The genre of Mark seems to be what most scholars rely on to arrive at the failed apocalyptic prophet conclusion, reading Mark as a Greco-Roman biography (Ehrman's position). But that looks to be seriously unfounded and, as you point out, it seems as though Mark is more like an allegorical Jewish novel.

The verses you linked to about the unripe fig tree? The area that Jesus is close to is called Bethphage... which means "house of unripe figs".