beef, A24’s new ten-episode Netflix drama has a lot going for it. The premise is compelling, featuring two charismatic leads, Steven Yeun (to the pain, Living Dead) as financially strapped contractor Danny Cho and Ali Wong (Always be mine maybe) as wealthy type-A entrepreneur Amy Lau, drawn into an escalating feud after she is involved in a traffic accident in Los Angeles.
It seems only right that this incident doesn’t even amount to a fender bender — there’s no collision, albeit a minor one, between Danny’s overloaded old red pickup truck and Amy’s shiny white SUV. Distracted by his own misfortune, Danny tries to back out of a parking spot and is honked with screaming aggression by Amy, still invisible behind the tinted windows. She flips him off, he tries to chase her down the typically shocking Los Angeles traffic, and that’s the start of the whole crazy scam. It’s a good way to illustrate the way people live now, in such a seething cauldron of pressure and neglect that we’re all ready to pop at the slightest displeasure.
Class initially appears as a focus of antagonism. Of course, I was Team Danny all the way, because after all, who has a lot of money to soften every rough edge of this horrible world made only of rough edges? Not Danny.
He is actually alone striving contractor, more like a broke handyman with big, anxious dreams who struggles to make ends meet and get any professional help, doing renovations for affluent L.A. types who openly despise him. (Overheard by one customer’s wife: “Just fire him, honey! He’s so annoying!”) He lives in a crappy apartment with his lazy younger brother Paul (Mazzino Young) and has vowed to raise enough money somehow, for bringing his aging parents from South Korea. His life is a nightmare of financial worries and desperate attempts to prioritize happiness and success, which fools no one.
Show creator-writer-director-producer Lee Sung Jin (Tuka and Bertie, Dave, Silicon Valley) has stated in interviews that he originally planned to have Korean immigrant Dan clash with a wealthy white American, but decided not to emphasize the racial animosity. Both main characters are Asian Americans, though the series delves into the specifics of their very different backgrounds within that broad category. Amy is Chinese-American and is so driven and tormented by expectations of perfection that she is in a state of pent-up rage most of the time. This is the main thing she and Danny have in common that will create a twisted relationship between them. Both are “so tired of smiling” at their woes that they find forbidden joy in acting on directly expressed hatred.
Amy runs a curated plant empire, including one of those hideous stores that look like museum exhibits, where every ridiculously expensive, precious potted plant is presented as a separate work of art. She’s about to close a multi-million dollar deal, selling the entire business to an extremely wealthy monster named Jordan Forster (Maria Bello). Jumping through hoops trying to convince Jordan to close the deal, she feels perpetually guilty about not spending enough time with her beloved daughter June (Remy Holt) and “nice” but clueless husband Joji “George” Nakai (Joseph Lee). , a hopelessly untalented artist always spewing New Age aphorisms. She is also burdened with a harshly judgmental mother-in-law, Fumi (Patti Yasutake). In short, Amy cracks under the strain. But all her anguish stems from personal relationship and financial career developments very different from Dan’s underlying material difficulties underlying the family turmoil.
Regardless, as the episodes progress, the series focuses more and more on what Danny and Amy have in common, even as their frantic acts of revenge spiral out of control and involve their families and partners in some terribly bad consequences. Lee Sung Jin seems inclined toward broad humanistic conclusions, saying in interviews that the show is ultimately about “how hard it is to be alive.”
And after all—class issues aside—aren’t Danny and Amy just flawed human beings trapped in a dysfunctional society that pits them against each other? Sure. Of course, of course, of course. Sure. But sometimes I get pretty tired of the almost inevitable “class issues aside” move in popular entertainment. The series does its best to make that clear both both of them have done very bad things in the past, both of them cheat and betray their families, both of them lead creepy, secret emotional lives, and both of them gravitate impatiently—even erotically—to vengeful violence. This insistent equivalence reminds me of the old “cross-class fantasies” created in the Great Depression era to help quell the perfectly justified anger of an increasingly impoverished working class against the wealthy elite.
Amazing comedies like It happened one night (1934), My man Godfrey (1936), Easy life (1937) and Bachelor Mom (1939) were wonderfully sketchy in pairing a rich man with a struggling working-class man, showing how each has a quirky charm as well as things to teach each other. Aren’t both of them – a rich man and a poor man – eccentric and comically flawed, yet so endearing? Don’t they go perfectly together to create a more perfect union? No reason to hate one side more than the other, no call for torch-wielding mobs!
However beef it has none of the funny, upbeat, utopian qualities of the offbeat comedy, it shares a certain cross-class fantasy logic, just in darkly dramatic form. It’s a nasty show, really. But on the other hand, we live in a deeply unpleasant culture, and it’s natural to point it out.
It’s also a well-made production with a train-wreck charm that makes it hard to stop watching once you start. I wish the series had lasted eight episodes instead of ten – some of the narrative beats start to become predictable as the feud escalates. But still, the show’s erratic momentum holds up well enough to propel you toward the much-discussed grand finale of the disaster, followed by faltering steps toward rapprochement and possible redemption.
A powder keg of growing estrangement that finally erupts in a chance encounter with a stranger – truly a story for our time.