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Beef<\/a><\/p>\n A New Starting Point for Further Desires<\/p>\n \n Season 2<\/p>\n Episode 2\n <\/p>\n \n Editor\u2019s Rating<\/p>\n 4 stars<\/p>\n ****\n <\/p>\n \n As Ashley tries to scheme Austin into a job at the club, Josh and Lindsay are desperate for an escape plan. In childhood, we\u2019re taught that two wrongs don\u2019t make a right. That\u2019s a good lesson for the playground, but when you\u2019re fighting for your life in the big, bad world (or the Monte Vista Point club) while the billionaire class (or the members of said club) exploits loopholes and scams and robs the rest of us, the lesson loses purchase. Why shouldn\u2019t we exploit, scam, and rob, too? Ashley realized this the moment Austin brought up the injustices of \u201clate-stage capitalism.\u201d Throughout this second episode, Josh will realize it, too. Lindsay and Austin extrapolate the notion even further: It\u2019s not just the economic system you can manipulate. It\u2019s possible to manipulate people, too.<\/p>\n Facing each other in Lindsay and Josh\u2019s living room, the two couples mirror each other. Ashley and Lindsay are bad cops; Josh and Austin are good cops. Austin and Ashley are armed with the video of Lindsay and Josh\u2019s fight, and they want a \u201cbetter opportunity\u201d for Ashley at the club. When Josh brings up that Ashley doesn\u2019t have a high-school diploma, Austin puts it this way: Given \u201call the changes at the club, the new owner and what have you, it would be beneficial for everyone for the status quo to be maintained vis-\u00e0-vis what has transpired.\u201d It doesn\u2019t work. Josh and Lindsay tell them to take it up with the human resources department, see who they believe; besides, they were trespassing. Going for a more efficient tactic, Ashley simply plays them the video. They are faced with the truth: The fight really was that bad.\u00a0<\/p>\n Ashley\u2019s financial situation was so precarious that the notion of a $45,000 salary, ten days paid vacation, and health insurance gives her confidence that they are \u201cset for life.\u201d But Austin isn\u2019t as excited or relieved. In fact, he\u2019s feeling left out, dismissed: They never even thought about what he could get out of the deal. Defensively, Ashley reminds him that the reason they are in this situation is that she has a potentially fatal cyst that needs to be corrected with surgery. \u201cLet\u2019s never fight like this again,\u201d she concludes, once he has relented. Their idea of a fight is worlds away from Josh and Lindsay\u2019s, but in a way, it\u2019s even worse: All of their resentments are bottled up. Throughout this episode, Austin\u2019s bitterness festers. He\u2019s sick of being Ashley\u2019s puppy dog. He is the winner of the 2015 Butkus Award for most outstanding linebacker in college football, for Christ\u2019s sake!<\/p>\n Later, Austin lets off some steam by doing shoulder presses. He gets riled up when Ashley interrupts his \u201cresearch\u201d (watching a video of a guy explaining how to properly do glute bridges while eating chips) with requests: Can he find her an in-network doctor, make an appointment, and get her some returnable work clothes from H&M? When he says he\u2019s busy, she reminds him that their \u201cwhole future is riding on this job.\u201d She needs to do well, which won\u2019t be easy, given her position. In order to promote her, Josh had to fire Deb, who worked at the club for 16 years. The members are complaining that the new beverage cart guy \u201csucks,\u201d as he is not a beautiful 26-year-old woman. All Josh wants is for Ashley to delete the video. When she comes into his office with some old, irrelevant invoices she took over from Deb\u2019s \u201cworkload,\u201d Josh tells her she doesn\u2019t need to try to impress him, she only needs to delete the video\u00a0from her roll, then from her recently deleted folder. She will consider deleting it from the Cloud if he takes the time to walk her through her new job and put a name plaque in her office. What Ashley is doing is lording the video over Josh, just like Lindsay said she would.<\/p>\n After Ashley and Austin left their house the previous day, Lindsay and Josh read over his contract, which specifies that \u201cany behavior that may harm the company may be grounds for termination,\u201d even outside of working hours. Lindsay \u2014 who has many years\u2019 experience being petty and getting people fired \u2014 warns that Austin and Ashley will lord the video over them, but Josh thinks the best thing to do is to give Ashley what she wants and be done with it. Lindsay wonders if they shouldn\u2019t treat this as an opportunity to start over. Maybe Josh can quit the club, and they can focus on the bed and breakfast. Maybe this is all a blessing in disguise. But Josh isn\u2019t willing to consider quitting. Why not? What keeps him tethered to this job?<\/p>\n The members love him, but they constantly remind him of his inferior position,\u00a0which he is at risk of losing. Troy has heard that Chairwoman Park is interviewing candidates for his role. He tells Josh as much over a card game with Benny Blanco, Baron Davis, and Michael Phelps (all playing themselves) in a great sequence. Josh pours them drinks from a special vintage bottle. He declines joining their game, but Michael Phelps literally makes him; then, when he loses, tells him back-to-back Venmos will do for the amount he lost, which exceeds the $5,000 limit. It\u2019s not exactly like Josh is swimming in it. Not only does he have to sell his sports memorabilia and music equipment to pay Michael Phelps back (a deliciously absurd sentence), but his sister, Sara, is onto him. Going through their late mother\u2019s accounts, Sara notices that the joint account Josh shared with her is overdrawn. Over the phone, she tells her brother that he doesn\u2019t have to send her money he doesn\u2019t have in order to make up for the fact that he was working the night their mother passed away. As Josh gets increasingly aggravated, the sound of the leafblower just outside his office adds to the impression he is about to snap.<\/p>\n Maybe part of the reason why Lindsay wants her husband to quit the Monte Vista so badly is that its members see her as an employee, too. From her former relationship with the Duke to her family\u2019s cottage in Cornwall, it\u2019s been hinted that Lindsay comes from a wealthy, maybe even aristocratic British background, yet she is treated like a concierge by Ava and her friends. It\u2019s terribly demeaning, and over iced tea, her anger spurs her to action. Lindsay tells Ava and company that Ashley was hired to be their personal concierge; they can ask her for anything, no matter how small. On cue, Ashley, who is trying to make heads and tails of the information she is getting from Deb\u2019s suspicious former coworker about an upcoming Carnival event, gets flooded with texts asking for sunscreen to be delivered and AirPods to be retrieved. When Ava and her friends talk about the new tennis pro, Woosh, Lindsay finds out that he\u2019s been texting all of them. His endgame is to sell rich ladies Korean skincare. One of the members suggests Lindsay ask him about the travel package; for \u201conly\u201d $40,000, she could fly to Seoul to get cosmetic treatment. The implication is that she needs it.<\/p>\n Little do these women know that there is a Duke dying to see her. At home, while playing with her little dog Burberry, Lindsay unblocks Desmond and sends him a touched-up selfie. Now considering seeing him, she decides to meet up with Woosh. He gives her sunscreen, has her put it on his back, and offers her the travel package. Lindsay tries to bargain with him, to no avail. But, as she says to Woosh, she really needs this for her confidence and status. So, having failed to emotionally move Woosh, she goes for the next best thing: Does Chairwoman Park, who has been helping out Woosh since he was a kid, know that he has been sexually harassing the women in the club?<\/p>\n Austin, meanwhile, is starting to realize the power of emotional manipulation. Despite his and Ashley\u2019s delusion that what they did wasn\u2019t blackmail, something about going through with the plan flipped a switch in his brain. Ashley gets home from work just as Austin is working on some \u201chow-to\u201d videos, repeating what he learned earlier about glute bridges. Though he clearly feels dismissed by Ashley, he insists that the distance she is sensing is just projection. In a subtle move of petty revenge, Austin went to Goodwill instead of H&M for Ashley\u2019s work clothes (his explanation is that \u201cIt didn\u2019t feel right\u201d to use and return). This is the first phase of his new gaslighting approach. The second comes later, after Ashley,\u00a0feeling the toll of the emotional manipulation,\u00a0clues him into her new scheme, which occurred to her earlier that day.<\/p>\n Doing a round at the club\u2019s gym with Chairwoman Park, Ashley tells Park that her fianc\u00e9 is a personal trainer. Park characteristically ignores her connection attempt, but Ashley cleverly earns her warmth and attention by saying that Austin is half-Korean. Still, Park\u2019s husband, for whom the gym is being redone, doesn\u2019t need a trainer; he needs a physical therapist. Thinking on her feet, Ashley says Austin is also a physical therapist. By this point, the Chairwoman is charmed enough to let Ashley in on her secret, which is that she can speak English. The three women \u2014 Ashley, Park, and her interpreter, Eunice (Seoyeon Jang) \u2014 decide Park will have a trial session with Austin, which will serve as an audition of sorts for a full-time position as the club\u2019s physical therapist. Talking about the plan at home, Austin worries that it will take years for him to get a license. Ashley suggests they use a fake one for now. She wants them to \u201cmove up together\u201d and close the distance that has been widening between them, which Austin, getting good at gaslighting, insists is just in her head.<\/p>\n When the time comes for Austin to meet with Park for the first time, he nearly walks away. But Ashley reminds him that they have leverage over the one person who needed to approve his license, which he did anyway, without even looking at it. When Ashley handed the fake certificate to Josh, his mind was on his own scheming. As he was changing the security questions for his joint account with his mother, it occurred to him that for outgoing payments of under $5,000, only the general manager\u2019s signature is required. That means that only he \u2014 and Ashley, who mails the invoices, though Josh is not worried about \u201can underqualified, entitled little Gen Z with no attention to detail\u201d \u2014 would know if a check for $4,999 addressed to his own mother went out. He gets so confident about the scheme that he even tells Ashley, as she leaves his office, that she is ready to take on some more of Deb\u2019s workload \u2014 the more she does, the more opportunity for fake invoices to be mailed.<\/p>\n As Josh tells Lindsay later, \u201cEveryone is scamming.\u201d It\u2019s time Josh and Lindsay took back from the entitled jerks at the club, too. Lindsay has already started on her parallel journey: With Woosh interpreting, she has a FaceTime consultation with Dr. Kim (the also-great Song Kang-ho), the Korean plastic surgeon, who, as it turns out, is the chairwoman\u2019s husband. He suggests a slew of procedures, but Lindsay decides to start with laser only, which is a relief to Woosh, who is being made to pay for the whole thing. Even then, when Josh tells her about his own scheme to \u201cskim thousands of dollars from the club,\u201d Lindsay is so excited, so moved, feeling so seen, that she passionately kisses him. Josh tells her everything she wants to hear: They can\u2019t \u201cjust disappear,\u201d they have to get back on track. Why should he work himself to the bone while Troy and Benny Blanco and Michael Phelps get richer through \u201cbuy-borrow-die\u201d?<\/p>\n The theme of this episode is that with status comes power, and with power comes impunity \u2014\u00a0or at least, the illusion of it. It\u2019s an infuriating truth obvious to anyone who has wondered why the world is so messed up. But by the end of \u201cA New Starting Point for Further Desires,\u201d it\u2019s clear that the stakes will only get higher. Getting away with embezzling money from a country club is one thing; getting away with murder is another. Austin is waiting for Park to begin their first P.T. session as the Chairwoman talks to her husband on the phone. She tells Eunice to take over the session instead. Dr. Kim is in crisis: He has just killed a patient on the surgery table.<\/p>\n \u2022 Even though we saw Josh delete his subscription-based porn account in the last episode, he must have reactivated it to resume his routine of jerking off and going for a run while listening to a podcast about how porn is bad for you. Just as he\u2019s taking off on the trail, he trips and comes face-to-face with a coyote. That\u2019s all after he found an old, sweet card, collaged with younger pictures of him and Lindsay.<\/p>\n \u2022 Will Dr. Kim\u2019s, uh, situation delay his arrival at the club? The chairwoman seems to be treating the club as a private oasis for her husband, adjusting the gym, the rooms, the d\u00e9cor \u2026 She tells Ashley that she chose a husband 20 years younger than her so she would die first, but her husband has more health issues than she does. Maybe she\u2019s thinking of the club as their own personal rehabilitation center? Something about the cut on the dead patient\u2019s face, and the way he was looking at her, has me suspecting that maybe he,\u00a0like Austin, is not licensed to practice the profession. But maybe I\u2019m paranoid from watching too much of The Pitt<\/a>?<\/p>\n Sign Up for the Vulture Newsletter<\/p>\n Entertainment news, for the pop-culture obsessed.<\/p>\n Vox Media, LLC Terms and Privacy Notice<\/p>\n
\n Photo: Netflix\n <\/p>\n