The following article contains minor spoilers for Netflix's Beef.
Much has been made of the recent spate of cancellations over at Netflix, of new original series that a lot of people ostensibly care about. But which series, exactly? Uncoupled, the derivative Neil Patrick Harris-starring affluenza narrative centring on a rich (and annoying) gay man in Manhattan divorcing from his long-time husband? Oh no, we must be taking about Blockbuster, the oh so esteemed dramedy about the movie rental store that streaming stuck a dagger in. There've been a handful of decent new hits that got the axe, the likes of German sci-fi mystery 1899, but it's been a long time since we got a new Stranger Things, a House of Cards, or a Bojack Horseman. There's something to be said about giving new ideas a chance, but it's not like Netflix has been taking out prize horses to shoot.
From Mindhunter to Daredevil, we'll never forgive and we'll never forget
Thank god, then, for Steven Yeun — an evergreen statement if I've ever seen it — and Beef, a Russian Doll-esque return to form for the streamer's original programming, and unequivocally the best new series they've released since 2020's Squid Game. Riding the welcome wave of new Asian-American media emerging over the last couple of years (think: the blissful Yeun-starring Oscar-nominee Minari, preceded by The Farewell, The Half of It, and Crazy Rich Asians), Beef is an inventive drama-comedy from mega-hip studio A24, ten thirty-minute episodes spun from an incident of quintessentially L.A. road rage. What begins as a petty dispute explodes into an increasingly violent rivalry, like a twister ripping through a rundown motel, indiscriminately coughing out debris.
It's the story of two powder kegs, already primed to blow, slamming into one another. We begin with Danny Cho (Yeun), a blue-collar Korean-American guy with a short fuse, the sort who always seems to get a short stick of it, the weight of the world — and his parents' hopes — on his shoulders. His adversary is Amy Lau (Ali Wong), his economic opposite, a rich lady with one of those Kardashian-style minimalist mansions who is, nevertheless, deeply unsatisfied with her life of Riley. Her marriage just isn't hitting nowadays; when we discover she's not allowed access to the gun safe, we presume it's for fear of suicide ideation, but it turns out she's developed a similarly dangerous pistol fetish.
This is less the story of how much these two hate each other for a minor fender bender so much as how they discover, and latch onto, a silly injustice as an outlet for their volatile bitterness. They're both addicted to the conflict, something to break up the banality of their day-to-day; it's a richly comic premise, and one so universal. Haven't we all imagined, in rich detail, the visceral justice we'd inflict on the fuckers who cut us off in traffic, or walk achingly slowly in front of us on Oxford Street, those direct-and-deliberate micro-attacks that do nothing less than ruin our days — nay, our lives?
And so their obsessive brinkmanship evolves into increasingly out-of-hand sparring: Danny pisses all over her bathroom rug, so Amy graffitis his car with belittling slogans, so Danny turns up at the house wielding a hammer, and so on. For the most part, the duo are kept to their own spheres, with the fleeting moments they come to blows a release of their anxieties personal and interconnected. They're both deeply likeable, which is critical, because you don't root for one or the other. In reality, they're kindred spirits, the ambitious children of migrants who just want to do well, because the migrant diaspora of America can't afford to be average. It's hardly a surprise that they both default to beef.
There's an increasing tendency online to shit on A24, the dominant trader of socially conscious vibe-fests like Bodies, Bodies, Bodies and Everything Everywhere All at Once, for its cooler-than-cool house style (there's a little of Supreme-on-screen with them, it has to be said). But it's hard to tear them down when they're routinely putting out works like Beef — the first wagyu cut served up in the Netflix steakhouse in an age. Finally, some good fucking food.
Beef is now streaming on Netflix.
