Meh... I've always thought SEED was better than Destiny and it remains my favourite because it's really what got me into the Gundam fandom even though I did start with watching Wing. However, when I watched the original Gundam series, I also did notice the direct rip off of many of the themes that they had there employed in SEED and Destiny...
I'm not one of those people who will say that the CE Universe sucks because it was just a rip of the original. More that I'll say instead that it brought a brand new generation of fans to like what made the original good, plus the Lacus
That said, Gundam 00 could shape up to be the better than these yet, hopefully because it's stand alone and unpredictable.
Episode 2 seems to have been almost a copy of episode 1 in that they were just rehashing, except in greater detail, what the point of Celestial Being was. The show could at this stage go in many directions, but yeah, we'll see
