Every Trek show had over-sexualized characters and useless scenes, but in the early 2000s ‘barriers’ were being pushed. Sluttier and sluttier things were not just allowed on screen but actively encouraged. Trek got caught up in this trying to keep it’s slumping relevance in the ratings. Voyager had Seven who was effectively painted into her costume. To one-up that, Enterprise had them all get naked repeatedly for very an extremely tepid lore reason with the ‘Decontamination Showers’.
Racism, irrationality, stupidity, immorality, all of these things are ‘phased out’ of humanity by TNG. A lot of humanity is able to refocus itself on the betterment of humanity instead of the procurement of goods. However, we had to start from something. Earth had just survived the Eugenics Wars and WW3. The Earth was a disaster zone. Enterprise takes place not long after that period of time. People are still going to be relatively untrustworthy, racist, and held back. Enterprise is a story about the growth of humanity, not just the growth of Starfleet/UFP/Individual Characters. All of these characters are pretty deeply flawed to be able to tell those stories of growth.
I’m not super sure what you been by the coherence of references to other shows. TOS takes place 100ish years after Enterprise. A lot of what they’re going to be doing in TOS is built off of the backs of Archer and his crew. It makes sense there are going to be some ‘back-references’ in a prequel.
You say that there are empty episodes like there aren’t a shit ton of empty episodes in other Trek shows too. Not every episode is going to be a banger. Enterprise is by far the least well produced of the ‘ClassicTrek’ but I never found there to be an extreme problem with filler episodes.
Nostalgia will play a part. A fair amount of people had Enterprise as their introduction into the Trek universe. A very good friend of mine did. He watches it now and will openly say that other shows are more well made but he still loves it and prefers it personally.
Tastes just differ. I thoroughly enjoy Discovery and don’t share most of the same complaints that people have. That’s okay just like people not liking it (provided the reasons are sane and not “TOO WOKE”) is completely okay too. People are allowed to have different opinions. Just because someone likes Enterprise doesn’t mean that you have to. You also won’t necessarily understand it.
You seem to be really underestimating the amount of people who hate Enterprise. I’ve seen far more people voice issues with the show than I have seen people who say they like it. I’ll be honest and say I don’t personally enjoy the show either but considering my own controversial opinions I don’t tend to give people shit for it. Most people will meme about the theme song but are ‘eh’ on the show itself. I have a folder of 1000+ memes saved about Star Trek from years of saving them the second I see them. I have maybe, MAYBE, 10-15 Enterprise memes. Most of those are ‘Faith of the Heart’ jokes.