Yeah, see I didn't really see Sallah as being too much different overall... He cracked some funny lines here and there, but he seemed about the same overall. He, like Brody (IMO) didn't get established much in Raiders for his TLC persona to be far off the mark...
Marcus, I guess I can see... I was thinking of that line about going after the Ark as probably what made you guys dislike the TLC Marcus, but at the same time his saying "I'd have gone after it" doesn't necessarilly mark him as an adventurer like Indiana either... Marcus struck me as more a conservative kind of guy like Indy's father actually, in Raiders. Other than that one line of course about wanting to go after the Ark himself... But one could also take that as nothing more than excitement overtaking him.
Indy's crack about him getting lost in his own museum, I personally thought that was hysterical and transferred to the next scene where he was wandering around that middle-east city lost looking for Sallah. I guess I just didn't really look at Marcus as a competent adventurer, and more the "study and examination" type of archeologist like Indy's old man was...
To me, then, the way that Marcus and Indy's father were both thrust into Indy's world of ass kicking and Nazi killing was funny and worked.
The one thing I'll agree on though, is the part at the end with Marcus and the horse. THAT was dumb. Otherwise I loved TLC. That and Raiders are by far my favorites above Temple. Temple's cool, but lacked something (I think it's some of these recurring characters) to me.