Hello there, and welcome to the forum,
To answer your questions,
1) No that would not work, all the episodes must be in the same folder as the "tvshow.nfo" file, or in subfolders within that folder. The biggest reason is that XBMC would not be able to support this.
This is the 2nd request I've seen for this feature, so I may add it at some point in the future, it would still require a seperate tvshow.nfo file to be scraped for each location, but MC would list identical shows under a single entry.
2)Not yet, but I will be adding it within the next few weeks.