'Beef' season 2 review: Netflix dark comedy fights a losing cattle
- S.J.
- Apr 16
- 4 min read
The temptation of giving this two and a half stars, which is an average rating, not a bad one. We're all out of waspf, but we do have more Beef if you're interested. In season two of this oops-it's-now-an-anthology series, generational differences clash against each other. Fresh-faced Gen Z sweethearts Ashley (Cailee Spaeny) and Austin (Charles Melton) work at a Californian country club. A recent engagement and financial struggles are on their minds. They smell an opportunity when they see and film a fierce fight between their manager Joshua (Oscar Isaac) and his English wife Lindsay (Carey Mulligan), an affluent, millennial couple who don't want the footage to ruin their social standing.
Naturally, this situation spins out of control very fast, unearthing all sorts of nasty business at the club and elsewhere. More and more people get mixed up in the drama, including chairwoman Park (Youn Yuh-jung), the club's new billionaire owner from South Korea; her assistant/interpreter Eunice (Seoyeon Jang); tennis coach Woosh (Matthew Kim); and Dr. Kim (Song Kang-ho), a plastic surgeon based in Seoul.
Can they knock it out of the park again? That was indeed the big question after the show was seemingly meant to be a tight, satisfying miniseries, which happened to catch fire because its energy and fury were so infectious. The good news is that showrunner-creator-director Lee Sung Jin along with his collaborators did find more gold to mine. In terms of tone and storytelling mechanics, nothing has really changed. Beef is still very much a dark comedy that isn't afraid to embrace cringe and wackiness whilst often turning its characters into the worst versions of themselves.
Lee and the writers' room (Alex Russell, Anna Ouyang Moench, Carrie Kemper, Ethan Kuperberg, Gene Hong, Madeleine Pron, Niko Gutierrez-Kovner) produce both fantastic text for the actors—the dialogue can be funny, truthful or biting depending on the situation, if not all three at the same time—and juicy subtext. Therefore you can enjoy the end result purely as an entertaining romp that moves efficiently thanks to solid humour and great pacing. You can also have fun with the friction between these couples, so-called friends and colleagues, which draws attention to economic inequality, privilege, greed, capitalism and the evolving gender dynamics from one generation to the next, although this is mostly during the first half of the season.
Challenging the writing for the championship belt is the wonderful acting. The four leads (Isaac, Melton, Mulligan and Spaeny) are pretty damn stellar and all of them are clearly having a grand ol' time with the tonal shifts and escalating scenarios. Melton and Spaeny squeeze out a lot of desperation, jealousy and recklessness from Ashley and Austin's give-and-take. Isaac and Mulligan sell Joshua and Lindsay's slow decay with extreme deftness, while making every fight, petty remark and desperate attempt to bring back a sliver of their former glory feel painfully real. Youn is also a terrific supporting force as Park's importance in the narrative grows. Song is the only one who is underserved by the material, hence the actor seems quite out of place in this show's world, which is a shame.
Related to that, Dr. Kim's arc and practices also lead to everything that happens in the last two episodes of this eight-episode run. (FYI, the spoiler guide states that I'm not actually allowed to mention episode titles because otherwise Lee himself will shoot me in the head and feed my body to the coyotes. Allegedly.) This grand finale marks a significant drop in quality, whether that is exemplified by one of the worst action scenes of the year that should be on the cutting room floor, or utterly confusing choices these characters make. Before this, the show's biggest flaw was badly written text messages so the decline is noticeable. In the end, the season feels rather messy, even incoherent thematically and I didn't care about anyone's fate as much as I wanted to. The writers are pretty exceptional when it comes to conversations, comedy and conflicts, but they're seemingly unable to go in for the kill seeing how both seasons end on a down note.
Speaking of notes, the series does find one noteworthy upgrade in the musical realm. Composer-actor Finneas O'Connell's—he plays himself in the show—synth-based score is excellent, oftentimes being the middle ground between the two main couples, meshing with a needle drop or standing in for the disharmony in a marriage (especially since Joshua loves his synths). This is also a step-up for O'Connell who has simply been a serviceable composer whose name probably brought more eyeballs to a project and boosted its soundtrack on streaming services, but here his work elevates the dramatic tension constantly. In addition to a different kind of score, there are new visual quirks like a fun steam room bit, ant on a phone screen and separative colour hues that are nice, small touches (Jake Schreier and Kitao Sakurai also direct).
On the whole, season two proves that Beef still has more meat on the bone. Come for the first-rate performances and writing; stay for the entertaining razzmatazz. Afterwards, find allies for a fight against the one percent because those folks are always up to no good.
Smileys: Acting, writing, dialogue, score
Frowneys: Ending
In the next season, a boyfriend character will face his strongest enemy yet: a vegetarian who ain't scared of him.
4.5/5
Where to watch:
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