Beef: Season 2 - Series' Second Act Offers Entwined Couples, Great Writing and A-list Cast
By Karen Gordon
Rating: A
The entire time I was watching the second season of creator/writer/director Lee Sung Jin’s excellent series Beef, Thoreau’s quote “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation” was playing in my head.
This is the second go-round of his anthology series built around grievances between various characters that play out with increasing intensity.
The nut of what makes the series work is Lee’s strong understanding of fundamental human psychology; how people continually react to situations seemingly without much awareness of their own self-defeating behavioural patterns.
Carey Mulligan and Oscar Isaac are in a strained marriage in Beef Season 2.
Lee’s observant eye is not void of compassion. He sets his characters up to clash, and manoeuver, and make choices that don't bring out the best in them. But he doesn’t reduce them to cardboard stereotypes. They’re navigating life and situations that aren’t that different from the ones that a lot of adults have to make.
Beef Season 2, is set in at a country club/spa in Montecito, California and centers on three couples, each with their own power dynamic and pressures.
Oscar Isaac and Carey Mulligan are longtime married couple Joshua Martin and Lindsay Crane-Martin. He’s the general manager of the club, and she’s an interior decorator who does work there. Very quickly into episode one, we see the relationship is strained. A verbal argument intensifies one evening, to the point of near physical violence.
Then they hear noises outside that make them stop. Ashley Miller and Austin Davis, played by Cailee Spaeny (Priscilla) and Charles Melton (May December), lower level staffers at the club, are returning a wallet. Hearing sounds of the altercation, Ashley pulls out her phone and captures on video that ugly moment of physical threat. She and Austin take off.
Uh, oh. Now she has video evidence that could really hurt Joshua at a very crucial moment in his career. Not good and the timing couldn’t be worse.
The country club hasn’t been doing well, and the new owner is coming to take a look at the facility and evaluate Joshua’s leadership and the staff in general.
The imperious owner is a Korean billionaire Chairwoman Park (Youn Yuh Jung, who won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her role in Minari), who communicates through a young assistant. Chairwoman Park is a serious power player, who dominates her marriage to young plastic surgeon Dr. Kim (Parasite’s Song Kang-ho.)
Even young, ambitious Ashley has pressures, a recently diagnosed medical condition affecting her fertility. Newly engaged she’s been romantically talking about having a family. Problem is she needs the kind of job that will get her insurance. Joshua has treated her poorly in the past, so, potentially damaging video in hand, the stage is set.
There are other recurring characters throughout the arc of the series that throw in curves, or become distractions or provide bad or faulty advice. On top of this, there are secrets characters are trying to keep - not always as secret as they think - and bad choices.
Lee’s script is strong, and he’s given us an A list cast, superb movie actors, who take it up more than a few notches. They’re not only watchable, they create a sense of what the characters are thinking—or not thinking—in some of the quieter moments.
Beef Season Two is addictive as hell, and terrific TV.
Beef Season Two. Created and written by Lee Sung Jin. Directed by Lee Sung Jin. Jake Shreier, Kitao Sakurai. Starring Oscar Isaac, Carey Mulligan, Cailee Spaeny, Charles Melton, Yung Yuh-jung, and Song Kang-Ho. Streaming on Netflix April 16.