And I dont' even remember the moments he tries to reach out to anybody to be honest, and I've played up through disc 3 of this game twice, the second time was me trying to force myself to finish it years later. Perhaps these scenes do exist, but if so then they basically get completely overshadows by everything else squall does.
Admittedly I might have missed out on some things as you mentioned, but it was still so horribly done and overshadowed, it doesn't really matter if he has character development or not, it was still terribly done.