\n\tIn transitioning from a standalone story to a multi-season anthology, all shows in the genre Ryan Murphy took mainstream with \u201cAmerican Horror Story\u201d face the same existential question. If a series isn\u2019t defined by a stable set of characters or locations, what does define it? For HBO\u2019s \u201cThe White Lotus,\u201d the answer is wealthy people trying and failing to outrun their problems at various outposts of a luxury hotel chain. For FX\u2019s \u201cFargo,\u201d it\u2019s the battle between moral turpitude and folksy common decency across the American Midwest.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tFor Netflix\u2019s \u201cBeef<\/a>,\u201d the 2023 hit and Emmys darling that starred Ali Wong and Steven Yeun as enraged enemies, its core essence appears to be right there in the name. Wherever creator Lee Sung Jin took the concept next, a bitter rivalry would presumably be its driving force, just as Wong and Yeun\u2019s searing anti-platonic chemistry powered Season 1<\/a> through some tonal bumps and big swings. And unlike \u201cFeud,\u201d the Murphy show with a confusingly similar name and concept<\/a>, \u201cBeef\u201d could do so without the constricting tethers of a real-life inspiration.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tThree years later, Season 2 seems to reintroduce itself along these established lines. The biggest difference, in line with all the attention and acclaim received by Season 1, is one of scale: rather than two individuals on a collision course across class and gender lines, we now have two couples. Josh (Oscar Isaac) and Lindsay (Carey Mulligan) are aging hipsters who\u2019ve traded cool, creative careers in music and interior design for a cushy gig running a Montecito beach club \u2014 Josh as general manager, Lindsay as his de facto lieutenant. Austin (Charles Melton) and Ashley (Cailee Spaeny) are two low-level employees at the club who decide to blackmail the older couple into promotions when they catch the pair on video in a nasty, violent fight. The millennial-Gen Z generational divide, both sides fighting over scraps of a shrinking pie while still in smiling, obsequious service to aging boomers, is an enticing hook made more so by meta casting. Isaac and Mulligan are experienced film stars, while Melton and Spaeny are more recent breakouts. All four are executive producers.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tBut over eight episodes, \u201cBeef\u201d loses focus and overcrowds this already expanded premise. By the closing credits, Season 2 is no longer mainly about the acrimony between its antiheroes and what it brings out from within them. Which begs the question: even if a follow-up allows Lee to attract bigger names and film in far-flung locations (more on that shortly), was \u201cBeef\u201d ultimately worth turning into a franchise?<\/p>\n \n\tDoubling the personalities would be a tall enough order in itself. Yet Season 2 soon reveals it\u2019s not really the story of two couples, but three. The club has recently been acquired by a South Korean billionaire, Chairwoman Park (Oscar winner Youn Yuh-Jung of \u201cMinari\u201d), who\u2019s less preoccupied with her new toy than the hand tremors threatening the livelihood of her much younger husband, plastic surgeon Dr. Kim (\u201cParasite\u201d star Song Kang-ho, so rarely seen that the role is a glorified cameo). The new bosses\u2019 high-class problems are always tertiary to the Josh-Lindsay-Ashley-Austin quadfecta and never stop feeling tacked-on, even when plot contrivances transport the entire ensemble to Seoul for the finale. But they\u2019re just present enough to distract from the core conflict, transforming the season from a group character study into a corporate espionage thriller such that neither half feels fully fleshed-out.<\/p>\n \n\tIt\u2019s a shame, because before they peter out, there are threads worth following. Lee has a gift for crafting characters who ride the edge between loathsome and pathetic; you feel just enough for these people to keep watching, and enjoying, their self-inflicted suffering. Josh and Lindsay\u2019s carefree youth has curdled into a tangle of resentments over squandered money and lost potential, with their dachshund Burberry\u00a0 \u2014 it\u2019s a good joke! \u2014 the thin layer of glue keeping the sexless relationship together. Ashley and Austin are only 18 months into their courtship and newly engaged, but there are already cracks in their freshly laid foundation. A former college football player, Austin is struggling to reinvent himself as a personal trainer, while Ashley clings to the prospect of motherhood as a salve for her abandonment issues. (Her extortion of Josh is motivated by a need for health insurance to fund an ovarian cyst surgery.) Both seem more anxious about holding onto their first love than actually enamored with each other.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tJust as Season 1 was a sociological cross section of Asian-American Los Angeles and its many subcultures, Season 2 gets specific with another corner of Southern California. Josh and Lindsay live in Ojai, the hippie mountain town turned increasingly yuppie enclave; Austin and Ashley are in more working-class Oxnard. None of them can actually afford to live near their jobs around Santa Barbara, a common trend with service workers employed in what\u2019s increasingly a retirement community for well-heeled baby boomers.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tBut rather than dig into this dynamic, Season 2 represents the club\u2019s clientele through a single VIP, Troy (William Fichtner), and his trophy wife Ava (Mikaela Hoover). Most of \u201cBeef\u201d\u2019s satirical ire is instead reserved for those lower down the food chain: Josh\u2019s unctuous sycophancy (Lindsay says he\u2019s good at his job as an insult), Lindsay\u2019s posh permafrost (she thinks Park deeming her aesthetic \u201ccolonial\u201d is a compliment), and most uncomfortably, Austin and Ashley\u2019s stupidity. (He thinks \u201cmisc.\u201d on an invoice is a typo for \u201cmist\u201d; she makes sense of a 1 to 10 pain scale by reasoning it\u2019s \u201clike Letterboxd.\u201d)\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tGiven their youth and economic precarity, the show\u2019s contempt for Austin and Ashley can tip into the mean-spirited, even if it\u2019s not exclusive to them. Ashley complains that she worked \u201cnine whole hours\u201d at her new job, a \u201ckids these days\u201d stereotype that\u2019s the most basic form of generational humor. Regardless, the performances are uniformly, and unsurprisingly, excellent. There are no great discoveries here, \u00e1 la Young Mazino in Season 1 \u2014 just professionals demonstrating why their success is so justified. Melton, for example, follows up his revelatory turn in \u201cMay December\u201d with another young man in a toxic relationship whose emotions are inscrutable to himself but painfully obvious to the viewer.<\/p>\n \n\tIn fact, this expanded version of \u201cBeef\u201d has so many centers of gravity that the whole enterprise starts feeling adrift. At the season\u2019s halfway mark, Ashley vows to \u201ctake\u201d Josh \u201cdown\u201d by any means necessary. The line gives the feeling of the plot locking into place. (Where\u2019s the beef? Here!) Except little ever comes of it. \u201cBeef\u201d has to attend to the internal dynamics of the marriages, plus the initially vestigial but increasingly overpowering storyline about Park and Kim\u2019s plastic surgery clinic. A finale set piece there is riveting and directed with flair by series stalwart Jake Schreier; the scene still feels disconnected from the preceding buildup. Dr. Kim and his physical decline are introduced at the end of Episode 2 in an abrupt escalation of stakes. Despite some gestures at Austin exploring his half-Korean heritage through a flirtation with Park\u2019s assistant Eunice (Seoyeon Jang), the subplot is never smoothly incorporated.<\/p>\n \n\tOnce the animosity between Josh, Ashley and their significant others fades into the background, it\u2019s increasingly difficult to discern what Lee wanted to say with their juxtaposition. Is it that all couples outside the 0.01% will crack under financial pressure in time? Is it that the middle-aged envy and want to sabotage the innocence of fresh-faced twentysomethings? Or is it that Season 1 was successful enough to demand a sequel, regardless of how much Lee\u2019s current interests aligned with the \u201cBeef\u201d framework? Season 1 of \u201cBeef\u201d was an original idea that took off on the strength of its own merits, not a brand name. Perhaps that was the magic worth attempting to replicate.<\/p>\n \n\tAll eight episodes of \u2018Beef\u2019 Season 2 are now streaming on Netflix.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In transitioning from a standalone story to a multi-season anthology, all shows in the genre Ryan Murphy took…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":587586,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[4859,88,92],"class_list":["post-587585","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-beef","tag-entertainment","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/587585","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=587585"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/587585\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/587586"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=587585"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=587585"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=587585"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}