Beef Season 2 review
Cast: Oscar Isaac, Carey Mulligan, Cailee Spaeny, Charles Melton, Youn Yuh-jung, Song Kang-ho
Ceator: Lee Sung Jin
Star rating: ★★★★
Beef (then a limited series) appeared out of thin air on Netflix a few years ago and emerged as one of the most fascinating shows in quite some time. There was a wild unpredictability in its grasp of human behaviour that led the world to talk about it. Writer Lee Sung Jin is back with a new season featuring an entirely new cast. Divided into eight episodes, Season 2 of Beef is far more ambitious and populated, far hungrier to indulge. There’s no harm in that, since it delivers big time, even though it does not quite match the complicated brilliance of its predecessor. Still, there is a lot of meat to chew on in its sharply observed study of human behaviour that can turn from good to ugly in a minute. It is still one of the best shows you will watch on Netflix all year.
The premise
Season 2 is sewn together like a ball of desire and scandal overlapping one another, which takes time to build. We meet the two couples who will form the mainstay of the central beef. They are the Monte Vista Point Country Club employees, the newly engaged Ashley Miller (Cailee Spaeny) and Austin Davis (Charles Melton), and the older and unhappily married Joshua Martín (Oscar Isaac) and Lindsay Crane-Martín (Carey Mulligan). Joshua and Lindsay are desperately holding things together, on the verge of tearing each other apart, when they discover they are being watched by Ashley and Austin, who work for them.
They are young and unmarried. Ashley even tells Austin that she would never consider a prenup when they settle down together. She has a severe health scare that threatens to upend their future, and so Ashley sees the recording of Josh and Lindsay’s fight as a means to make their lives easier. It is an ugly path of blackmailing, but what other means does she have to make a way into a better life for themselves? This is just the tip of the iceberg for the country club, as a separate disaster awaits in the life of Chairwoman Park (a scene-stealing performance from Oscar-winner Youn Yuh-jung), the Korean mogul from the Silent Generation. She will try to hide a crime, but her alliances will slip, and the consequence of that will form the crux of the narrative.
What works
Season 2 takes time to build these connections and is essentially a comedy of errors. Love turns bitter and rots under the spell of capitalism. Each generation starts off thinking that they’ll never become what they see in the older generation, and Lee Sung Jin carefully constructs this overlap while maintaining the acidic sense of humour. Slowly yet surely, Beef builds a pressure-cooker-like intensity as the stakes rise for both couples. I don’t think the masterful Season 1 finale can be replicated, but this time around, Lee Sung Jin takes a different direction altogether, settling on a stylised finale set in Korea. It is a well-earned showdown that aligns with the story’s equilibrium, but I could not help but wonder whether I was entirely convinced. I was not.
Season 2 is very good, but somehow predictable in its road to escalation. Lee Sung Jin deserves all the praise for not holding back in this pitch-perfect character study of codependency in a relationship, the pressures of capitalism, and the role status symbols play. But the sprawling web of characters does not gel into a cohesive unit and lacks focus after a point. Season 2 is too crowded and less intimate, too shifty and less vibrant. It is the cast that takes the lead and saves the day.
Final thoughts
Carey Mulligan and Oscar Issac are terrific together, playing off each other in some of the best scenes of the show. The standout scene has the two of them beefing over the loss of their pet dog, which escalates into a full-blown release of all the built-up frustration over the years. Charles Melton is perfectly cast as the bumbling manchild who seeks ChatGPT‘s help to become a fitness trainer. But it is Cailee Spaeny who truly shines in her subtle performance as the young woman determined to make her dreams come true. In the midst of all the chaos, her performance anchors the heart of what can still be good. I might watch Season 2 again, and this time, all from her perspective. Season 2 deserves a chance, just for Ashley.
