The Booth at the End
The Booth at the End: The Devil is in the Details
Sometimes the best things in life are those things stumbled upon, enjoyed without hype or expectations. It allows the thing to be enjoyed as it is discovered, without feeling like you have to discover what someone else enjoyed. Nobody told you the wine was smoky with notes of cherries and blackberries, but you enjoyed it because it reminded you of cobbler and it had been a long day.
I’ll ruin that now by ranting about how brilliant this show is. I stumbled across it on Hulu and can’t contain myself enough to allow others to stumble into it so I will trip and push them into it hoping to find some other enthusiasts.
The Booth at the End is reminiscent of a play with a single stage. A benign and common looking Man (played by Xander Berkeley) sits at a booth in a diner as people visit him to make a deal. He is friendly but firm, congenial but cold. He is slightly aloof, and with his pen and thick notebook is strikingly similar to a shrink. The deals he makes with each visitor promises to give them what they want, or at least, what they believe they want. Their desires range from saving the life of their child to becoming more physically attractive, but somehow this man at the booth assures them he has the ability to grant their wish so long as they fulfill their part of the bargain and update him on their progress. The morality and difficulty of the Man’s tasks for each visitor varies as much as their requests, and as any experienced story-listener may anticipate, the paths and desires are quickly begin to intersect.
The beauty, however, of this show lies in the subtle and profound hints at the essence of humanity. What we are capable of when we want something, how far we’ll go, what we believe we deserve, are all displayed in each unique situation.
I could go on about all the gems hidden in the script, and the double meanings of very simple phrases, (the last three words of the title are quite sinister now that I think about it) but really the show is summarized poignantly when one diner asks the Man if he believes in god and the devil.
The response: “I believe in the details.”
The fun for the viewer lies in understanding just who exactly this Man is. Is he lying, or is he powerful enough to grant these wishes? Is he just a sociopath orchestrating a diabolical experiment in human desperation? Is he the devil, or is he god? Is he both? Even more unsettling… which one are we, when we pursue our deepest desires?
The answer is in the details.
The Booth at the End can be seen streaming on Hulu. The first season is comprised of 5 episodes, a little over 20 minutes each. It was created by Christopher Kubasik, and originally ran from August 27, 2010, on the Canadian network CityTV.
