I've been pushing myself through Caprica, because I've seen so many people rave about it, calling it too smart for TV and how it being canned is just proof that we're all idiots. Said people are pretentious and up their own asses, because the show is horrible, just as I remember it when I stopped watching after about four episodes. And the thing is, it gets worse with every episode after that!
When I first got into it, my biggest problem was the setting; with BSG ended, and I watched the whole damn thing, including that horrible finale, I knew exactly when the series was supposed to take place. However, they didn't seem to care, because Caprica looked like Earth maybe 20 years into the future. On an alien planet possibly on the other side of the galaxy were cars from maybe 10 years ago. They had plums, they had tennis, they had cats and dogs (I know, a flaw BSG had as well, but they had an excuse for a while with not knowing the time setting), everything about it screamed soft science fiction set on Earth where they had robot butlers and an evolution of the GUI for the Internet in eye bands.
The characters range from I want to punch my monitor to dear God somebody wrote this and assumed we were supposed to care. There is a level of smug that comes from such horrible characters with horrible lines delivered by terrible actors in a drama that tries too hard and yet delivers nothing. Then when they doesn't work, they add in an MMO where death means perma banning, because hey, that's fun. They ramp up the character flaws to 11 and start trying to push terrorists as main characters who we're supposed to feel something more than the purest of disdain. But you know, at least that's a step up from the space Italians with their space mob, where you have multiple characters who are little more than thugs who you wish you could beat to death as main and supporting characters.
The show is trash, just like BSG became after the first two seasons (with the last half of season 4 being the perfect storm of dear God make the pain stop). People are trying to push "intelligence" onto the show when in reality they just want drama and flawed, whiny characters that they can be pretentious about and look down their noses at those who don't "get it".
Death of intelligent TV? No, there was nothing intelligent about Caprica... except the decision to cancel it.