Great discussion, guys. I'd also like to point out that I do play with mods such as Meaningful Stories and More Personality Please. While these tone down the constant happiness, it doesn't fix the repetitiveness of emotions. That's where I've got problems.
Emotions have potential to be great. There are so many things that they could do to improve them. I think it'd be neat if we saw emotion-specific scenarios , isolation from sadness, etc.] Emotions play out the same way each time my sims enter them. My Sim has the same sad reaction to seeing a broken dollhouse and getting a divorce. Unlike in other games, I don't think it's interesting to break two sims up, set a fire, or really anything that could trigger the worst.