Fortunately for you, if you want stupid you can find plenty of it on TV.
-Joe
Yes, I know. But I still stick primarily with [adult swim], as I value funny and bizarre more than I value stupid.
What hooked me on the original series, cheesy as it was, was Flight Cpl. Rigel. I had a mild crush on her. Every episode she would look at the panel and say something mundane about flight operations. My heart would go pitty-pat! 
I always liked the idea of Battlestar: Galactica*, even in the horrible '70s cheez version. The last survivors of the human race, crammed into a rag-tag fleet of ships, desperatly fleeing their robotic murderers? It’s an awesome concept, and one that deserved a better treatment than it originally got.
Of course, I wasn’t expecting it to be any good. It was on the Sci-Fi channel, for God’s sake! But I always say I’ll try anything once, so I decided to check out the miniseries when it aired. Except that I forgot all about it, and missed the first episode entirely, and most of the second. When I finally tuned in, it’s to Colonial One abandoning thousands of colonists on their non-FTL capable ships, while a wave of Cylon nukes is inbound. That’s when I was sold on the show. I knew the show was supposed to be “grittier” than the original, but I never expected something that raw. It was absolutely gut-wrenching.
I was hooked.
Some of us saw those core themes and ideas right away and didn’t need the benefit of hindsight. 
Yeah, that was some crazy shit. The FTL pilots are trying to keep it together, calling out their piloty checklists and choking back tears. Meanwhile the non-FTL pilots are pleading for assistance. “You can’t just leave us here!” “I hope you burn in hell!”
The SciFi channel was running a BSG marathon, so I recorded it all. They didn’t think to include the miniseries, and I didn’t know there was one, so I actually saw 33 first. That was enough to retain my interest, but I was a little confused until I saw the miniseries later.
…hey!!! She was MY teen crush, thank you very much!!!
“Banquet Bear, launch when ready!”
I used to watch the original when I was a kid. Cheesy, but kind of fun. I didn’t watch it because of the original, though. There’s very little connection to the original, and that’s a good thing in many, many ways.
A friend of mine from Australia brought back a DVD set when he went home for a visit. I’d heard buzz about it on the net, but wasn’t able to get a decent file download. I was hooked from the first episode. We marathoned about half the first season in one session. Turnabout is fair play; I introduced him to Firefly.
All it takes to justify it is to watch a few of the early episodes, or to actually listen to what people like about it. It works much better seen in order than piecemeal because of the continuing storyline with events that (mostly) impact later developments. While the first season is better, the second is still worthy. I haven’t seen any of the third season stuff yet, as the DVDs aren’t out and I haven’t tried downloading anything yet.