‘Beef’ Season 2 Review: Bigger Is Actually Better in Lee Sung Jin’s Searing Netflix Sequel

Early in “Beef” Season 2, a distracted driver and his fiancée almost slam into another car at an intersection. The couple immediately apologizes, mouthing “I’m sorry” and waving to the other driver to go ahead. But the other driver is also apologizing, and he also wants to cede the right of way. So both cars lurch forward, both cars brake, and they’re back where they started.

“I shouldn’t have gone,” Austin (Charles Melton) says to Ashley (Cailee Spaeny). But he’s not angry. He’s embarrassed. Even contrite.

From there, it’s clear Season 2 is a different cut of “Beef.” The first season of Netflix‘s anthology series centers a life-changing clash sparked by road rage: Danny (Steven Yeun) and Amy (Ali Wong) narrowly avoid an accident, and their lack of grace in the moment provokes an odyssey of revenge that steers them down ever-darkening paths. Amid all their attacks and counter-attacks, what motivates each aggrieved party comes to light, painting a rich, empathetic portrait of lives lived under immense pressure — and the illogical outlets that sometimes become our only means of relief.

Where Season 1 tapped into a timely surge in post-COVID exasperation, when every day felt like an onslaught of indignities as people relearned how to behave in public (actually, remembering this morning’s subway ride, this may still be the case), Season 2 focuses on a timeless font of outrage and its multifarious sources: namely, relationships, their thin line between love and hate, and how the trappings of late-stage capitalism (which gets name-checked twice in the first episode) contribute to a breakdown in trust within once-happy couples.

It’s a bigger season and, defying the odds, a better one.

Compelling the expansion is creator Lee Sung Jin’s decision to double his principal cast. Really, it’s tripled, but let’s come back to that. “Beef” Season 2 gets to the promised brouhaha straightaway: After hosting a swanky fundraiser, country club GM Josh Martín (Oscar Isaac) and his wife, Lindsay Crane-Martín (Carey Mulligan), can’t even make it home before trading barbs. He accepts an invite to Las Vegas with a prominent club member (William Fichtner), without realizing the excursion is planned for her birthday. Ouch. One mistake evokes a dozen more, and soon names are called, glasses are smashed, and blows are very nearly thrown.

They may have even landed, if not for the unexpected intrusion of Austin and Ashley. The betrothed twenty-somethings both work at Josh’s country club — she’s full time (sans benefits), dispensing drinks to thirsty golfers, while he’s part-time, doing whatever’s needed — and they were sent to Josh’s house after the party to return his forgotten wallet. But when they get there, they hear shouting. They see a struggle. And they record it all.

Jolted back to their senses by the prying eyes of others, Josh and Lindsay reassure themselves that they didn’t do anything wrong. “What is there to tell?” she says. “Couples fight. It’s normal. We’re normal.” But then they see the video, and everything changes.

Ashley and Austin don’t want to blackmail her boss, but they also don’t see any other option. If they report Josh to the authorities, Ashley will have to deal with the fallout at work. She can’t lose her job, especially when Austin is still trying to accrue clients as a freelance personal trainer… and when they’re saving up to get married… and when they want to have kids someday. But after Josh tries to intimidate her into staying quiet, all of Ashley’s anxieties morph into anger. Why should she live in fear of this boomer (Ashley’s technically inaccurate yet properly belittling label for Josh) when she’s the one holding all the cards?

Charles Melton and Seoyeon Jang in ‘Beef’Courtesy of Netflix

From there, “Beef” Season 2 proceeds in similar fashion to its predecessor, with each couple poking and prodding the other in order to get what they want or protect what they have. But not all threats stem from outside the house. Josh and Austin wrestle with cultural assimilation, as the latter starts to realize what he might be losing by surrounding himself with white people (and the former recognizes what he lost long ago).

Josh and Lindsay’s initially imperfect union grows more imperiled as we discover the flaws in their foundation. He spent her inheritance on his dying mother, largely out of guilt for working through her final days. She doesn’t have a job, only securing the occasional interior design gig. Their shared dream of opening a boutique bed and breakfast at their home in the Hollywood Hills isn’t any closer to becoming a reality than the day they moved in, and neither feels like they’re living the life they intended.

Contrast this, as “Beef” explicitly requests, with the young Austin and Ashley. Eighteen months in, they’re still in the lovey-dovey phase of their engagement. (The only reason the both witness Josh and Lindsay’s fight is because if he alone had walked the 10 feet between their car and Josh’s front door, she would’ve missed him too much.) But they’re also still at that sweet naive spot in life between childhood dreams and adult realities. When Ashley gets a scary medical diagnosis, she recedes into herself, not knowing how to discuss it with Austin and, more acutely, not wanting to scare him away. When Austin notices her shift in behavior, he also doesn’t know what to do, so he asks Reddit: “fiancee weird sex why.” Their innocence lends them a certain fearlessness, but it’s also an Achilles’ heel that may eventually give out.

Lee (along with a small writing staff and large producing team) gravitates toward over-explaining, both in what motivates his characters and their story’s ultimate meanings. Big exposition drops (like in the finale) can be grating when they stack up too close together or feel unnaturally forced into conversations that can’t sustain them. The same irritation crops up when certain callbacks are used to emphasize similarities between the couples (not that anyone at IndieWire would ever complain about too many “Aftersun” shout-outs). But the dense plotting, frenetic pace, and skilled cast go a long way toward alleviating the annoyance for those who notice it.

Melton is hilarious as the dumb, sensitive jock: When Ashley asks him for help, he prattles on about income inequality and wealth redistribution like he’s remembering the biggest words from his favorite podcasts — which he probably is, but he brings enough conviction (aka misplaced confidence) to sell his list of keywords as a legitimate course of action. Ashley isn’t that much brighter, but her instincts are well-honed to a fault. The way Spaeny balances her character’s ferocity and terror create some of the season’s heartiest laughs and most moving revelations.

Isaac, like Josh, is a facilitator: The GM is always hustling to create “a land of make believe” on behalf of his members, his bosses, and himself. He smiles through everyone’s outrageous demands in order to protect the club’s illusion of bliss, as well as his place inside it. But putting all that effort toward something that’s not real weighs on him, and Isaac’s taut encapsulation of misery compliments a series that feeds on tension.

There’s a lot more passive aggression than active aggression in “Beef” Season 2, and Mulligan wields her words with immaculate precision. Her scathing insults are as giddy as her crushing acknowledgements are gut-wrenching, as Lindsay strains to navigate a situation spinning further and further outside of her limited domain.

Which brings us to Season 2’s power couple, in every sense of the word: Chairwoman Park (played by “Minari” Oscar winner Youn Yuh-jung) and her husband, Dr. Kim (“Parasite” star and Korean cinema icon Song Kang-ho). The Chairwoman, a billionaire many times over, recently added the country club to her massive portfolio, and her arrival to oversee renovations causes quite a stir. Josh needs to renew his contract as the general manager. Lindsay hopes to stay on as the club’s freelance decorator. Austin eyes a new position as an in-house personal trainer, and Lindsay worries about the Chairwoman’s fit assistant, Eunice (Seoyeon Jang), stealing her Korean fitness-enthusiast boyfriend.

Cailee Spaeny in ‘Beef’Courtesy of Netflix

All of those elements feed the furious, anxiety-riddled plot, but the eldest couple’s true utility comes from illustrating how perspectives can evolve across generations, as well as how that evolution can be kneecapped by wealth. Without giving away how the story unfolds, the Chairwoman feels like one of the more honest representations of the uber-wealthy (in a TV world oversaturated with examples), and her husband proves surprisingly effective in connecting the three male leads’ broader arc.

Similar to the first season, “Beef” Season 2 isn’t myopic about its central themes. Even though Season 1 goes to extremes to illustrate the destructive nature of anger, it still acknowledges that anger can be liberating, too. Everyone needs a release for life’s many frustrations; its just a matter of finding the proper outlet, before things get out of hand.

Season 2, in the big picture, takes a cynical approach to modern relationships, asking if love is an inherently selfish endeavor within a capitalistic society, where your quality of life is so heavily influenced by what’s in your bank account. Partners can be a financial boon or bust, often for reasons beyond their control, be it spending on aging loved ones (like Josh does for his mother), taking on unavoidable debts (like Ashley), or simply not being properly prepared to work (like Lindsay, who’s grown accustomed to being a housewife, and Austin, whose time in college was devoted to football instead of a meaningful degree). Are we all putting too much faith in love to save us, when there are so many powerful forces waiting to crush it? Can love conquer all… except capitalism?

“Beef” Season 2 often answers that question in the thudding affirmative, but it doesn’t fully ignore the alternative. The most beautiful moments of Lee’s epic tale appear at times when all the noise has been stripped away, and each character has to face a truth they’ve been fighting so hard to ignore. When they face them together, when they share their experience instead of putting up walls, it’s all the more powerful. Like they’re glimpsing what life could be if they could just find a way to hold onto this feeling, if they just had the chance, if all their love wasn’t so often consumed by anger.

Alas, their beef is too big to squash. But this “Beef” is better for it.

Grade: A-

“Beef” Season 2 premieres Thursday, April 16 on Netflix. All eight episodes will be released at once.