Beef, the new 10-episodes series by creator Lee Sung Jin, currently streaming on Netflix, begins with a charged encounter between two strangers at a parking lot. At one end is Danny Cho (Steven Yeun), who is conveniently trying to keep it down after being unable to return a huge number of hibachi grills and a carbon monoxide detector. He is at a dead end. Then there is the L.A. botanical designer Amy Lau (Ali Wong), who is on the verge of selling her company and cashing it in. None of these two are ready to settle the score with after an insignificant honk and middle-finger show, and it escalates into a chase down the suburban San Fernando Valley. This chase effectively turns out into a rollercoaster ride of who-gets-who, that gets increasingly nasty and ridiculous. (Also read: Jubilee review: Sidhant Gupta delivers star-making performance in Motwane’s sad, slow burn about movies)
Even before you ask why, the answers begin to trace back to its charged portrait of America where control, or the lack of it, has become the ball game of survival. Spread over 10 episodes, the world of Beef takes time to make space for its characters first. The initial episodes struggle to maintain its connect akin to its protagonists, but look closer, and creator Lee Sung Jin along with director Hikari work expertly to create a specific cultural perspective: where the predominantly Asian-American cast make choices that might seem widely contrasting with one another, but are intricately almost similar in terms of their spiralling self-awareness.
Consider Amy. She’s successful, yes, but also on the verge of everything at the moment. As a half-Vietnamese, half-Chinese working mother of a young daughter, she’s always on the get-go of things, either feeling too much or not feeling at all. This, while her husband George (Joseph Lee) remains blissfully self-sufficient and unaware of her simmering rage within. While for Danny, its a tough, unending road to the American Dream- as a struggling contractor trying hard to make ends meet while his unavailable brother Paul (a scene-stealing Young Mazino), always looks for an alternative via crypto-trading. We are told his parents have moved back to Korea after his cousin Isaac (David Choe) lost them their motel due to some criminal activity. Now, David is out of jail, and is coming to set things straight.
Amid all this, the road rage incident occurs. It’s Danny who gets back at Amy first, by introducing himself as a plumber at her doorstep one fine morning. He quickly finds a chance, pisses at her bathroom floor and runs away. Amy is enraged, but her ways of getting back are nastier. She creates a fake profile with the picture or her white female assistant and gets back to his brother Paul. It is just the beginning here for these two volatile, dysfunctional adults as their motivations get out of the closet and turn into a messy bloodbath.
Yeun, who has carved himself as one of the most lovable screen-presences in recent times, is a ball of fire as Danny. Far away from anything we’ve seen the actor try in his career, Yeun displays a wide range of powers here, alternatively flexing his singing chops in a shockingly tender moment, or coming to terms with his buffoonery until it’s too late. Matching Yeun in every step is Wong, who is in compelling form- balancing the hilarity, despair and frustration of her actions with superb control. When these two extremes collide, the scenes crackle with a charged force of a sudden thunderstorm.
Yet, even before these characters trace back to their spaces and dig open their dynamics right until that brilliant finale, Beef catches hold of that impossible weight of hustling for survival in a burdensome, horribly capitalist society where one is never who they seem to be. Where one cannot stand the same mistakes they make in someone else. The knife cuts deep. Moving forward with a nerve-wrecking speed, Beef steadily mounts its building blocks together like an act of balancing genius. As the self-destructive nihilism escalates into anxiety-inducing extremes, Beef bursts open with its themes of displacement, repression, and intergenerational trauma like a volcano. Insanely original, deeply empathetic and never boring, Beef is one of the best, most juiciest shows you will encounter all year. Demented just got a new meaning.