Beef Is Finally Back For A Second Season

 

Like the entire world I fell in love with Lee Sung Jin's Beef is the spring of 2023. The fact that the show had a predominantly Korean and Asian American cast did nothing to stop me from immediately identifying with the theme Sung Jin established of how anger and emotion cause to spiral in directions that lead us to do things we might not think we're capable of but that in our hearts we all could do. I named it the fifth best show of 2023 and celebrated every single award it won particular for the incredible leads of Ali Wong and Steven Yeun.

Naturally the show was renewed for a second season and Sung Jin made it clear from the start that it was going to be a completely different cast. This was in my opinion the correct move as so many brilliant limited series frequently fall in the trap of thinking that they can keep the magic going with the same cast the following year. I also approved of his cast for the next season who he announced as two of the most brilliant actors of this century: Carey Mulligan and Oscar Isaac. I didn't know until I watched the first two episodes (the new season finally dropped Thursday) that Sung Jin was trying a completely different approach to how he dealt with the themes he'd started in Season 2. In it he decided to show the ramifications of an argument but this time it was between a married couple who are played by Isaac and Mulligan and how it is viewed – and more importantly filmed -  by a younger twenty something couple played by two superb actors in their own right: Charles Melton and Cailee Spaeny.

There are similarities between the conflict: like In Season 1 it deals with the struggle between two people who are struggling economically and a seemingly wealthier couple who themselves only have the appearance of economic success but in fact are similar dependent are far wealthier people. In this case Isaac and Mulligan play Joshua and Lindsay who work at a California country club in positions where they seem to have wealth and power. Spaeny and Melton play Ashley and Austin two millennials-Gen Z who are struggling with working class issues, they don't have health insurance and they're not making ends meet. They have no idea that their bosses are not only in the same economically bad position as them but have no more job security then they do. Nor do they realize that the fight that catch them in is just another in a long series of signs that their marriage is on its last legs but neither one can pull the trigger on it.

Now's where I tell you that, unlike in Season 1, all four of the leads are white people. (Melton's character, as in real life, is half-Korean.)That may have seemed obvious if you know who the actors are but I can imagination that for those who loved Season 1 because of how much it looked at a minority group that has struggled for representation onscreen, to change it to just looking at a bunch of angry white people might seem like Sung Jin is selling out. That's not the case. In fact I'd argue he's doing something he couldn't have really done as much in Season 1. Because of the increasing polarized America the first season of Beef resonated even more because it dealt with a minority that's had to struggle far more in this country as opposed to white people. That's why the figure that was seen as the true heavy of Beef was a seemingly progressive white woman played by Maria Bello, who was very much a member of the very rich and was cosplaying at being open-minded and loving.

The second season of Beef tests our sympathies by setting so much of the show at a country club where the rich and elite gather to play and treat both the managers that Josh and Lindsay represent with the exact same contempt they do those that Austin and Ashley do. These people are the real one percent and they basically see all four of these people as the help if they see them at all. This is the same theme that the first season of Beef visited but by looking at it through white people Sung Jin is making the same point as before: everyone is looking at the person a few rungs higher as the villain when none of them are really looking at the very top of the food chain. One of the better jokes is that the two younger people talk about late-stage capitalism as the villain and Austin wants to try and do it the right way and talk about reading books and voting. Ashley  just wants to blackmail Joshua and Lindsay because they're what she considers late stage capitalism and this is the shortest distance between two points.

Oscar Isaac and Carey Mulligan are two of the greatest actors working today. Twelve years ago the two of them starred in Inside Llewyn Davis; Isaac played the title role; Mulligan his more successful sister. There's a parallel in their marriage between the relationship in Llewyn Davis;  here Lindsay was an heiress from Britain and she clearly resents that he's dragged her down, causing her to lose her ambitions as well as much of her money.  The fight that takes place is caused for many reasons, both career wise and sexual. In the Season 2 premiere Lindsay complains they haven't had sex in a year. Going in we don't know what caused this drift but we see Joshua pleasuring himself to pornography online; something he's clearly been spending a lot of money on. Lindsay seems to be considering cheating on her husband yet again but that actually seems like a cover for a British noble she still follows on social media.

What makes both of these actors so ideally cast, apart from both their talent and former on-screen pairing, is that both have an equal measure of parallels of threatening and awkwardness. Isaac's height and build frequently make him look imposing (it's why he's part of both the Marvel and Star Wars franchise) but just as frequently there's someone whose uncomfortable in his own skin. Mulligan has a long history of playing characters who seem frail but are far stronger then they look beneath the surface: something that was clear with her breakout role in An Education and was made most clear in arguably her best role to date on film Cassandra in Promising Young Woman. Both of these elements play out perfectly in the early segments: in public they can be one thing and in private something far darker.

Spaeny and Melton have both been working in Hollywood for nearly a decade; Spaeny has worked in serious projects both on film and TV; in the latter she had roles in Mare of Easttown before breaking big in 2024 where she worked with Sofia Coppola, Alex Garland and starred in Alien: Romulus. She has a common thread of playing seemingly frail character. Melton played Reggie on Riverdale  but has occasionally done deeper roles, most controversially playing the teenage lover of Julianne Moore in the controversial Todd Haynes film May December. Melton's role in his most famous works serves him well as Austin: he's playing both the idea of teenage heartthrob who's aged out of his prominence but still believes in the ideals of love. Spaeny's seeming frailty with a misplaced sense of toughness also works well for her as Ashley. All four are contenders for Emmys in both lead and supporting acting awards right off the bat.

Another critical way that Sung Jin subverts things is how it goes out of its way to have both the female characters using bullying tactics to get things done in their own way. Ashley sees no problem in blackmailing Josh from going from the beverage cart to a higher up manager spot even though she didn't even graduate high school and has no ability to do anything that broad. She doesn't think once about getting anything for Austin for the first time, does everything wrong from the start, demands Austin essentially steal clothes for her (which he refuses to do) and only needs to receive token praise to do whatever Josh asks.  Josh himself refers to her an entitle, unqualified Gen Z who pays no attention to detail and has no problem manipulating her (more on that). She then decides to try and cozy up to the new owner of the club by saying her boyfriend is half Korean and that he's a physical therapist, which he absolutely isn't. As far as she's concerned if anything goes wrong she'll just blackmail Josh. Ashley really thinks the world should work without her trying.

Lindsay is no peach herself, though we're more sympathetic to her given how much she feels like an outsider at the club. She wants to perform surgery to look better for someone she's still flirting with online and essentially tries to first nudge a local tennis pro and when he won't give her a discount (which he can't afford) she blackmails him by saying he's sexually harassing the women at the club. "And you're making me feel uncomfortable to," she says casually. The tennis pro then immediately gives in because he knows how this work.

Both Josh and Austin are at least initially more sympathetic. Josh has been essentially embezzling money from his family to pay off various debts the two of them have but its also clear how financially precarious their position. There's also the very real way the male entrepreneurs not only bully Josh into doing what they want and openly talking about wealth as if it's nothing to them. Josh is trying to sell off some of the things they have to pay debts and he's finally realizing that trying to do things the honest way just isn't working. So he decides to engage in a series of scams that he intends to blame on Ashley, who clearly has no idea what she's doing or that she'd have to work this hard. Lindsey is so impressed by this that she openly kisses Josh and it looks like they might have emotionally connected for the first time.

After two episodes Austin is still the character who seems the most human. He was clearly a former athlete of some note once and now his career has failed. He's been trying to make it doing virtual workouts for rich people and that's going nowhere for him. He's clearly more in love with Ashley then she is with him and is willing to do anything for her. He still seems to have some kind of code of ethics that is driving him that to this point none of the other lead characters have.

Its worth noting there is still a Korean influence. The club that everyone works at has been bought by Chairwoman Park, someone who controls 2 percent of Korea's GDP. It's still not clear why she's bought this particular club but we also see in a sense her marriage is as much a joke as anything else. She married a man twenty years younger then her and she's basically left him in Korea. When he calls her in despair because he's killed a patient she can't really be bothered thinking he bought another gold Rolls-Royce. How this will play out later on I'm not sure yet but I suspect it will be yet another argument how the truly wealthy always evade the penalties of the law, no matter what country they live in.

Understandably the second season of Beef has not been as positively reviewed as the first by viewers even though critics have generally responded to it enthusiastically. I find it just as darkly entertaining, frequently hysterical and even more bleak then the first season was.  But because it looks at the white  working class of America as well as the more overt versions of the generational, gender and often political stereotypes – and just as frequently finds them things people use to get ahead or don't comprehend -  it very likely makes those same viewers more uncomfortable then they did during Season 1 when it was dealing with darker themes. The characters in Season 2 are just as desperate and angry as the ones in Season 1 and just as at mercy of the forces of wealth. But it was easier to applaud when it was with Korean and Asian American actors fighting each other instead of having Poe Dameron  jerking off to online porn and Reggie Mantle looking like he's gone to pot.

But for me it confirms why I truly loved Beef the first time around: even though I wasn't Korean, I recognized the emotional realities of the two leads as being universal. Here Sung Jin has changed the format from ten half hour long episodes to eight much longer ones, is dealing with images from European art rather than Asian and is more addressing the economic realities of the world then he did in Season 2. But that same rage that drives the leads is present here, always beneath the surface, always done against the wrong targets, always stopping those involves from recognizing that they have more in common with their opponents then they really thin. It might not be as comfortable as the last time but that's always the point.

My score: 4.5 stars.