'Benefactor' loser lets loose at Cuban

05:20 PM CST on Monday, November 8, 2004


By ED BARK / The Dallas Morning News



Aggrieved reality show contestants have been a fact of TV life ever
since Survivor: The Australian Outback portrayed Jerri Manthey as a
banshee in a blue bikini, which she later insisted she wasn't.

It's gotten unusually acrimonious, however, between Dallas Mavericks
owner Mark Cuban and Linda Caruso, who was banished from The
Benefactor finale after being exposed as a fraud in his view.

"I wish I never would have been on the show. I wish I had never met
Mark Cuban. He's just raunchy," says Ms. Caruso, a former star guard
on the University of Massachusetts Boston basketball team and a
linebacker for the professional Mass Mutiny football team. "He just
ruined my name that I helped to build up for 31 years. He just
squished me."

Mr. Cuban responds to a lengthy list of accusations via a catch-all e-
mail: "My comment is that Linda lies and misrepresented herself. You
got to see my honest reaction [on the show]. All she had to do was
tell the truth."

The bitter aftermath underscores the reality – or unreality – of your
basic reality TV show, where selective editing can shape story lines
for better or worse.

As The Benefactor fades from memory and George Hamilton's Life of
Luxury takes its place tonight, here's a last postgame column on a
show that principally disappointed ABC with its flea-sized ratings
throughout an abridged six-episode run.

Ms. Caruso positioned herself on The Benefactor as a determined,
tough-talking contestant who grew up in poverty and yearned to buy
her wheelchair-restricted mother a prosthetic leg if she won the $1
million prize.

Mr. Cuban says he believed her story and likely would have made Ms.
Caruso the big winner had he not visited her hometown on the show's
Oct. 25 finale. He met Ms. Caruso's 60-year-old mother, Teresa, in
her humble Boston apartment before traveling to nearby Portsmouth,
N.H., to see the house where Ms. Caruso and her fiancé, Daniel
Schneider, are residing.

It wasn't exactly a hovel, and Ms. Caruso admitted, "I was nervous
about him seeing where I live."

Mr. Cuban told viewers, "It sent a helluva message to me. This is not
living in poverty. ... She tried to play me. She knew she had blown
it in a big way. And she was busted."

The host particularly took notice of a state-of-the-art TV screen
hanging on Mr. Schneider's wall. A few minutes before cutting Ms.
Caruso from the show while glowering at her, Mr. Cuban told
viewers, "Maybe she ought to just sell some of these hi-def
televisions. Then she could afford a leg for her mom."

That particular comment incensed Ms. Caruso and Mr. Schneider when
they heard it for the first time on ABC. They subsequently contacted
The Dallas Morning News to tell their side.

"The reality is that a single mother with cancer, with diabetes, with
an amputated leg and without means cried herself to sleep after
watching the finale of The Benefactor," says Mr. Schneider. He called
it a "grotesque and misleading personal attack" by Mr. Cuban.

Mr. Schneider concedes he is a "gentleman of means." But he
emphasizes that Ms. Caruso indeed "came from poverty and
circumstances that not many people would want for themselves. As much
as I want to contribute financially to Linda's reality, she has
refused, always stating that this is something she must do on her
own."

After being evicted on the finale, Ms. Caruso told the camera, "I
made a huge mistake when I went home. I shouldn't have brought him
[Mr. Cuban] to my house. I should have showed him somebody else's
house, I guess."

She now says, "What really upset me is to have my mother cry over
it. ... I never lied. I guess they took me being proud of my heritage
and my roots and they turned it into something negative to make good
ratings. And that's not good."

Dallasite Kevin Hall, who took a $30,000 buyout from Mr. Cuban on the
show, has a far different view of both The Benefactor and its host.

"I just really think it was a great show," he says. "I love Mark
Cuban. I think he's a great guy. If I could marry him, I would."

He is less effusive, but still complimentary, of Ms. Caruso.

"I think she's a nice lady," he says, declining to elaborate.

Femia Durosinmi of Henderson, Nev., whom Ms. Caruso derided as
a "poser," ended up winning The Benefactor's $1 million bounty. But
in reality, who knew?

The show's finale had just 4.6 million viewers nationally to rank a
subterranean 85th in that week's prime-time ratings. A hastily thrown-
together, minimally promoted "How'd They Do That?" edition of ABC's
Extreme Makeover: Home Edition drew 8.2 million viewers a week later
in the same 7 p.m. Monday slot.

Mr. Cuban, while acknowledging "disappointing" ratings nationally for
The Benefactor, insisted to the end that it was a hit locally on WFAA-
TV (Channel 8). But it wasn't, really.

The show's finale was seen in 160,600 homes and finished third in its
time period, according to Nielsen Media Research. A week later, the
Home Edition special enticed 235,400 homes while easily winning its
time slot in the Dallas-Fort Worth viewing area.

That should be of some comfort to Ms. Caruso, if not to Mr. Cuban.
Only a relative handful of TV watchers witnessed him saying, "When I
cut Linda, it took everything I had not to just rip into her and tell
her exactly what I thought. But I realized that her being cut was her
own reward."

Ms. Caruso says she'll survive.

"I'm upset, but life has to go on. The only thing I can't live with
is that comment about my mother."