‘BEEF’ season two is undercooked and overstuffed

The premise is not altogether uninteresting. The first entry, directed by the returning Jake Schreier—who also helms the finale, and whose episodes are the only ones with any visual verve—begins by quickly establishing the outward dynamics of two couples at a luxurious golf club in Montecito. As middle-aged general manager Joshua Martín (Oscar Isaac) and his wife Lindsay Crane-Martín (Carey Mulligan) run a lavish fundraiser, a pair of smiling, uniformed employees run drinks to wealthy members while making googly eyes at each other: former college football prospect Austin Davis (Charles Melton) and his high school dropout fiancée Ashley Miller (Cailee Spaeny). The latter are so disgustingly in love that it’s kind of off-putting; even the idea of minor disagreements feels like a danger to them. Meanwhile, Joshua and Lindsay’s forced grins conceal deep-seated resentments and repetitive arguments, one of which dovetails into a brash confrontation once they return home. 

This bodes poorly for the couples’ understanding of one another when they’re forced into each other’s orbits at an especially inopportune moment. Austin and Ashley are tasked with running an errand at Joshua and Lindsay’s private residence, where they arrive just as the latter’s quarrel reaches a fever pitch. Ashley has her phone out, and films a snippet of the altercation which, out of context, could threaten Joshua’s career, leading to a game of subtle threats, misinterpreted motives and blackmail for the sake of rising up the economic ladder. That is, at least initially.

With every episode, season two of BEEF not only strays farther from this central premise, but ends up several degrees of separation away from its core quartet. It’s a great idea for a tight ensemble feature, but it feels stretched inorganically over eight episodes, which tend to spin their wheels while employing clunky metaphors that don’t necessarily land. Ants and insects feature frequently, as if to represent uneasy domestic rot, but this isn’t the kind of story that ever evolves in meaning, or investigates its ever-shifting premise. It also frequently employs visual devices like characters envisioning themselves in the place of those around them, but these seldom provide any additional insight.

Before long, the setting fans outward to include the golf club’s new South Korean owner, chairwoman Park (Pachinko’s Youn Yuh-jung), her attractive translator Eunice (Seoyeon Jang), and her surgeon husband Dr. Kim (a criminally underutilized Song Kang-ho of Parasite fame)—who gets caught up in medical malpractice tied to the club’s finances—not to mention a couple of affluent members, whose own romantic woes and successes contrast Joshua and Lindsay’s crumbling marriage. All these and more not only steal the lion’s share of the runtime, but their very impetus for existing eventually becomes the subject of wordy, inelegant explanations of the show’s underlying themes. In a tale of money protecting people from consequences, in which poverty leaves you exposed, it verges on insulting to saddle a venerated powerhouse like Youn with a clunky climactic, Randian monologue about how capitalism is the one true religion, in case you missed the first 26 times this was strongly implied.

Although the premise rests on Austin and Ashley being—for a lack of a better phrase—hilariously stupid, this affords Melton and Spaeny the chance to gradually peel back the layers of their characters’ naïveté in order to expose their characters’ insecurities. Similarly, Isaac and Mulligan put on performance clinics whenever Joshua and Lindsay are at loggerheads. The broad strokes of this dynamic yields a show where each couple slowly comes to a better understanding of what lies beneath their respective façades. However, put the four of them together, and what you’re left with is a show that contorts its central plot via swerve after swerve (after yet another swerve) until it forgets both its origin and destination.

In theory, its tale of corporate malfeasance ought to provide parameters within which Joshua, Lindsay, Austin and Ashley are forced to reckon with one another, or with themselves. Instead, the result is endless pablum about doctored invoices and other technicalities that don’t even create bare-minimum intrigue. But hey, at least the show has enough C-tier celebrity cameos (like songwriter Benny Blanco, and Billie Eilish’s producer brother Finneas) to keep your eyebrow raised and your Googling hand occupied.

It almost feels unfair to compare season two to its predecessor, but it neither adequately walks in its footsteps, nor meaningfully departs from its M.O. enough to be remarked upon. Where the first season was rooted in the specifics of its characters' Asian American backdrops (Korean churches, for instance, were a key dramatic venue), the followup is only nominally steeped in questions of identity. Joshua suffers a micro-aggression or two, while Austin’s part-Korean heritage comes up on occasion, but it results only in him extemporizing about not having enough immersion in his mother’s culture, a verbose declaration that informs neither the story’s logistics, nor its emotional unfurling. To say that it feels tacked on would be too kind, since it would imply that it sticks.

Where the first season’s character beats and episode cliffhangers were exciting, the show’s return is marred by the drudgery of rote misunderstandings, as though the finished plot were the product of a hasty first draft. Performers this talented deserve far better than what’s on offer here, instead of being forced to elevate such lifeless material. Acting may be alchemy, but it isn’t necromancy, and BEEF season two is dead on arrival.