I do not hate it personally, in fact I am a big fan of Gen 5 too, but Samurott may be one of the worst pokemon designs by objective standards.
Its quadrupedal stance and the shape of its limbs are awkward but also such a big part of its design and silhouette you can't "fix it" by making it bipedal.
Pokemon using tools is already a deprecated design element, weapons in particular, but you can't remove the swords either for the same reason. They are also ugly and don't fit organically as they don't really resemble clams like its pre-evolutions and the placement of their sheaths doesn't make sense and appears unwieldly.
Talking about his evolutionary line, Samurott's face and body shape are completely different from Oshawott's and Dewott's, to the point they don't even seem to be based on related animals. This is something unique among starter pokemon, specially if you compare the line to the other two in the same gen. The only other exception to this I can think of is Torchic's line, but Combusken makes the transition between the extremes feels more natural and all three are solid designs.
Lastly the headpiece while clam-like does not resemble that of a samurai japanese or army official, looks out of place and makes it also appear rather clumsy.
All in all Samurott is an objectively bad design because all of its flaws are intrinsecal to its existence. Even if Gamefreak wanted to redesign an existing mon, which is unprecedented, you cannot fix it by changing one or two elements, the entire design would need to be scrapped or altered to degree of resembling an entirely different pokemon.
