Artistic integrity makes no sense
There's no way Gervais' character is this stupid.
1) NO ONE in the world, especially one that's working in showbusiness, seeing all kinds of famous actors and so on, can be naïve enough to assume that their story or production will be shown on TV EXACTLY as they wanted, exactly as they wrote it, etc. Everyone knows studios, TV executives, and people with money, generally tweak and mold any and every story and idea until it's identical to those that have sold well.
EVERYONE KNOWS THIS!!
2) If someone like Andy Kaufman could figure it out, why the heck couldn't this 'more savvy' and seemingly at least as intelligent individual? FIRST you do exactly as they want you to do, bend over to their will, sk their cks if you have to, just WHATEVER THEY WANT. Why?
WHY?
I don't have to spell it out, do I? When you get to a position where a studio (or whatever) is interested in your idea, you do anything and everything to get them to give you money. It's all about money at this point.
This is stage one: COLLECTING VAST AMOUNTS OF MONEY.
What can you do with vast amounts of money? You can become independent. You can THEN make your idea, vision, etc. EXACTLY as you want or envisioned, you can realize and manifest anything you want in any way you want, because YOU HAVE MONEY NOW.
Surely no one can be this stupid that they would ARGUE and feel depressed about their story being mangled beyond recognition and being asked to perform a banal, idiotic one-liner every day?
Andy Kaufman scked it and did the 'foreign man' exactly as the execs wanted, because he knew that was only stage one, that was the pathway to doing WHATEVER he wanted - and it worked. He DID do whatever he wanted, and I think he was happier for it.
Why the !#%;"*%@€£$ wouldn't Ricky's character be able to come to the same realization? Do this for a few years, become famous and rich, and you are in a UNIQUE position to do _WHATEVER_YOU_DAMN_WELL_PLEASE_!
But no, makes somehow more sense to mope around, argue about 'artistic integrity' and be depressed about stage one.
Holy cow.. this SO doesn't make sense!
(And I meant 'SO', not 'show', just in case any illiterate mongol01d is wondering .. and I use this word deliberately, because it was used SO well in this show)