Your slightly hostile reaction is evidence that your perception of these samples is psychological and a placebo-ish effect on your part. Your devotion has affected your perception. It's okay... not judging. We all do this (though I've done this mostly with women I've dated, who looked better "at the time" and then thought "what was I thinking..." later on... as opposed to imaging technology choices...) If these prints came off your enlarger, you'd be happy with them. (I would be...) You would have gone through many dollars worth of expensive wasted paper to get there. You are looking for blown highlights and you are looking for "plastic-y skin tones" - and finding them, which is usually a function of over-aggressive noise reduction which wasn't used on these photos. If these photos were shot on film you wouldn't be looking for blown highlights and the skin tones would be smooth. You also would probably embarrass yourself if I spread out a bunch of prints - some digital, some traditional, and asked you to sort them out.
Again - not judging. We all do this when we're committed to an idea, technology, methodology that has been or is in the process of being supplanted by something new. What if I thought a lot of film prints look "muddy" and dull and grainy? I would find muddiness and dullnes and grain in all film prints. That's what I would be setting out to find in every photo that I thought was shot on film if I was trying to "make a case". I would be incapable of objectivity and instead be defending my choice of methodology or ideology - or both.
