Hashi-hime makes a comment Jeff's place (I wish she'd make it on her blog though, at least we'd have a permalink):

No, the show did not “rely on jokes and gags to get its point across.” It was not a joke show, it was a humor of living show. Few laugh-out-loud moments, but continuous inner amusement. This little misunderstanding may be why you do not rate it as highly as I do. For me, it was one of the top three shows of the year (with ef and Blue Drop — Gurren-Lagann just wasn’t my style).

Insightful, isn't it?

I also don’t think that you need all that much knowledge of otaku culture to get what was important about the show. I got less than half the otaku references, but the other humor (see above) was more than sufficient.

I'm a living proof that she's right. Moreover, there was one moment where overdoing it was harmful: the Initial-D "parody".

I credit two people with making this show as good as it was. The first is Yamakan — original director Yamamoto Yutaka, who was fired after ep4, when KyoAni may have thought from the public criticism that the show was failing. No such thing. He is the man who directed both the ED of SHnY and the OP of LS, and who directed both the concert episode and the Yuki reading episode in SHnY. In other words, I think he may have given both shows their special flavor. Second is Hirano Aya, whose unique comic voice for Konata was the underpinning of the whole sound and rhythm of the show.

Now this is interesting. I thought that the change of direction helped the show a lot, but I know so little about the production of anime, that perhaps it's a mistaken impression. All I know is that Lucky Star started branching into human dimension more after the change.

Anyway, that's an interesting addition to what she blogged officially, in case you weren't obsessively reloading Jeff's entries.

BTW, Jeff replied with the criticism which I also made before, and while it's true, I think he misunderstood what H.H. Hashi was saying. Jokes were the backbone, it's right, but it was unnecessary to know the references to enjoy the jokes. Most of them, anyway.