Yeah I get that argument, it all felt like it had gone in a completely different direction to TFA for me though. Kind of felt like they were trying to force the jokes too much as well.
I agree about the jokes in TLJ, they were forced, ill timed, out of place and just not funny. This is coming from someone that liked the film.
Going back to your earlier point, I think he had to move away from Abrams groundwork as it was fairly shoddy. He was given some badly written characters and a much less interesting remake of the first film as his jumping off point. He did a lot of things right by making Rey a nobody and moving away from established Star Wars tropes, you can't just keep making the same films over and over again. With the prequels George made the universe feel tiny by having everything be connected, making Rey a nobody returned it to a hero can rise up from anywhere. It's just unfortunate that the hero in this case is a badly written Mary Sue.
For me he got a lot of things right, got a few things wrong and took it in a direction I felt it needed to go. I quite enjoyed it. That being said, I've no interest in seeing episode 9. I have no interest in the new characters, the old ones are all gone and I couldn't be arsed to see how brilliant Rey becomes at everything they've not shown her doing yet.