Would ENT work better with Archer being more like Coulson?

I'm curious if you've seen either of the first two Ironman movies, or the 2012 The Avengers movie?

 

No, I was never into the Marvel comics. Was reading DC when it was National Periodical Publications. The only thing I've seen in the Marvel line was the first Toby Spiderman and the first two X-Mens.

 

Have no broadcast TV either- 'Agents of SHIELD' is on Netflix except for the current season.
Coulson is a wonderful character but I do not think he would be suitable for command of a starship. His strength is more tactical than strategic and is better at subterfuge.
Archer never came across as a Kirk wannabe but his character did morph from the beginning wide eyed explorer to more pragmatic during the series arc. First year Archer would not have attacked an alien vessel and stripped them of their warp core.
For me the show would have been better if they skipped the whole temporal war and shortened the Xindi arc by half.

 

Story arcs are hard to follow for the occasional viewers. When TNG was on, I could watch a show, skip a couple and pick up to see another stand-alone episode. With a large story arc like the Xindi attack, if you missed a week or two, you'd find yourself being lost when you returned. The upside of story arcs is that it didn't force you to compress everything into neat 40-minute packages, which could make the show seem rhythmically repetitive (Fly to planet, find problem, fix problem, Fly to next planet, repeat ad nausea).

 

Probably because you were predisposed to the idea that Coulson was an "inferior" character compared to Archer. That simply is not true.

This is more like the way Coulson is thought of among AoS and Marvel fans in general:

Bolding, mine.

Although the debate is purely subjective, Coulson, unlike Archer, is a beloved character in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The character was so popular that he was seen being killed in the original Avengers movie, and brought back for AoS. I've seen Archer lose popularity contests to the animated Captain April. Archer never finishes more than 3rd or 4th in popularity contests I've seen in this forum and elsewhere.

Coulson is written as the kind of leader who appears to be in control even when he is not. The actor playing Coulson, Clark Gregg, has imbued the character with the personal charisma and charm to keep the character likable even when he is engaged in committing the impossible. When Archer was shown doing the "impossible", like taking on multiple Vulcan commandos in the Vulcan arc, many Ent fans complained about "super Archer".

Not saying how I feel about Archer myself, but to say that the character couldn't have benefitted from being written more like Coulson would he foolish. But on the other hand, and this is a very large hand, the actor playing "Captain Coulson" would have to have the ability to present the same attributes as Clark Gregg does, and that seemed to be beyond Scott Bakula's capabilities (as Archer).

 

I can see the Coulson/Archer comparison: they are both thoughtful leaders with massive chins. Archer occasionally comes across as an asshat, which is partly the writers wanting to create conflict, and partly poor choices on Bakula's part. I do like the character over all, but unfortunately most of the maturity he acquired over the first three season of ENT was thrown away in the fourth.

That's what they did - it just took a season to get there.

This is completely superficial assessment that misses what makes Coulson interesting: he is, beneath the suit and quiet demeanour, deeply weird. He's constantly cracking odd little jokes which show that, while he chooses to seem conventional, he knows it's not the only option.

 

If the OP is about seeing a different archetype of captain, then I agree, it would have been interesting.

Whatever we think of Archer as a character, he was not exactly very different from what we'd seen before. Then again, the starship captain archetype is chosen based on whatever the producers deemed to work well with a general audience, and back then, when in doubt, they tended to go with "very safe".

 

Archer would've worked better if he was completely rethought and recast.

Nothing about him worked for me.