Beef: New Netflix Series Unearths Dark Comedy from People Acting Very Badly
By Karen Gordon
Rating: A
If the acclaimed streaming series Bear, set behind the scenes in a restaurant kitchen, is metaphorically about workplace anxiety, then Beef is metaphorically about anxiety of living in the modern world. And if dark comedy mixed with drama and a touch of the surreal is your jam, then get set. The 10-part Netflix series is your next great binge.
Both shows are brilliantly conceived, written, and cast. Intense dramedies built around richly drawn, flawed, damaged, fascinating lead characters who are trying to stuff down the intense pressure that can come from just trying to navigate life.
Beef was created by Lee Sung Jin (Silicon Valley, Dave, Undone) and is set in and around Los Angeles. It stars Steven Yeun (The Walking Dead, Minari, Burning) and Ali Wong (Baby Cobra, Bertie, both also executive producers) as two strangers whose relationship, such that it is, begins with a road rage incident.
Yeun plays Danny Cho. When we meet him, he is at a big box store, trying to return a cartful of goods. The store has a no-questions-asked return policy, except that the cashier recognizes and challenges him. Danny leaves without returning what’s in his cart.
Back in his truck, Danny is defeated and stressed. He puts his car in reverse and is snapped out of whatever mood he’s in by the sound of a car horn. In his distracted mood, he almost backed into someone in a white car. The driver of that car sits on the horn to the point of obnoxiousness before driving away.
Danny can’t let it go. He chases the car down for blocks and blocks, doing damage to his own truck along the way. Ultimately the other car gets away, but not before he memorizes the license plate number.
The driver of the white car is Amy Lau (Wong), a successful businesswoman who lives in a beautiful refined modernist house in an upper-class neighbourhood. She’s married to George (Joseph Lee), who is an unsuccessful ceramic artist, the son of a now-deceased famous artist.
George does the majority of the child care for their young daughter, Junie (Remi Holt). As well, George’s mother Fumi (Patti Yusutaki) is a constant presence. She disapproves of Amy and handles the stress by putting on a smile.
Everyone speaks in quiet tones, or therapy speak (at one point George suggests they solve a problem by starting up their gratitude journals again) but underneath it all, Amy is juggling a number of problems, marital boredom and business worries among them.
She’s on the verge of a business deal that could end the endless stress and set her and her family up for life. She’s being courted by Jordan Forster (Maria Bello), a rich businesswoman and art collector who wants to buy Amy’s business. But the courtship has been prolonged, and Forster is a smooth, manipulative bully.
Danny, on the other hand, is trying to get his contracting company off the ground. He lives with his younger brother Paul (Young Mazino) in a cramped apartment. While Danny is on the hustle, directionless Paul spends time gaming and dabbling in crypto with the little money he has.
Danny is on a mission. His parents used to own a motel, but lost it and are now living with his uncle in Korea. Danny is determined to build them a house, bring them back to Los Angeles so he can support them in their retirement. They want him to go to the Korean church, find a nice girl and get married. And he dutifully takes that seriously.
The reasons for the family losing their motel have to do with some funny business that he was involved in along with his cousin Isaac (David Choe). Isaac has just gotten out of jail and the two cousins reunite and start to talk about business plans. Isaac has criminal tendencies. Then again, so does Danny. Whether it’s his nature or desperation is up for debate, but we can see that he’s capable of exaggerating, lying, and looking the other way. But he’s also charming.
Despite all that he’s dealing with, Danny can’t shake the road rage incident. He still doesn’t know the identity of the driver but manages to track the car down to an address, charms his way into the house, and spends time with Amy before leaving a particular calling card. Once Amy figures out who he is, the feud is on.
Neither Amy nor Danny is very nice. Though both outwardly charming, once the game is on they are intent on screwing the other person up. They become so obsessed that they don’t care about collateral damage, and as the series progresses, the consequences of their beef spread to affect the people closest to them.
On one level, the revenge cycle is a bit like Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner. Neither is going to give up, and from a distance it’s ridiculous. But as the series unfolds and we see more of what each of them is navigating, things become deeper and darker, walking the line between comedy and tragedy.
Lee Sung Jin keeps all of this on an even keel. The show never feels emotionally heavy or overbearing. He keeps a vein of dark humour running through all 10 episodes. And perhaps even more remarkably given that the series turns on two people behaving nastily, we feel more empathy for these characters.
Part of the reason for that is the emotional complexity of the lead characters, and the talent and sheer charisma of the cast. There’s an existential crisis buried deep in both Danny and Amy. But instead of introspection, they turn to rage, which becomes kind of an addiction, further levelling the playing field between them.
The drive to succeed is part of the game in the modern world. Danny and Amy may be living different lives, but the high bar of outward achievement is chasing both of them. The brilliance of Beef is how it takes its lead characters to such entertaining extremes, and yet in the end, doesn’t abandon their humanity.
Beef. Created by Lee Sung Jin. Starring Steven Yeun and Ali Wong. Debuts on Netflix April 6.