I am similarly exhausted by 4.5's peculiar blend of awesomeness that doesn't FEEL awesome BECAUSE GIRLS DON'T TALK TO EACH OTHER. I honestly think that is behind a lot of the sense of emptiness, because the endgame arc is still so clearly about what's going on with the women and yet there are always these men standing between them emoting and being generally irrelevant (Tigh excepted). it's like what grrl_unscripted keeps ranting about re: Laura is DYING and we see the whole thing from ADAMA'S POV. yes, I am a man-hating lesbian. if we don't want to attribute it to the uselessness of the boys in general we could certainly say that the absence of Laura in particular leaves an absence at the show's core.