Ugh... I didn't say the characters would be carbon copies of those around them. Actually, I took specific care to mention that they WOULD NOT be.
They're manufactured products. You have to go into it knowing that things WILL be exaggerated.
Again you fail to differentiate between personality and actions. I grant that action is a manifestation of personality, but at the same rate, the situation can just as easily affect the writer.
Additionally, giving examples of a few exaggerated personalities being in a story doesn't prove, or even bolster your point. All that says is that we should be skeptical.
Anyway, the example you propose with Crighton doesn't hinder the typing. If someone wrote a bad review, and michael wrote about them exactly as they were, their typology would reflect that. Instead he portrays the chap as a criminal. To go backward with my point about how behavior is a direct manifestation of personality, the person's typology will be reflected by the actions he takes. Again, I didn't say that they're replicas, or scale models. Obviously the artists will portray them a certain way. The psychology that's drawn from that will change, as the subjective interpretation by the author is spilled onto the page, or recorded on film.
How can you argue that? No one's saying it's realistic. They're just saying that the artists are quite often (decidedly) non-creative, and realistic with their characters, so the underlying message -- the theme of the work seems more 'real'.
I guess you wouldn't know though, since you dismiss the shows, and presumably don't watch them anymore (unless you're a masochist).