I too never found the Essentials classes necessarily 'bad' or a 'wrong headed' direction to take classes. A variety of the AEDU structure could allow for some interesting classes. Take the Skald: two daily powers at LVL 1, but you can only use 1, and they operate as a kind of encounter-long buff to a class feature. That's potentially neat! And I very much loved playing my lightning Elementalist -- as a concept there is a particularly limited set of features or abilities that such a class might have. (Not that the class as delivered was complete in all of those, or didn't have it's oddities that "forced" one to dip outside the narrow concept.)
That said, I did find a quality difference in a good number of the Essentials classes, both in terms of being half-baked (not enough time allowed to playtest and develop, I would guess) and the classes that seemed explicitly designed to be "this existing thing, but 'simpler"' felt underwhelming. (Would have IMHO been better to design from 'cool concept and also simpler, much like the Elementalists felt.) So, on the whole, I found the E-classes more of a mixed bag with sometimes confusing organization but not a disaster of an idea/direction.
I said it before upthread already, but I will never pass up a chance to sing the praises of the Rules Compendium! It rocks so hard!