Trib Total Media TV writer Rob Owen offers a viewing tip for the coming week.
In its first season, Netflix’s “Beef” dealt with the everyday conflict of one driver who cuts off another, although in the series, the antagonism that follows escalates precipitously.
Season two, now streaming on Netflix, explores more intimate but equally familiar couples’ strife amid generational differences set at a swanky California country club.
Newly engaged Ashley Miller (Cailee Spaeny) and Austin Davis (Charles Melton), both lower-level staff at the country club, witness a fight between the country club’s manager, Josh (Oscar Isaac), and his wife, Lindsay (Carey Mulligan), that leads to an entanglement just as the club’s new billionaire owner, Chairwoman Park (Youn Yuh-jung), arrives at the property. That setting and story give the show a “White Lotus” season three vibe.
Initially, “Beef” creator/showrunner Lee Sung Jin didn’t have an idea for a second season, but a real-life incident sparked his creative energy.
“I had overheard, in Josh’s words, ‘a heated debate’ coming from a couple’s home,” Jin recalled. “And the incident itself wasn’t that interesting, but it was everyone’s reactions to it. When I retold the story to my younger Gen Z peers, they were all aghast, clutching their pearls, being like, ‘Did you call 911? Like, is everyone OK?’ Whereas my millennial and Gen X peers were, like, ‘Eh, big deal.’ That juxtaposition, I thought, was very interesting.”
The show’s country club setting also came from Jin’s personal experience housesitting for a friend and borrowing his country club membership.
“When I heard how much it cost, I turned my nose up, like, ‘That’s crazy, dude, you’re wasting so much money.’ And then you use it for a week, and you’re like, it’s kinda nice,” Jin recalled. “Then, as I spent time at Montecito Club, what I observed was most of the members were Silent Gen and Boomers, and most of the employees were Millennials and Gen Z. I found that to be a great microcosm for society because no matter how hard those employees work, they’re never going to become members. Like Austin says in the show, ‘Everyone grabbed the bag before we could,’ which is a sentiment that is growing more potent by the day due to leaders continually stripping away the checks and balances that used to be in place for capitalism. Once we had that metaphor, we kind of ran with it.”
Jin said notions of social class play a significant role in the season two story.
“It’s just something that permeates every interaction, unfortunately, and it’s not like it’s getting better,” he said. “If you’re putting your brain into these characters’ minds and trying to wonder what they do, I think money is a huge factor.”
While season one of “Beef” trafficked in crow imagery, season two turns to ants and bees.
“There’s enough context clues in the show to hopefully allow the audience to come up with their own interpretation,” Jin said. “They’re a hive mind, a group of bugs, and the show is a lot about self vs. other, and I think Chairman Park probably gives a speech that can shine a light on all that, but a lot of the conversations we have are trying to figure out the right level of being not too on the nose, but also not too esoteric and vague, and finding that middle ground where the audience feels like they’re in good hands and can participate in the interpretation of the work.”