The big, the central question of the fantastic Netflix series beef: Am I maybe not so broken, so desperate, so depressed because there is so much to do – but because I have to endure so much? You somehow manage to “do” it; the 60-hour workweeks without a word of encouragement from colleagues or supervisors; helping in the community; Leisure time stress with children, friends, siblings. What really wears you down: Does this tramping never stop? And why does it always look so incredibly easy for others? Is there really nobody who understands how I feel?
It is precisely at this point in life that Danny Cho (Steven Yeun) and Amy Lau (Ali Wong) meet – or rather, they collide. A mini-incident in a supermarket parking lot leads to a car chase and the two increasingly worse things to each other over the course of the first season’s ten episodes. They would realize, if they just talked to each other properly, that they understand each other very well and could even help each other. But they still choke each other and push each other even harder to endure.
No matter how powerful or rich you are – there is always something
Both live in the Los Angeles area, but come from different worlds: He is a handyman with notorious money worries who plans to bring his impoverished parents from South Korea to the USA and eventually start a family himself. She wants to sell her successful lifestyle plant chain for ten million dollars so that her husband is no longer the only one who spends time with their daughter and raises her in a completely unrealistic way. The husband masturbates to photos of their employees and is annoying as brutally as possible with his carefree attitude of the spoiled artist’s son.
What Danny and Amy have in common: frustration with their own lives; the humiliations of others; that it’s never enough Or as Danny says: “I always do the right thing – and see where it got me.” That’s the theme of the series: it doesn’t matter how powerful or rich you are; both say: “There is always something.” Something is always. Whether it’s the brother’s laziness, the egomaniacal ignorance of the investor; the pressure of having to achieve something: there is always something or someone that you have to endure.
What they both have in common: They are Asians in Los Angeles, and that’s why beef just praised like hardly any other series – because being Asian is not shown in a voyeuristic or stereotypical way, but rather: That’s the way it is. Just as Los Angeles is also shown as it really is: a place of yellowed self-love, where everyone, despite all the privileges, believes they have it worse than the others; and therefore demands undivided attention, all the time.
beef is a stylistically outstanding, wonderfully told, fantastically acted series – angry and humorous, and above all: honest about life and the fact that you can be lonely, even if you’re never alone. Creator Lee Sung Jun has revealed he has ideas for multiple seasons. This is fantastic news.
Beef, ten episodes, on Netflix.
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