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Nooo, but come on, guys, he became insufferable 
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It's just really hard for me to find any of the original cast insufferable. I do wish he had kept more insecurities. They seemed to dissipate with his role as a politician, which should have given him more. Actually, maybe I'm misjudging and he did have such inner conflicts but projected more arrogance at the same time to counterbalance them. It's really funny to consider Brandon's solo or main insecurity being how much Kelly does or does not love him in later years, given how I know you feel about both of the characters' trajectories. S8 must have been a blast.
This ancient video rant re: S1 Brandon still cracks me up:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=giqGbajYdQQ I can't identify with it. Except the 1x05 remark.
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Hm, yes, but there was also no need for that bridging. Steve could helped Andrea to get closer to Kelly and Donna, but she did that via Brenda and Brandon.
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Yes, they went the alternative route, so S/A wasn't necessary.
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But we already had Walshes for that. I guess this was a comical version of the spying though (and also literal spying), while the Walshes were handling serious issues.
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Exactly. We needed someone whose outlook could be over-the-moon (David's view of Kelly and Steve) while the twin protagonists broke ground in discovering what's real.
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The way we saw her in the beginning, as a girl who had troublesome sexual experiences, but learned to overcome them, enjoy sex and be relaxed about it - that is what I would like to see as a result of personal work on herself. To change what she did not like, but to accept herself for everything she was.
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Me too. But
did we really see that whole trajectory reach fruition in S1 (or pre-series)? I would say not. I know how she presented herself and I feel like your characterization of S1 and the show's portrayal of sex and underlying messages for the audience is spot-on.
Had we only gotten S1, I'd wholly share your impression of Kelly's inner world.
But then came S2, which cast some new shadows on S1. So busy with the love-hate dance with Steve, we didn't get to see Kelly in sexual/romantic entanglements S1 that began anew or required any kind of assertiveness to protect herself or could demonstrate her healthy attitude towards relationships and sex. What we got was the alarming confession of date rape to build on "Perfect Mom" in explaining the occasional dichotomy between public and private impressions of her life/how she's feeling, and two years of virtual celibacy from a girl who's 'boy crazy' -- punctuated by events like in S2's "Summer Storm", where she prematurely and quite embarrassingly strips naked for Kyle because she doesn't know what to expect from a guy who is not out to primarily use her for sex, or at least do so before getting to know her. She was clearly still messed up from her time with boys pre-series.
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But I really had a problem with the way she reflected on her sexual past from S3 onwards. She got into such an intense self-loathing
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This starts from at least S2's "Everybody's Talkin' About It" onward, with the touching conversation between her and Andrea. And not helped at all by the Halloween episode.
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and she never fully processed it as a self-loathing also, but into projection of everything she hated about herself on the other women (Valerie was a prime example).
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You're right, it feels like she did this. It was a long process.
Hell, she even technically throws a chair at Steve in S7, saying she is "still getting over it" (her past). Meanwhile, I think she did a lot of work in S3-S5 to be okay with herself.
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What she missed, in my opinion, was more openness about things she was not happy about, and learning how not to blame herself for certain things (Ross Weber or relation with her father).
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Yup.
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and Kelly had to get into rigid routine of having sex strictly with people she loved. The only way for her to have sex with someone she did not love was to be raped. […] According to the moral of the show, even more, girl had to be sure that THE GUY is in love with her so she could have sex with him and not be considered a ****. […] I think morale of her story was - girls, be careful of who you have first time with, because that will define you forever. If it's a guy who does not truly love you, it can only be a disaster.
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SUCH an interesting assertion, which I totally agree that they pushed, and very successfully too.