shipping aside, I'm just mad about Lance/Gwen because it's how the legend goes (at least from what I remember). So to handle it so poorly makes me really sad.

That's my biggest annoyance too. magog made a great point above that at this point the writers are just putting it off because they don't want to deal with it; which is just so depressing. Unless it happens soon and Merlin gets to go all bamf! no one is going to be happy. I mean, they could even have an entire season of Arthur being pissed and exiling him and all this emotional fallout and people would be WAY less angry about that- maybe even expect it.