I'm completely biased when recommending this show to people, I re-watch it at least once a year. Sometimes I take a few years off, but I'm in the middle of a rewatch now.

I watched it when it first ran, I was too young to really care about it in the first few seasons (good thing too since I might have lost interest) but by the time season 10 rolled out I was graduating and wanted the dvd set as a graduation present (which I never got)

If you're looking for some kind of "deep" meaning in a show, or overarching message (beyond general team-work and helping each other gets the job done for everyone type stuff) in a show, I don't personally think there is one, and would disappoint someone who wants one.

I like to think everything they talk about is pretty relevant even today. Politically they're fairly neutral for US politics, though keep in mind it's a show about a military team in a military base doing military things, so everything is pretty often making the military look good, or "just get rid of this damn red tape " on a few occasions, but they do a pretty good job of showing how absolutely wrong the military and government are, to the point where in real life the characters would all have been courtmartialled for disobeying idiotic military protocols and bad orders.

Daniel in particular can get preachy about doing the right thing no matter what, and O'Neill basically tells him " stop being so preachy" on a few occasions.

The pacing of the show picks up as the seasons go on, and it gets more action-filled in the latter half. They also start mixing a lot of philosophy type stuff in here and there. Less so on the later seasons.

Mild generalized plot ahead:

Season 5 is where they really start leaning toward continuing stories from earlier episodes. Also introduces a villain that will play major parts in seasons 6-8. One of the final episodes is a gut punch that introduces a new recurring character.

Season 6 introduces a villain that will start out small but eventually become galaxy-threatening, and continues into one of the post-series movies. Also expands on the second Stargate from Antarctica and how that got to be there.

Season 7 introduces an Ancient outpost, which leads them to what they need to get to Atlantis. Also Richard Dean Andersons less frequent appearance on the show.

Season 8 reintroduces the replicators as bad guys, and this time they're not all blocky and insectoid. Also surprise return of a once-vanquished enemy. Actually like... 2 or 3 now that I think of it.

Season 9 introduces a new team leader (Ben browder, aka Chrichton from Farscape) and Claudia black (aeryn sun) is a recurring character that eventually becomes a full time member of the team. New villains introduced and shit hits the fan pretty quickly.

Season 10 is a futuristic holy crusade from evil energy aliens using humans to do their dirty work and subjugate another galaxy. A couple old villains pop up here and there but are usually smaller episode arcs or bottle episodes.

The show got canceled and the story never finished in the show run, but they had a few movies to try and wrap up the remaining plots that were supposed to take place over 1-3 more seasons.

If you want a good episode to start with, try season 4 episode 6 "window of opportunity". It's a Groundhog Day episode that has some pretty great comedic bits as well as, I think, a pretty good representation of sg1 as a whole. It's got a little of everything.

If you want to skip to more modern style of TV that still feels early 00s, season 6 is a good place to start, but I'd recommend reading plot summaries for most of the earlier episodes if you do that. It's time consuming but you won't be lost.

If all that sounds unappealing.... We'll then I guess it's not for you, but still give s4e06 a try just for gits and shiggles.