The Booth at the End is an intriguing web series that raises philosophical question while leaving many of its answers shrouded in mystery. The series centers on an anonymous man who sits in a booth at a diner and is capable of granting wishes to anyone who seeks him out. There is a catch, of course – in order for the wish to be fulfilled, the person making the request must complete an assigned task that is designed to both test their morality as well as cause them to consider the consequences of their actions.
The tasks “The Man” (Xander Berkeley) dispenses go beyond mere right and wrong, and include killing an innocent girl, setting off a homemade bomb in a busy coffee shop and stealing in excess of $100,000 from a bank. Although the “will they or won’t they” question hangs in the air throughout the web series, the reactions of the individuals to their assignments and how they handle the moral dilemmas are just as intriguing as the outcomes.
How far will a man go to save his dying child? To what extreme will an elderly woman venture to rescue her husband from the grasp of Alzheimer’s? What will a person do to reconcile with their estranged son? These are just a few of the questions that The Booth at the End asks, and “The Man” appears just as curious about the answers as anyone.
The Booth at the End wisely intertwines many of the individual storylines involving the various characters, giving the web series a more seamless and fluid flow. While “The Man” allocates one person the task of killing a little girl, for instance, the assignment of another is to protect the girl in question. Then there is the issue of “The Man” himself, as he does not make empty promises – once a task is completed, the requested wish is granted in a natural and synchronistic fashion. But is it supernatural, or simply a form of extreme coincidence?
More importantly, who is “The Man”? One client asks, “How can I know you’re not the devil?” and the response is, “You can’t.” When asked if he believes in God, meanwhile, “The Man” replies, “I believe in the details.”
Later in the narrative, he hints that he is merely a go-between, a middle-man if you will, who simply assigns the tasks from his leather-bound book that he then uses to record the outcomes. Although his neutrality in regards to whether an assignment is actually carried out or not is evident, “The Man” often appears both surprised and relieved when someone refuses to follow through on their assignment, while likewise showing disappointment when they do
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Season two of The Booth at the End contains a different set of individuals seeking guidance from “The Man,” as well as one holdover – a teenage girl who died during her assigned task but was apparently resurrected after her father made his own deal at the end of season one. Just as in the inaugural effort, the majority of these separate storylines intersect at the end, bringing both hope and happiness, as well as death and despair, in the process.
While season one spotlighted the lengths one is willing to go in order to have their wishes granted, season two also focusses more on how the tasks inevitably change what the wish makers thought was important. Henry (Danny Nucci), for instance, wants to rewrite his life by having been married for the past twenty years to someone else. “You don’t want to have a happy marriage, you want to have had a happy,” he is told by “The Man.”
For Henry, that is the point – by having been “happily” married for twenty years without actually living that life means that he never has to regret saying or doing the wrong thing. A life-altering event while attempting to fulfill his assigned task of believing in God, however, inevitably causes him renounce his wish instead. “I just want to live,” he tells “The Man” afterwards.
Maria (Romina Peniche), meanwhile, wants her drug-addicted sister to change her self-destructive ways in order to bring some happiness into her recently widowed mother’s life. Maria is ultimately unable to accomplish her task of making five random people cry but is able to make her wish reality nonetheless.
“I told her a story,” she says in regards to her mother. “I told the story of how I went to the zoo to make a child cry but he kicked me in the shin. And how I went to pinch a baby to make it cry but he threw up on me. And how I went to break the heart of a man who loved me by saying I never wanted to see him again, and he dumped me before I got the chance. I told her a dozen tales and more and more about how I tried to save the world by making people cry, and I didn’t succeed. And my mother laughed and laughed. And she took my hand, and she was happy.”
Then there’s Melody (Jennifer Del Rosario), the dead girl brought back to life between the first two seasons of The Booth at the End. For her to live again, someone else had to die, a fact that she cannot accept. Her request is thus to reverse the wish of her father and be dead again. Dillon (Noel Fisher), meanwhile, recently had his own brush with death when his military father died overseas. Dillon’s desire is to never die himself – or even age – and in essence be indestructible.
According to “The Man,” Melody’s task is to “grow” something lasting while Dillon’s is to indelibly “mark” someone for life. Their paths cross during the assignments and the love that blossoms between them completes the tasks at hand, making one wish reality and the other abandoned in the aftermath.
“Watch what you wish for or you might just find it” is a popular catch-phrase that has been around for centuries. “The Man” likewise has his own proverbial warning regarding wishes. “There are things I don’t understand about this world, about people, about how things will turn out,” he explains. “But I do know this – there are consequences. When you start to change the world, you don’t know when the changes are going to stop.”
The Booth at the End itself, however, suggests that one should watch what they wish for because they might find it in the most unexpected of ways. While not everyone who visits “The Man” finds what they are looking for, those that do discover a better appreciation for their lives and a deeper understanding of themselves. For The Booth at the End, it’s not the wishes that matter or even the tasks, but the lessons learned in between that truly resonate.
Much like life itself.
Anthony Letizia