some combination of the two) that are sort of messy, variable and hard to quantify -- that don't quite fit into tidy little boxes. HL was actually better at this than nearly any other Western show I can think of -- most of the other examples that come to mind are either books or anime/manga.