[TV Review] ‘BEEF’, this prime cut slab of raw animosity sizzles to a well done finish

Travis Leamons // Film Critic

Rating TV-MA, 10 Episodes (approx. 351 minutes)
Creator: Lee Sung-jin
Directors: Lee Sung-jin, Hikari, and Jake Schreier
Cast: Steven Yeun, Ali Wong, Joseph Lee, Young Mazino, David Choe, and Maria Bello

Having swept the major categories at this year’s Academy Awards, A24 is setting its sights on the Emmys. I wrote this after watching the first two episodes of Netflix’s incendiary new series. After watching the last two episodes of BEEF, where a fit of road rage becomes an experiment of psychological torture and repressed trauma, those Emmys might as well be reserved.

We’re in Los Angeles at a home improvement store. Danny Cho (Steven Yeun) tries to return a shopping cart full of hibachi grills only he discovers he forgot the receipt. His interaction with the cashier is far from sunny. He returns to his pick-up truck with the grills, climbs inside the cab, and is steaming. Aggressively pulling at his stuck seat belt strap until it finally locks into place, Danny starts to back up and nearly collides with a white Mercedes SUV. The SUV stops. Its horn begins blaring. Danny pops his head out the window indignant screaming, “What! What is your problem?”

Amy Lau (Ali Wong) is the driver of the SUV. She’s also agitated. After pounding her horn hard enough you’d think the steering wheel would cave in, Amy moves forward a few car lengths, rolls down her window, and extends a middle finger. Trouble takes the wheel as their individual microaggressions bubble over into full-on road rage. This inciting event takes a wide swath of how far is too far for revenge. Forget about it being served cold, this beef is 100 percent raw.

Amy owns a small plant business, is married to a stay-at-home artist, and is mother to a little girl. Danny is a down-on-his-luck contractor who hustles, lives hand to mouth, and is depressed. Those hibachi grills he tried returning were for a failed suicide attempt.

Series creator Lee Sung-jin smartly pivots from dog-head tilt curiosity with us wondering why these two strangers would engage in such adrenaline-fueled recklessness to search for each other’s causality. By transitioning to Danny and Amy’s home lives, those first impressions we have reshape like a pillow after a hard night’s sleep. Their mutual animosity swells and cascades with grown ups doing childish things – like Danny aiming everywhere but the toilet bowl when taking a leak in Amy’s house, or her tagging his truck with offensive remarks. This is just emotional top soil. Digging deeper below the surface, Sung-jin allows us to connect to their empathic sides so we see them as individuals, not stereotypes.

The show, meanwhile, explores how a series of microagressions between two Asians of different affluence metastasizes into a kaleidoscopic firestorm, moving from anger and vengeance towards sadness and clemency.

Danny may be failing at life, and a disappointment to his Korean parents, but he’s doing what he thinks is best to get the money needed to get them back to the states and him out of the cramped apartment he shares with his kid brother, Paul (Young Mazino). This means odd contracting jobs and hustling. And hustling means helping his ex-con cousin, Isaac (David Choe).

Amy is not failing. In fact, it appears she has it all. Married to George (Joseph Lee), the most pragmatic and caring husband a woman could want, and mother to little Junie. But Amy fake smiles her happiness to disguise an eagerness to be the one in the driver’s seat of her marriage, instead of George’s controlling mother-in-law. To get there she has decided to sell her plant business to Jordan (Maria Bello playing an uppity, bleached blonde Angelino to a hilt).

While BEEF shows acts of violence that should not be done, you can’t help but shake your head in digust (and silently admire) how Danny and Amy escalate their pettiness. But road rage is not always about the instigating action. A guy cuts you off or changes three lanes without signalling to exit, you need to Elsa that and just “let it go.” You have no idea what problems the other driver is going through. The transference of microaggressions is mirrored later on with how Danny acts towards his brother and Amy with her husband.

Lee Sung-jin’s creation would be nothing without Steven Yeun and Ali Wong’s performances. Oscar-nominated for MINARI and strong work in both BURNING and NOPE, Yeun again shows how talented he is. Seeing him slumped next to his truck and cathartically downing four Burger King chicken sandwiches is like watching the innards of humanity turned inside out. Later, he busts out an acoustic version of Incubus’s “Drive” in a church that tears your soul.

Wong is a wild card, but her background in stand-up comedy provides all the necessary experience required for drama. Dying on stage during sets and dealing with hecklers is nerve-wracking. Working on this series must have been a breeze. She leaves an indelible impression even when she isn’t smashing her steering wheel.

Feelings spill out like a ketchup packet splattering everywhere before reaching the farewell finish. The last two episodes are a gigantic emotional roller coaster with hairpin turns, gunshots and dislocations, and a hallucinatory conversation where our sworn enemies prove the idiom of misery and company.

You don’t have to be a meat eater to enjoy BEEF. This is reverse comfort food made to binge. By the time you consume the final episode your stomach won’t be bursting. You’ll be emotionally replenished and glad your life isn’t nearly as miserable as theirs.

Grade: A