In retrospect, it probably would have been, and I say that as someone who likes Coulson, and eagerly wanted a TV show starring him.
I don't even think Agents of SHIELD is irredeemable as a premise, it just... kind of needed to happen "sooner" so to speak. It would have needed at least one season where it could just be its own thing, establishing a status quo. It would have also needed buy-in at the approval stage of ". . .and at some point, SHIELD goes kerplooey!", though, and I'm not sure Marvel would have been willing to risk leaking one of its big setting turns potentially years before it happened.
Of course, I could probably spend all day listing out the various ways things could have been changed to make AoS a better show. Its a long list. . .
I tend to enjoy making such lists, so I'd love to see someone else's. I'm not sure what you mean by additional buy in though. Do you mean by the showrunners, studio or audience? Maybe all, because it would definitely be a second show going into its second season. Maybe with a new name, which is rare, but I think it would have been the best option, and would have preserved the secret. But, that's hindsight mostly. But then again, there are some things that I didn't like about AoS from the get go, including reviving the awesome but totally dead Coulson. But honestly, even that could have been done in a cool way, I think, if there were more coordination, not so much crossover, but just an alignment of messaging and servicing of Marvel fans and not just Coulson fans.
So, not only a different show in Season 1, but a different different show going into Season 2. It would have been a very difficult show to write, I think. But I still dream...
The logistics would be a nightmare.
I heard someone else say that, and I'm not sure I'm totally convinced. Certainly you couldn't pull off a huge crossover on any kind of regular basis, but scheduling people for TV and for movise isn't the hardest thing in the world. In a perfect world, the only time we would have seen the Agents of SHIELD in the movies would be as line-less cameos at SHIELD HQ in CA:TWS and on the Helicarrier in Age of Ultron. It's possible that a character would have to go missing from the show for a week or two, but that's not exactly a nightmare, and can actually lead to making a show better, depending.
Going the opposite way, just like scheduling Jamie Alexander wasn't a game-breaker, and Sam Jackson was done on a whim, the same with scheduling virtually any of the supporting cast from the films. Selvig, Darcy, Sharon, Maria, Happy, Hope, The Wombats, The Warriors Three... many of them have already been successfully scheduled to be on other TV shows, without all the nightmare. Even the shooting schedules aren't that bad, it's weeks before they're doing the big promotional push so that it airs a bit after the movie they're in comes out.
Plus all the things that didn't need scheduling. An episode arc about Loki's Scepter pre-AoU would have been wonderful synergy, imho. There's cool MacGuffins to be had from almost every film. Pairing that with 5+ minor characters showing up each year, and that makes for a really connected feeling, even if they never show up in the films, and if they do... most people couldn't ask for more, and even the people who think that TV characters should get their own movie would be at least a little bit happy.
I think the real challenge to a coordinated AoS show would be weaving a narrative through the kind of consistent crossover or themes and macguffins that would have been the most fan-pleasing. I mean, first season was pretty straight even with little coordination, what with Thor 2 having natural fallout on Earth and Cap 2 naturally "kablooeying" the show in a spectacular fireball. The challenge is, knowing that, at least the broad strokes, a year and some change out, how do you write a story that fit with that. You probably don't write a story about big SHIELD secrets that don't come out, and you can't really deal with HYDRA directly and spoil the movie, so you've got to do a sort of red herring type of villain. I think that's what they were trying to do with Centipede, but because it didn't have its own narrative, the villain before the reveal felt really light and impactless.
The nightmare is... how do I create a villain that gets people excited and also gets people even more excited when it's suddenly HYDRA all along? That's more than a little bit challenging. Season 2 would be an even bigger challenge as you basically are called on to make getting a helicarrier out of mothballs into a big deal. They found something that worked for that with 'The Real SHIELD' though I don't think they tied it in that well, but even so, that still looks down on the thematic progression of Cap 2. And it's not just kablooeying the premise of the show that the show has to worry about. Ward's fate was sealed as soon as he got picked to be HYDRA. They probably dragged it out too long, honestly. The show would have to change, sometimes dramatically, depending on the plot of the latest movie, and sometimes have to readjust as the movie changes just before and during filming, and that, that is a nightmare. That would have been a stunt like no other. But gosh darn would the synergy have been incredible.
I don't think the Netflix shows have that same opportunity because they don't claim to cover the whole world the way SHIELD does. There's a bit of synergy there, potentially... but not a ton. It's more 'It'd be nice to see these characters meet.' I mean, I saw someone wishing Cap or Tony had swung by Hell's Kitchen to pick up DD, but his absence wasn't really consequential, either for him or for the larger fight.
