The first season of Lee Sung Jin’s dark comedy Beef was a hit and an award-winner for Netflix because of its relatable story, class differences that people could connect to, and fine performances. The second season has an all-new story and characters, who face similar issues. But something about this season feels off.
BEEF SEASON 2: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
Opening Shot: Ants are crawling on the ground on what looks like fake snow. Then they’re stepped on by someone carrying a case of beer.
The Gist: Joshua Martin (Oscar Isaac), the general manager of Monte Vista Point country club, is at the microphone at the end of a fundraiser gala, and he’s praising his wife, Lindsay Crane-Martín (Carey Mulligan), for putting the soiree together. She has also done the interior design for an upgrade to the club as it gets a new owner, Chairwoman Park (Youn Yuh-jung), a Korean billionaire. Working the party are Ashley Miller (Cailee Spaeny) and Austin Davis (Charles Melton), who recently got engaged.
While the Martins put on a happy face, as soon as Lindsay gets in the car with Josh to go home, the fight starts. She is not happy with the work she’s doing, the house is still not fully renovated after six years, and she thinks Josh is avoidant about discussing his issues. The fight spirals out of control, moving to Josh’s “man cave” in the guest house, and Lindsay smashing things with a golf club.
It’s then that Ashley and Austin show up to return the wallet Josh left behind at the club, and through the window of the guest house they see the Martins grappling with each other. Ashley decides to record the melee.
Josh and Lindsey seem to shrug off the whole thing as just another fight in their long marriage, but the younger couple are traumatized by what they saw, and are ready to send the video to the police.
Then the next day, Josh passive-aggressively threatens to fire Ashley in more than one way; when he encounters her beverage cart, for instance, he takes time to tell her that she needs to keep the “make believe” atmosphere of the club going. For his part, Austin visits Lindsay at her home to offer his support, which is when she tells him that a married couple who never fights is hiding something.
When Ashley is told she’s going to need surgery on a cyst near one of her ovaries, and that the chances of bearing children are reduced, she gets angry that she’s suffering without health insurance while jerks like Josh get away with things like his fight with Lindsay. In the meantime, Chairwoman Park arrives at the club and decides to redo all the decorative changes Lindsay made to the place.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? The second season of Beef, written by Lee Sung Jin, has more of a Fargo-like feeling than the first season did.
Our Take: We found it really hard to connect to the story at the heart of Beef‘s second season, despite the riveting performances by the season’s four leads. The Martins are living the good life by just about any standard, but not as good as the powerful and super-wealthy country club members Josh works for, or the club’s new owner. Ashley and Austin are young (but not as young as you might think) and naive about love and relationships, and their bitter fight with the Martins is going to make them much less idealistic.
But it’s not just the apparent class and power imbalance at the heart of this dispute, a big part of the first season’s conflict, that left us cold. In a lot of ways, this feels more contrived a situation than Season 1. A couple in Ashley and Austin’s situation, where they have some proof of domestic violence, will either go to law enforcement or bury the info, because they think it’s none of their business.
However, the sequence of events that befall Ashley in the first episode, getting her to the point where she’s angry enough to hold this video over the Martins’ heads, feels like Jin fully created a path to get to the beef instead of having it happen organically.
The Martins aren’t supposed to be sympathetic figures, and they spend the first episode really leaning into that, from shrugging off the out-of-control fight as just another argument, to Lindsay sliding into various men’s DMs, to Josh tossing his wife under the bus as soon as Chairwoman Park expresses dissatisfaction with Lindsay’s work. But Austin and Lindsay are positioned as if they’re idealistic kids, with Austin being one of the more empathetic men we’ve seen on TV in a long time, but they’re in their mid-to-late 20s. Is this really the incident that’s going to make them be as vicious and vengeful as the Martins are with each other?
Performance Worth Watching: Oscar Isaac is so good at being menacing while being passive-aggressive as Josh, who seems to be pretty content with his life and doesn’t want Lindsay or anyone else to upset the apple cart.
Sex And Skin: We see Ashley and Austin having sex, with some light nudity.
Parting Shot: Austin and Ashley show up at the Martins’ door, and both couples look at each other with suspicion.
Sleeper Star: William Fichtner is Troy, a club member who seems to be friends with Josh, but even there, the relationship seems to be more transactional than Josh thinks it is. Fichtner ‘s presence is a wild card that we’re looking forward to seeing play out.
Most Pilot-y Line: There are a couple of moments where the view momentarily changes, like Josh seeing himself instead of Troy, or Lindsay dragging pillows down the street wearing a tennis outfit instead of the dress she’s actually wearing. We’re not sure what those moments are about and how they connect with the greater story.
Our Call: STREAM IT. We’re not sure the second season of Beef is going to be as satisfying as the first season was, but the story has a lot of places it can go, so we’re hopeful we can connect to it as the season goes along.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.
