Jaro is awesome cause well...Frank Langella! And I thought him and Winn played a deliciously evil couple that I had hoped continued but sadly no more of Jaro. - That voice gets me every time. I'd like to think that's the actor's idea of serene and calm but it (to me at least) comes off quite strange in part, due to none of the other vedeks not sounding like that. It seems so out of place.
I didn't feel that all the Bajoran men were creepy. I found that most of them were not as interesting and fleshed out as some of the women. I did find Bariel strange at times with his weird robot voice.
Perhaps the real problem was that all the good Bajoran men were used up too quickly. The Circle story could have been spread out over the whole second season rather than presented serially in three back-to-back episodes.
To be fair, by Trek standards a 3-part episode was unprecedented at the time. A season-long arc was likely more than anyone would have hoped for.
Yes, but I was not suggesting a season-long arc, but rather that the story be spread out and revisited throughout the season.
It did often seem in the series that cultural gender expectations were reversed relative to Earth. Maybe not at the beginning but after the second season it seemed all Bajoran women were aggressive and ambitious and all Bajoran men were sort of passive and demure, like reversed gender stereotypes. If Bajoran men seemed creepy it was because the actors couldn't quite figure out how to portray that.
Most mainstream religions other than Catholicism allow their religious officials to marry. And IIRC Kira was the primary aggressor. When Quark was manipulating them together his approach was more like 'Aww shucks I'd sure like to spend some time with you Nerys'.
One episode on the circle, four of five on something else, one on the Circle, three or four on something else, and so on. As I said, not back-to-back.