Says Mario, one of the supposedly lucky 16: "I don't know what to expect!"
What viewers can expect is less than nothing. It takes forever to introduce the people picked by means unexplained and lured to Cuban's mansion in Dallas. The opening of the show looks just like one of the those tacky infomercials featuring guys who promise you can make millions buying abandoned old houses or by placing "tiny little classified ads" in hundreds of newspapers.
Mark Cuban will give away a million dollars on "The Benefactor." The show gives viewers zip.
(Craig Sjodin -- ABC)
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As on other reality game shows, the contestants were apparently picked mainly by the size of their egos, the bigger the better. Dominic, a slick hipster from Nevada, says his spiky coiffure inspires folks to ask, "How do you do your hair like that? It's the coolest thing I've ever seen." Explains Dominic: "I've been blessed, you know what I mean?" Later, interviewed by Cuban, he repeats, "I'm a cool guy. I've been blessed." Oh brother.
Femia, a young woman who is also from Nevada, declares, "I'm pretty and smart and athletic," but that's nothing compared with the chutzpah of Linda from New Hampshire, who, undoubtedly having watched enough reality TV to know what comments will end up on the air, announces: "If I have to cheat a little bit, I'll cheat a little bit. If I have to lie a little bit, I'll lie a little bit."
If I have to retch a little bit, I'll retch a little bit.
What Cuban's "games" will entail isn't spelled out, but the opening edition isn't very promising. After all kinds of fanfare, Cuban unveils the first competition: a silly old children's game called Jenga in which players try to remove little blocks of wood from a pile. This is network television? (No, it's ABC.)
The rest of the hour consists of filler, blabbing and stalling. Very little happens, none of it intriguing. Cuban keeps saying a person gets only one chance to make a first impression, but the contestants seem to get several. Near the end of the hour, two players are eliminated, one of them an arrogant lug who'd said in his interview, "I don't need a million dollars."
All the hype about "a million dollars" is reminiscent of the tepid threats made by "Dr. Evil" in Mike Myers's hilarious satire "Austin Powers." The villain tries to scare the world's leaders with his demand for "one millllion dollars" and everyone laughs. A million dollars ain't what it used to be, especially in George W. Bush's America, and the prize sounds paltry when one considers all the boring lectures by Cuban that the players apparently will have to sit through.
Viewers are luckier. They don't have to sit through any of this nonsense. "You never know what's going to happen next," Cuban promises before the fade-out. A good guess: the swift if not unexpected cancellation of "The Benefactor."
