Cartel Delay Album Release Date [Absolute Punk]

Episode 4: The Finale

A rundown:
- The VJ known as "Blair" introduces a montage of the last three episodes' highlights, causing us to fondly remember the days when MTV's hosts had last names.
- More footage from the day the front wall of the bubble shattered, leaving broken glass all over the band's equipment and shocking the members' moms, is shown.
- The mothers wisely flee shortly after Jeff, the bassist, questions the building's structural integrity. Good thing you're not on the water or—oh, wait. Luckily, the glass is put back up, good as new, on...

Day 14
- The band is shown recording accordions and toy trucks, and auditioning harmonica players. The guy who gets the slot looks like he accidentally wandered over from the Renaissance Faire one pier over.
- The Boys And Girls Choir Of Harlem shows up, too.

Day 15
- The producers sneak in for the sole purpose of leaving raw chicken feet all over the bubble, making us shudder to think of how the place smells now.
- Wyclef Jean, clearly looking for things to do, says that he is "vibin'" the Cartel record, and that he wants to supply some "crazy guitars." The Gideon Yago-looking guitar player doesn't seem too excited about the prospect, perhaps because he's on the way to the bathroom.

Day 16
- The "pranky" MTV people have moved on from dead chickens' feet to a live rooster and a live sheep. Well, if Cartel's album doesn't work out, they can always become The New New Monkees.
- Will is starting to crack under the pressure of interacting with people outside the bubble, and his angst is interspersed with blurred-out shots of visitors. Drama! Wait, didn't everyone who walked onto the pier sign a release?
- Blair claims that the next segment will show the band "scrambling to finish the album," even though the people who read the site's official blog know that recording wrapped Monday night. Um, guess the site didn't get that many hits?
- Wyclef shows up and tells Will that he sounds "older on the phone."
- The "featuring Wyclef" song will be called "Wasted." Also, he says that Will, vocally, is a "beast." Perhaps that means he's stopped singing out of his nose?
- The band tips its hand when it calls the 5,000-person capacity of the pier a "lot of people." We expected a band with 203,407 MySpace friends to be less impressed.

Day 17
- The band is in busting-ass, being-mean-to-one-another mode. Also, their song "Georgia" sounds like it was written after listening to "Sweet Child O' Mine" on endless repeat.

Day 19
- One of Cartel's songs is called "No Subject," and it's no doubt about the frustrations of poorly composed e-mail.
- A Sony executive named "Danny" stops by to listen to the record. His face is remarkable for its complete lack of reaction while the song is being played. There's a tense moment where he whispers to the Epic liasion—but then he says the record is great! And "anthemlike"! And he's ready to lead everyone in a Dr Pepper toast.
- The band, however, chooses to toast itself with Jack Daniels and mini-golf.
- And packing.

Day 20
- A discussion of Cartel's show, which will be played in front of an allegedly big audience. Um, anybody have ratings numbers on this thing?
- The glass breaks—but this time it's supposed to! The band plays—and the song maybe could be not bad? But it's hard to tell because the mix is absolutely terrible, like the water and the bubble are both conspiring to swallow the song up. The verses are all vocals and single-note-repeated guitar line, and things motor up a bit on the choruses, but not much.
- MTV is apparently aware of these problems, as it cuts to "Blair" (is that really his name?) midway through the second verse. You can buy the song on iTunes—but can you redeem Dr Pepper points for it?

The Verdict
Watching four episodes of Bubble—and periodically checking out the blogs and Webcam footage—made us actually kind of like the members of Cartel as characters, sort of like how we think John Mayer would make a great blogger. But everything around this stunt seemed chaotic and forced at the same time, with the obvious disconnect between the Web site's content and the old-news televised portion being the most glaringly shoddy aspect of the proceedings. Were the producers of the Web content and TV shows even talking to each other? It seemed to us like the two halves were designed to actively discourage synergistic viewing of any kind, thus making the band the ultimate losers. This story won't end until the album comes out next month, but for now, we aren't sure that this thinly disguised infomercial will be any more beneficial for the band than its MySpaced-out video was.

Earlier: The Bubble Boyz With Electric Toyz archives

Did you know that the series' fourth, and final, episode airs tomorrow? It seems like only yesterday that we were wondering if this whole thing would work. And after watching Saturday's episode—which tracked the band's adventures up through last week's wall collapse—we're pretty sure that it hasn't, unless you count "lots of gratuitous Dr Pepper logo shots" as "working."

Episode 3:

For some reason, Episode 3 tracks the period between May 28 and June 4, even though anyone with an Internet connection would be following along on the blog, and anyone who actually cared enough to use all the "interactive" features would have considered any of the footage used in this episode old news. Tacit admission that no one is really redeeming their Dr Pepper codes to watch the footage or sign that MTV cares as much for this whole debacle as Cartel cared for the fish its fans gave them—i.e. not enough to keep them alive past Day 2? We're leaning toward the latter, but we'll reserve final judgment for tomorrow night's episode, in which the band debuts its new material, which was apparently completed last night.

Other things we learned:

They're slobs. Okay, so the fact that they're in a band should make us less surprised by this. But during our viewings of the episode, the reminders that there was no fresh air in the place gave us a terrifying sense of the bubble's pre-window-shatter aroma—a mix of spilled beer, unlaundered clothes, dog pee, vomit (viewers were treated to two loo-cam shots of people puking), sweat, and nasty porn. Perhaps the "accident" was really not that bad of a thing?

The point of being in a band is being able to drink beer without running a mile afterward. At least, that's the excuse they gave to the personal trainer who woke them up at 6:30 in the morning and forced them to jump rope—cruelly, before they got to take a swig of a beverage that clearly wasn't Dr Pepper.

They can actually write a half-decent song. The whispery, delicate "Piano" actually sounded not-half-bad—but, of course, the label execs weren't fans. Will the track make it to the album in its current form? We're guessing no.

Making The Band 4 is going to exist. Just a warning.

We're really regretting our decision to recap this show. But you probably figured that out. Surely this can't be the ratings bonanza that I'm From Rolling Stone was.

Tomorrow: The finale, to which we are hoping beyond hope that this guy was invited.

Earlier: Somehow, we managed to squeeze four posts out of this thing.

This morning, we were planning on recapping the second episode of Band In A Bubble, the publicity stunt/rare bit of music-related programming on MTV that's been shunted to the Saturdays-at-8 ratings graveyard, but any drama ginned up by the show's editors probably pales in comparison to what went down at Pier 54 last night. It's been raining steadily, if not torrentially, in New York City for the past day or so, and the weather has taken its toll on the allegedly indestructible bubble housing the Atlanta emo-pop band Cartel. According to the stunt's official blog, the front glass wall of the bubble (above) shattered at around 9 p.m. last night because of the weather; nobody inside was hurt, although the damage to the guys' egos that resulted from this incident being mostly unreported is unknown at the moment.

Band In A Bubble Presented By Dr Pepper Featuring Cartel [Official site]

Episode 1, which was broadcast from right outside the bubble, set up the show, sealed the band inside its tricked-out digs, and gave the the guys their first task: They have to write (and record) a song, and it will premiere on an episode of TRL next week.

And the biggest news to come out of this episode?

MTV is now bleeping the word "masturbate."

Episode 1: The Red Carpet Special

We open with dozens of screaming fans waiting outside the bubble and an introduction from yet another one-named MTV VJ, some preppy guy who calls Cartel "rock and roll psychopaths." (Guess that's nicer than "publicity whores.") For some reason, the first third of the episode looks squished, like Paula Abdul's video for "The Promise Of A New Day", and it makes us feel dizzy.

Let's begin with a few Tiger Beat-style sketches of each character:

Will, the lead singer/public defender who actually thinks the "porn star name" conceit is funny;
Kevin, the moptopped drummer whose hobby is, um, being naked;
Joseph, the Gideon Yago lookalike lead guitarist who is serious about the music, as evidenced by his T-shirts of Hot Water Music and the Sex Pistols, and who's convinced that he's going to be the first to crack;
Nic, the "Abercrombie-hot" rhythm guitarist who's actually a bit shy;
Jeff, the newbie bassist who feels a bit estranged from the rest of the band, in an effort to actually gin up some tension; and
Peter, the Epic executive who's going to serve as the bringer of "our ass is on the line" bad news.

Peter is clearly going to be the person in charge of giving this thing an actual dramatic arc, since he talks about making Cartel an important band, blah blah blah. But his best line is clearly this one, which comes during one of his pep talks in the studio:

We have to treat each song like it's no longer a single—it's a sonic weapon.

The rest of the episode—which introduces us to the band members' mothers and frequently refers to the bubble as a "prison"—goes pretty much downhill from there, although there are a few highlights:

ARE PEOPLE REALLY WRITING THIS SHIT? Two "fans" were interviewed by another one-name VJ, and they were clever enough to come up with the following lines:
"I'm really excited how they make their album—I know they can sing live, but I wanna see them sing in the shower"; and
"I just really wanna know what five horndogs are gonna do late at night, when they're lonely and in that bubble!"
MASTURBATION IS NOW A CRIME ON MTV: While "horndogs" has made it past the MTV censors, another word referring to man's primal urges is not; Kevin discussed a period where he didn't pleasure himself for 24 days, and the word "masturbate" was bleeped out. "Morning wood," however, was not, for those of you keeping score.
APPARENTLY THERE'S NO DUANE READE IN THE BUBBLE: Fans brought gifts to the band, because clearly, what five dudes who are sponsored by Dr Pepper, KFC, and Wal-Mart need is more crap; one gir gave 20 pairs of "sexy" underwear to Kevin, another brought car air fresheners to de-smell up the joint. But the classiest gift? It had to be a plunger. We're so glad that whoever wrote that bit brought Next-like levels of humor to the proceedings.
THE CHALLENGE: The five members were charged with writing and recording a song to be performed next week on TRL, thus increasing the percentage of people to whom the afternoon countdown show is still a big deal by at least 20%.
THE REAL CHALLENGE: Perhaps already expecting I'm From Rolling Stone levels of viewership, MTV has scheduled the next Bubble episode for the ratings graveyard of Saturday at 8 p.m. The webcams, however, are up and running—but only to people who buy Dr Pepper. We already know how unexciting unedited webcam life can be (thanks, Ana Voog!), but we'll probably buy a bottle or two and fire up our browsers at odd hours, if only because sometimes we need to take drastic measures to put ourselves to sleep.

Earlier: Third-Rate Emo Band Making Us Feel Less Than Bubblicious