[cross-posted to Daimnation!]
Mark Cuban seems like a cool guy, but his show is probably the most boring, pointless reality show I've ever seen. (I've never seen Temptation Island.) I just gave up on it before the half-hour mark, in the middle of Cuban's interminable one-on-one interviews with the 15 remaining contestants. The Amazing Race has people jumping from airplanes, Survivor has contestants diving off cliffs, and The Benefactor has...interviews.
I'll admit that eliminating one candidiate 15 minutes into the show (after he called the program "stupid", unaware that Cuban was watching the whole conversation) got my attention. But 30 minutes into The Benefactor, I still didn't get the point of the friggin' show. It's kind of like a job interview, I guess, but we already have a job-interview reality show - The Apprentice - which actually has people doing things. The Benefactor, by contrast, is like a particularly dull Big Brother episode. I don't know the development history of this show, but I'll bet ABC was so desperate for a hit that they shoved this one into production before the rules had been completely thought through.
But surely I should watch the entire first episode before I pass judgment, right? Well, I guess it's possible something exciting could be happening right now. But I say that if it couldn't hook me in the first half hour, that's the show's fault.
As Cuban himself noted when he kicked out that first contestant, you don't get a second chance to make a first impression. The producers should have taken his advice.
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Article comments
1 - James North
This show sets a new standard for crassness. I think the so-called entertainment value of it lies entirely in watching an egotistical billionaire humiliate a group of really gutless contestants. The question over the remaining weeks will be; how much humiliation can these people put up with for a chance at a million bucks?
This megalomaniac kicks the first contestant off after 15 minutes for a harmless comment. Then a young woman gets kicked off because she was too embarrassed to do an air guitar performance of "Back In Black". Then he makes two people play a single game of Jenga to see who loses the chance at the million?
Twice, I noticed Cuban chastizing players for doing something fairly inconsequential "without permission".
I don't even really know who Mark Cuban is, but after watching this I sure as hell don't like the guy (he makes Donald Trump look humble), and I would be very entertained if at least one of the remaining players told him where he could shove his million bucks.
2 - wah
re: Cuban's egotistical history, see this "D" story about what he did when someone had the audacity to do a story on the fiance of the most eligible bachelor in Dallas.
Link to mefi discussion. The original article is down.