When I watched the first season of Beef in 2023, it was a revelation. Lee Sung Jin’s wholly original series was a perfect blend of dark comic thrills, with revealing moments of deeply felt mental health exploration. The show was frenetic, hilarious, and anxiety-ridden, and its controversial finale was utterly profound. You simply could not guess what would happen next, which is rare in modern, recycled entertainment.
Netflix has brought back Beef for a second season, with a deep bench of performers, audacious, suspenseful, and wonderfully acted. However, unlike the first season, it feels like a regurgitation of character conflicts, without the dark psychological insight that spun out of control a little over three years ago. We are no longer treated to something intimate and emotionally invasive, but War of the Roses with an inconsistent bite.
That being said, the series is still entertaining. However, when the previous season set such a high bar, the second feels like a prestige money grab, if there ever was one. The main difference this season is that two couples start at odds; they end up feuding, hence the film reference above, and things spiral from there. The key point is that, it appears, Lee Sung Jin has nothing new to say about alienation, identity, trauma, and self-worth.
A glaring issue is that the lead characters are less compelling than the supporting players and surrounding subplots. Josh (Oscar Isaac) and Lindsey Martin (Carey Mulligan) find themselves stuck in both a professional and personal rut. Once dreaming of opening their own inn, plans now on hold, they’re constrained by tight finances. Money has cracked their relationship, when family medical bills began to pile up.
In the meantime, Josh settles into a role as the general manager of a local country club. Looking for investors and keeping up the perfect couple facade, they come to an explosive head as they fight, yell, and get physical. Except Josh and Lindsey didn’t know that an engaged couple working at the club, Ashley (Cailee Spaeny) and Austin (Warfare’s Charles Melton), were returning Josh’s wallet and watch from the outside, taping the explosive event.
In the meantime, the club is filled with entertaining and nefarious characters, like Chairwoman Park (Pachinko’s Youn Yuh-jung), a billionaire with a f*ck-up of a husband (Parasite’s Song Kang-ho), a concierge doctor who has a habit of killing more patients than any physician this side of Dr. Henry Jekyll. Along with Park’s buttoned-up assistant, Eunice (Seoyeon Jang), this subplot is by far the most complex and engrossing.
Then there is a yuppy, boundary-bending club owner, Troy (William Fichtner), and his fiancée, Ava (Superman’s Mikaela Hoover), who all have their hands in each other’s pockets. These intersecting lives reveal and challenge bias and conflict at every turn. The characters force connections, then tear them apart. The film links them in ways that sometimes feel contrived and, at other times, natural.
The main theme of Beef’s second season is that many couples, at various stages of adult life, begin to suspect they may have married the wrong person. As the initial spark fades, the relationship settles into reality. All of a sudden, all those pesky behavioral terms therapists talk about, like attachment style, begin to surface. Their compatibility comes into question. Then, long-ignored differences become harder to overlook.
While entertaining, often very funny, and at times exciting as these storylines are, the writing offers only surface-level insight into relationships and marriage. Suddenly, the creative team behind Beef prioritizes plot over psychology, whereas the previous season balanced both expertly, allowing the chaos to feel earned rather than manufactured. The turmoil reveals something deeper. Here, a faux sense of profundity leads to mayhem.
However, what you can’t argue is how compelling and absorbing a thriller Beef can be. Isaac, Mulligan, and Spaeny are terrific here, with Melton offering a well-rounded performance and delivering most of the series’ comic relief. You can’t help but wonder what these four might have uncovered had the show dug deeper into their relationships or more fully embraced the chairwoman storyline, rather than giving us just enough of both.
To summarize, the second season of Beef boasts an incredible cast and remains audacious, suspenseful, and often very funny, but this time around, it prioritizes plot over psychology, offering only surface-level insight into relationships and lacking the deep emotional bite that made the first season so profound.
That makes the sophomore effort a victim of high expectations, but still a ride worth taking.
You can stream Beef Season 2 exclusively on Netflix on April 16th!
The second season of Beef boasts an incredible cast and remains audacious, suspenseful, and often very funny, but this time around, it prioritizes plot over psychology, offering only surface-level insight into relationships and lacking the deep emotional bite that made the first season so profound.
I am a film and television critic and a proud member of the Las Vegas Film Critic Society, Critics Choice Association, and a 🍅 Rotten Tomatoes/Tomato meter approved. However, I still put on my pants one leg at a time, and that’s when I often stumble over. When I’m not writing about movies, I patiently wait for the next Pearl Jam album and pass the time by scratching my wife’s back on Sunday afternoons while she watches endless reruns of California Dreams. I was proclaimed the smartest reviewer alive by actor Jason Isaacs, but I chose to ignore his obvious sarcasm. You can also find my work on InSession Film, Ready Steady Cut, Hidden Remote, Music City Drive-In, Nerd Alert, and Film Focus Online.
