Alex said:
I genuinely want to know who watches this and why.
I could probably churn out at least a five-page essay to explain why the show adheres to everything I hold dear about fictional stories (of all breeds: song, literature, poetry, drama, television, etc.), but to keep it short:
Haruhi is an original character, and originality in characters is valuable because characters are one of only two means by which stories distinguish themselves from one another. (The elements of stories are plot, language, and characters--but literally every plot can be boiled down to a character going on some sort of physical, mental, or emotional journey. Thus, language and characters remain, but language grows less relevant as sound and visuals are introduced.) She can't be easily classed into any number of stock stereotypes or archetypes, if archetypical interpretation is one's method, and it's unusual to find a character who shares her particular psychology and sorts of antics all combined in one person.
Kyon, meanwhile, is fairly generic, but he excels at exploding his laughably minor problems into melodrama, and whines about his "situations" with a dry humor that has a way of seeming to dispel the reality that he
is whining at all. It takes greater skill from a writer to make an audience care about someone's minor problems, like the eccentricity of a girl friend, than someone's major problems, like death or divorce or drug use or other heavy-handed garbage of such sort. Haruhi (the show) is impressive in that sense because it doesn't rely on plot devices that garner an easy, cop-out, autopilot type of sympathy.