THE BOOTH AT THE END, and US - Friday Viddy Views by Mike N.
Many of us - at least those not in the world of retail - have two more weeks of technically business-as-usual work conditions before the final two weeks of the year, when (hopefully) the schedule yields to blocks of time off. With that in mind, it can be a good time to (over-)indulge and catch up on shows and movies, all while trying to pretend the new year isn't waiting just around a shadowy corner, complete with someone else's Back To Work demands.
I came across a series called The Booth at the End that's worth a little attention.
These are two short seasons - just five episodes each - and the episode running time is about 23 minutes, so short and concentrated.
Each show is set in a diner, where an unnamed man (played by Xander Berkeley) sits in the last booth, writing in a leatherbound notebook. People, hearing from someone who knows someone else that there's a man who can make anything happen for a price, approach him with a mix of skepticism and trepidation. The man is polite, but accepts information while rarely giving any. He presses people for details of what they want, explaining to them in turn that it's important they be detailed and specific. The deal is that once the desire's been stated, he opens his notebook and gives the person a task. If they complete the task, what they want to happen will happen. The tasks never seem to have anything directly connected to the desired boon. Some are asked to do something positive, even heroic, or just odd and uncomfortable, while others are tasked with terrible, even monstrous, deeds.
What ensues is a blend of unconnected people, initially doing completely unrelated things, but as the season rolls on we start to see where the actions begin to interlace. One of the requirements of the deal is that they come back to report their progress and answer any of his questions about it. Any attempt to lie to him is futile, as through some agency he immediately knows.
The man repeatedly makes it clear that he doesn't make anything happen -- they do -- and that whether or not they do it is completely up to them. Whatever it was they wanted to happen could happen on its own, he reminds them. The only guarantee he gives them is that if they complete the task, what they wanted to happen will happen. Seemingly, no desire is so extravagant as to be impossible.
Between the first and second seasons The Man switches diners. There's one deal that carries over from the first into the second season, mostly as a matter of the ramifications of a first season deal, and a character whose dynamic in the story changes.
It's clearly a series that was hoping for at least one more season, though it still manages to hold together as a reasonably complete whole. I'll simply rip off the band-aid of one item: We never find
Would I be interested in finding out how that would have resolved had they had another season or so? Sure. Is it critical to enjoying the rest of the series? No. The Faustian deals, and the interlacing of their tasks, are sufficiently interesting, satisfying and complete.
Picky pricks will doubtless find problems with it, including being able to spot early on some of the deals that for one reason or another won't be completed. They're invited to sit and stew over it, or celebrate their victories over the screenwriters, well out of my view. My condolences to the luckless people stuck listening to any of that. Maybe they should start checking out local diners. If they see someone sitting in the last booth, sipping at a cup or picking at a piece of pie in between making scribbles in a brown notebook, remember that the pass phrase is some minor variation on "I hear the pastrami sandwich is very good here."
Courtesy of an opening flashback, we see a little girl on a beach vacation with her feuding parents goes missing for maybe 15 minutes thanks to a combination of mom needing a bathroom break and dad having had a couple too many and focusing his dimmed attentions on boardwalk games of skill. She has a bizarre encounter with a creepy doppelganger in the house of mirrors. Skipping ahead a little, we see that whatever happened appeared to leave her traumatized, marked by a stretch of unspecified length where she wouldn't speak. Seeking professional help, the parents were encouraged to get her into expressing herself in the arts, helping her break through what seemed to be PTSD.
Back in the present, we see the girl's grown into a young woman, bride of a handsome, apparently warm-hearted man, and mother of two. Vacation plans arranged by the husband take them back to the same California beach. It soon becomes clear that she's tried to bury the memories, and has never discussed the matter with her husband, which leads to them getting too deep into the situation before he finds out. Then, they all find out that something very strange and sinister is going on, as a bizarre, initially silent family of counterparts shows up in front of their vacation house.
Rated R for violence and language. Home invasion scenarios and bloody violence. None of it struck me as gratuitous.
It worked well for me, though the ultimate foundation for the tale isn't going to hold up to rigorous scrutiny. Honestly, though, it doesn't have to. It's a well-conceived nightmare scenario, with generally believable, if not always convenient, characters, leavened by character-driven humor. It's also not far of a stretch to take it as an effective allegory concerning entitlement.
Finally, just landing today on Amazon Prime - and high on my likely list of Things To Watch this weekend - is the third season of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. So, not a review or reaction piece here, but merely an expectation based on the scintillating cast, and the two highly entertaining seasons they've already provided.
I may -- no foolish promises, just a thoughtfully cautionary consideration -- at least try to ration it rather than binge-blast through, given that they're spacing these seasons out by a full year, and this third season is back to a mere 8 episodes.
It's nice to know that'll be waiting for me when I get home to decompress from this year's company Christmas party Friday night.
I'm going to continue to append an updated list of links to earlier
Friday columns, if you find yourself looking for some nudges toward
other tv, streaming and movie options. Aside from that, though, enjoy
the weekend! -Mike N.
Sept. 27th: What's The Matter With Helen, The French Connection, and Frenzy. (Early '70s R-rated movies I saw with my mom)
Oct. 3rd: Preacher (AMC), Stumptown (ABC), Sunnyside (NBC), The Good Place (NBC), and Jack Ryan (Amazon Prime).
Oct. 11th: Joker (still in theaters), and In The Tall Grass (Netflix)
Oct. 18th: El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie (Netflix)
Oct. 25th: Dolemite Is My Name (Netflix)
Nov. 1st: Watchmen (HBO series), The Kominsky Method (Netflix)
Nov. 8th: Seconds (1966 movie, currently available as part of Amazon Prime)
Nov. 15th: Dr. Sleep (current theatrical release, but probably not for long), Horace and Pete (2016 web-produced series, currently on Hulu)
Nov. 22nd: NOS4A2 (AMC, now on Hulu) and Man In The High Castle (Amazon Prime)
Nov. 29th: The Irishman (Netflix), The Mandalorian and The World According To Jeff Goldblum (both on Disney+), light touches on Watchmen (HBO) and Ray Donovan (Showtime).
Booth at the end. Watching asap. Thanks. Sounds fantastic!
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