I think the worst plastic and uninteresting characters were in Space 1999. Saw it as a kid and got the set mostly for nostalgic reasons. I didn't like it much then and don't enjoy it much now. and just couldn't keep watching it.
Firefly, in my personal view, is the opposite. The characters are interesting and the dialog is witty. I can see where people would think them still artificial, though.
Even with my bad memory, I need a few months to forget, but that's an interesting suggestion to revisit with the commentary track. I rarely want to watch with commentary tracks, but might enjoy it for Firefly... after I read the book, of course!
