This is going to sound very “Captain Hindsight” but I had similar thoughts to your hypothetical pitch… I think the main differences in my mind were that they wouldn’t stick around in 1991 for too long, and would end up going through wormholes to hit different time periods every few episodes, as the four time fugitives stayed on the run to evade Kinga.
Also in my weird masochistic mind, Mike would be featured in an episode or two, but just to troll fans, not as Mike - just his mean brother Eddie, or maybe as Jack Perkins.
I also think Max’s line toward the end of the finale was more than a throwaway line, and we’ll see an all-bots riff episode near the start of the new season, since the players are all in the right place for this to happen now.