I agree with you. the show lost a lot when Tara died and I just didn't care much by the final season either. As for Juice, I think his demise was long overdue.

It always intrigued me how Blakes 7 just killed everyone in the finale.  I thought Sons was going to go that route.

One character I always wanted to die a horrible death and never did was that annoying asshole, Miles from the final seasons of Lost. The writers must have really liked that jackass for them not to kill such a worthless character. Matter of fact, I hated most people from the freighter  (Farady, the annoying red headed chick and Miles, the only one that was likable was the drunken helicopter pilot)

You are spot on with Anna Torv, her acting precludes Tatians's.

On the subject of favorites being killed off:
I never understood why "Homeland" killed Nick Brody in Season 3. His relationship with Carrie was a cornerstone of the show and I found myself wondering ;"What are we gonna do now?"

See, I had the opposite reaction to that...I thought killing Brody was way overdue.  I thought his storyline had run its course, and it was time for him to go.  When someone is on the run like that, an international fugitive, they can't just let him get back to a normal life.  The show was bending over backward to keep him on the show, and it was going to suffer.

Orphan Black is good, but is still say that Anna Torv from Fringe was the best at playing multiple characters on one show. The nuance was brilliant.

They had more natural options for the death, bit they backed away because they didn't want to upset fangirls too much, and for some reason they viewed Laurel/Black Canary fans as a vocal minority.

I am all for sudden, tragic death. But it can't feel cheap when it happens.

The last two seasons in Pakistan and then Germany were just "okay" but it is so glaringly obvious that the show is missing something.  gravitas?  Seeing the actor, Damian Lewis on "Billions" is interesting. 

I was surprised when Sons of Anarchy killed Tara. To off her in the next to last season (and the savagery of her murder) was very upsetting.  I think the show lost a lot when she left.  Maggie Siff is a good actress and she has resurfaced also on Billions.  I never tire of watching her.

And as for enjoying watching certain performers, I have to tip my hat to Tatiana Maslany of Orphan Black. It is so much fun seeing her play all those characters.

The weird thing is that I don't think they were far from getting it right -- if they had decided from the first episode that Laurel was to die, they could have built up an entire run of episodes where the conflict between Laurel's legal exploits and her vigilante exploits is building to terrible consequences and those consequences turn out to be her death. Instead, all that stuff was abruptly thrown into one episode because it was only with this one specific episode that the writers had finally made a choice.

I disliked the Laurel character intensely in Season 1 but came to appreciate her reworking in Seasons 2 - 4. I don't object to the death or even the circumstances of her death -- I just disliked how, because of the improvised, open-ended approach, there was nothing to make sure that Laurel's story and Laurel's death dovetailed until the very episode in which it happened. It's kind of artless. On some level, I think the writers were operating from the view that death is often random; there aren't always clues, there isn't always build-up, so it'd be fine. But it makes the story feel like it's being engineered from the outside in and without much thought or care, specifically due to how the random nature of the writing is reflected in the random feel of the storytelling.

I don't hate it as much as you did, but I certainly can't defend it.

I'd dismissed WITCHBLADE as empty fetish material until Ron Marz, one of my favourite writers, started scripting the series, at which point I went back and re-read all the (awful) material before his debut. In the pre-Marz issues, the comic attempted to create some buzz by allowing readers to vote in a death pool where they could vote for characters to be safe or to potentially be killed off until only one unlucky character would be left in the pool. There was no storytelling function served by teasing a death and letting the audience vote on it, nor was it originated from the stories themselves -- it was simply to create empty hype. What it did, instead, was communicate how little the people writing this comic cared about their stories or characters in any way.

As for Battlestar Galectica, I saw that ending coming about a year early. The foreshadowing had basically tipped their hand and I was not surprised to find that they were not our descendants but instead our ancestors. I thought that it was brilliant. The human religion set the basis for the Greek and Roman beliefs while the Ceylon religion (and with the human converts including Baltar) was the basis for Judeo-Christianity.

Saying goodbye to some characters, I found the execution of Gaeta  somewhat disturbing, Callie's murder was upsetting, while
I hated to see Boomer die (she had been a favorite, the fact she was killed by one of her duplicates, Athena made no difference)
I was never clear as to the faith of Kara (Starbuck). Was she an angel of sorts? 

All in all I found the finale satisfying, unlike that ABC show that ran for six years about plane crash survivors...

However, I was so invested in the characters at that point that it didn't matter to me anymore.  There could've been an army of clowns on stationary bikes in that cave, and I wouldn't have thought any less of it.

One problem, I think, is that the show was a push and pull between science and faith. Like Battlestar Galactica, the finale and a lot that led up to it had less to do with science and more to do with faith. To me, it makes sense. To the people who want hard science to explain everything, it didn't make sense.

LOST came down to one fact - if you cared about the characters more than the mysteries, you liked it.  If you cared about the mysteries more than the characters, you were disappointed. 

It isn't the best show I've ever seen, but I still think it's my favorite.  No show ever got me as excited to watch, and nothing has come close since.

Can I never agree with anyone about anything?!

As for Game of Thrones, I liked Stannis, he was somewhat of  an asshole but he was the last of the "Five Kings" still alive.... going to miss him and his ...

I was glad the Sand Snakes were not killed off and since I do not get HBO and will have to wait many months before watching Season 6, that being said I would think that the writers have closed the chapter on them.  The fight between them and Jaime and Bron was thrilling to watch (even though it does not take place in the book!)

I don't really watch shows for just one character, and I usually wouldn't give one up just because someone died. I think that a well done death is great material to work with. Lost did it all the time, and it always mattered. Even when it wasn't as much of a shock anymore, it was always sad to see someone die.

I don't think that Laurel should have been killed off on Arrow. I think that in a lot of ways, it was a mistake to kill Tommy. It was great drama, but they keep looking for ways to bring him back into the show and they really can't (though I'd be cool with seeing him as Earth-2's Dark Archer). They weren't done with that character. But on the flip side, they brought back Malcolm when they shouldn't have and he has been sucking life out of the show for years now.
The problem with Arrow isn't that Laurel died, but that so little thought seems to be put into any part of the story anymore. If there isn't much else for people to connect with on the show, I can understand why her death would be the last straw. Especially with the comments made by the producer.

Jadzia Dax was a great character on DS9. The actress was leaving, but asked producers not to kill her off. They did anyway. However, it wasn't a cheap move. It wasn't petty. It was war and to show someone we knew and love die (even in a stupid way) meant something. With that show, there was enough good to balance out the bruised feelings of losing that character.

As for Sliders... I'm still not sure why we all stuck with it for so long. The basic premise was great, but there was so little that lived up to it. I guess we were always holding out hope.