Agree with the entire post except the Bemelerberg bit. At least I don't see a better alternative. On a race with laps like today, maybe there would be some, but todays circumstances are hopefully not gonna get the norm anyway. But usually I'd argue it's pretty much perfect at what it does. It's so easy that nobody in his right mind would think of waiting for it as the spot for your attack, but late in the race it's an interesting last spot for attacks from a small group. Iirc it's the point where Gilbert and Kwiatkowski dropped the rest of their group in 2017 and it was kinda crucial in 2019 since for a long time it gave Fuglsang hope that he could still attack Alaphilippe there. The track standing only started once those attacks weren't succesful.Yea, you'd say that realistically rather than being part of Ardennes Week, it really belongs as a pair with Brabantse Pijl and then Flèche and La Doyenne are the Ardennes proper.
At the same time, we should be wary of extrapolating too much from this year's edition because of the route changes - while they went up the three obstacles of the race several times, it was significantly shorter than normal editions and also skipped a lot of the climbs that could be more preferable to the Ardennes specialists, like Keutenberg and Eyserbosweg, in favour of a circuit including some less selective ones (the love affair with the Bemelerberg must end, it adds nothing other than a number to the amount of climbs in the race, and is no more worthwhile than literally a bit further on flat roads). Also Gilbert winning cobbled classics is more of a late career development, he's always been competitive in them but the hilly classics have always been his bread and butter.
Of course it's only an easy climb, but that's exactly its point and I disagree that it's so easy that it doesn't impact the racing anyway.