I've be doing a rewatch so my kids can watch. As much as s8 gets flack, it's pretty awesome how much it references and calls back to s2 and s3.
Personally I liked s8. Finding out that this show had devolved into a fanfic of relationship mashups makes my brain hurt. Supposedly these 'fans' cried to Dreamworks enough that they added the Shiro scene, but that pissed them off even more because it wasnt like their fanfic, so Dreamworks changed it a few more times until it became the 'out of left field' scene we got.