To be fair, a lot of TV doesn't do m-f platonic friendship at all, so I like that SGA has some, even if not as much as m-m (and pretty much no f-f friendship, which makes me a sad panda). And yeah, John with Teyla and Elizabeth worked better when they dropped the UST, but even when it was there it was mostly so subtle you could ignore it; they almost never explicitly stated the UST.

But a lot of shows that have romantic relationships will show more than the sexual attraction; they'll show the characters bonding over other things, having fun together, talking, sharing interests. While as SG seems to find this part of romance so - boring, or something? - that it's unnecessary. So you get Sam/Jack, where the show repeatedly makes the point that they have pretty much nothing in common, and that's supposed to make the romance cute or something. And now Rodney & Keller should have more in common than that, both being super-intelligent geeks, but the show almost goes out of its way not to give us anything. Keller doesn't like physics, Rodney doesn't like medicine (though he pretends to around her) - and we've been given nothing else. They both like beer?

I think this is why Keller nagging Rodney set me off. John snipes at Rodney in public too (though I can't recall him ever telling Rodney to be humble or tone it down, except in professional situations where Rodney's mouth could get them killed.) But we know John likes Rodney otherwise; we've seen them having fun together, and Rodney is assured enough of their friendship that he'll snark back to John. But this was Rodney & Keller's first date, and we haven't seen them interacting off-hours, so the sniping didn't have that base of solid affection. Certainly Rodney didn't think there was; he meekly folds under Keller's berating, like he doesn't to John's.