Beef: A darkly comedic feast of vengeance and vulnerability
Harry Khachatrian
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Joni Mitchell, in her 1971 melancholic ballad “River,” wistfully sang about hiding pain and longing behind a facade and pretending to be happy for the sake of those around her. It is this theme that Netflix’s newest offering, Beef, from writer and director Lee Sung Jin, creatively packages into a dark comedy.
The series revolves around two disparate entrepreneurs from immigrant families: Danny Cho (Steven Yeun), a downtrodden contractor struggling to sponsor and settle his Korean parents in America, and his antithesis and soon-to-be sworn enemy, Amy Lau (Ali Wong), the successful founder and owner of a thriving houseplant business. When a chance encounter on the road leads to a heated exchange, they inadvertently become conduits for each other’s suppressed turmoil, setting off a chain of increasingly absurd and hilarious revenge schemes.
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But beneath the captivating, pugilistic veneer lies a poignant tale of internalizing personal struggles and concealing one’s burden behind an insincere smile. Despite her ostensible success as a thriving entrepreneur, replete with an opulent home and a comfortable family life, Amy brims with discontent. She feigns affection for her effeminate stay-at-home husband (George Nakai) while longing for assertiveness. (His pseudo-artistic sculptures resembling mutilated Jeff Koons pieces don’t help, either.)
Meanwhile, yearning for some respite from her overwhelming work life, Amy finds herself striving to close a business deal with Jordan Forster (Maria Bello), an aloof white business tycoon with a bizarre obsession with Asian culture.
Similarly, Danny grapples with his own inner demons, concealing his financial struggles from his brother and his parents, assuring them that everything is fine and promising that he will soon buy them a house and sponsor their immigration to America. He hides and evades his problems, turning to his crooked cousin, Isaac (David Choe), for money.
Both Amy and Danny could have alleviated the burdens in their lives by communicating openly with their loved ones and those around them. Instead, they chose to bottle up their emotions and frustration until the road rage encounter pushed them to their precipice. They unleash their pent-up anger on each other, treating the incident as an effigy for everything that’s wrong in their lives. This rivalry drives them to extreme measures as they strive to come out on top, one-upping each other at every turn.
Throughout its highly bingeable 10 episodes, the series masterfully conveys the idea that living your life to appease everyone around you comes at your own expense. The burden of suppressing personal struggles and maintaining a facade eventually catches up with the protagonists. Toward the end of the series, in a pensive moment of introspection, Danny asks Amy, as someone he perceives to have obtained everything that he desires for himself, if she’s happy. In her most vulnerable state, she replies that she doesn’t know. “Everything fades. Nothing lasts,” she says. “We’re just a snake eating its own tail.”
Beef’s narrative is well written and paced, but it is the impeccable performances from Wong and Yeun (along with the rest of the cast) that elevate the series to greater heights. It is no easy feat to convey decades of internalized hardship in a few fleeting episodes, but by the coda, you feel as though you’ve embarked on an exhausting, emotional journey alongside these characters, experiencing the full weight of their lifelong struggles. The show’s humor, however, serves as a welcome reprieve; expertly integrated throughout the series, it rescues the story from becoming a somber drama.
As Joni Mitchell laments in her lyrics, “I wish I had a river / I could skate away on.” At various times in our lives, we all exhibit traits of Danny or Amy; we all yearn for an escape from our hidden struggles.
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Harry Khachatrian (@Harry1T6) is a film critic for the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog and a computer engineer in Toronto, pursuing his MBA.