Actually all the problems that you are talking about can be easily overcome, dont blame Kazaa for those. It is the users who screw the system, the irresponsible users.
Anyway, you can easily preview your friends episodes to see whether it is the episode 905 or 120. Right after downloading a couple of megs, with the click of a button you can watch the beginning of the movie file. That way you have the possibility to check the quality and if everything is in order (sometimes the movies come with no sound).
Also there are many web sites like
www.verifieddownloads.com
That gives you the name and the characteristics of the file. You can search these files to download games, programs, movies, everything!
Moreover you don't even need to copy the link. You just click and a special progrm called Sig2Dat copies that file into your transfers list.
As you see Kazaa is the best P2P network ever, and if you know how to use it you can take full profit.
That is why me, and many other people prefers to run Kazaa with Wine.
. Anyway, I still prefer xMule for two reasons 
... I don't use a product, with exception of games, which has not a Linux port anymore 
.
