A twisted thriller? A black comedy? A humourous drama? Or a tragicomedy?
However you categorise A24 and Netflix’s Beef, it is guaranteed to take you on a wild ride — and I don’t just mean the road rage incident that kickstarts the show. From the initial car chase, the show never lessens its pace, escalating and raising the stakes with each episode, from a petty domestic dispute to an almost Shakespearean blood feud.
The story of obsession and passion that builds up throughout the series can not be described as a love story, but rather one of hate. The road rage incident serves as a fresh take on the age-old idea of a fateful encounter, pitting Ali Wong’s Amy Lau and Steven Yeun’s Danny Cho as nemeses. At the offset, the two characters have nothing in common besides their presence in a Forster’s parking lot and a pent-up rage that can’t quite be justified by having to drive in LA traffic. Amy is a successful self-made entrepreneur whose at the brink of a career breakthrough while Danny is a down-on-his-luck contractor struggling to make ends meet. They both see in each other everything that they seem to hate in the world.
Blatantly, the title of the show Beef refers to exactly this: the increasingly violent feud between our two main characters. However, there seems to be a second meaning: meat, sustenance, fuel. Despite their differences, Amy and Danny both struggle with the performative nature of their existence, and a fear of never finding genuine connection or understanding in the people around them. To put it simply, they feel empty and unseen. The ‘beef’ they have with each other is more than just a liberating experience; it sustains them. Their complicated revenge plots and psychotic outbursts serve to satisfy a deep-set craving to fill a void within them.
As their efforts to fight this emptiness become increasingly dark and twisted, it would be easy for Amy and Danny to become entirely detestable — if it wasn’t for the incredible nuance Wong and Yeun bring to their characters. As they toe the line between anti-heroism and villainy, they remain painstakingly human. Understandable motivations, hopes, fears and dreams leave us rooting for and testing our empathy towards these deeply flawed characters.
One of Beef’s merits is that it isn’t afraid to go to dark and weird places. But no matter how surreal it becomes, it doesn’t lose sight of the inherent humanity of its characters. At its core, Beef is terrifyingly relatable. The evil stepsister of a coming-of-age narrative, it subverts the idea that as you grow up, things will fall into place. This artful depiction of millennial rage centers an unfortunate reality: you never age out of uncertainty.
“Steven Yeun” by Gage Skidmore is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.