Review of Beef Season 2

If you’re new here, and stumbled upon this blog through the mythical powers of the Internet, welcome! I know a lot of visitors to my website are people who randomly come upon this website through search engines like Google, but I also do have a lot of visitors who come back. Regardless: my name is Ashley, and I started this blog in order to keep track of everything I’m coming across in the world.

I feel like a lot of my blog introductions, especially when it comes to movies, have been lamenting on the fact I don’t have a ton of time lately. I used to work as a film and television critic (which, in fact, was so incredibly underpaid that I now make more off of this blog’s display ads than I ever did publishing anywhere else), and then when I was in graduate school I was writing a lot about film, so I used to watch so many movies and shows in a single work.

But now I work an 8-5, come home, and then doom scroll my evenings away instead of watching things I actually used to enjoy. I fell into a bit of a depression over this that I’m finally starting to overcome, so nowadays I’m chasing that inspiration that led me to want to love movies and television in the first place.

When Beef season two came out I was still in the middle of that funk, so I’m only just getting around to watching this season. I know that there was definitely a chance I was going to watch this pretty quickly, and that did happen. Once I got the ball rolling with the first episode, I finished the series within the week.

That said, let’s get into the review! I don’t want to ramble too much for the sake of time.

For two couples, one wealthy, the other struggling, their lives are going to be deeply intertwined by one blackmailing session.

The second season of Beef starts fresh, leaving behind the drama of the first season for a completely new series of events. The focus are on multiple couples, although we largely focus on two: Josh and Lindsey, who appear ultra wealthy and have their relationship together, and Ashley and Austin, who are struggling to get their footing in a world that seems increasingly stacked against them.

This all revolves around the Monte Vista Point Country Club, which is managed by Josh. Josh and Lindsay are having increased friction around their finances and relationship, and divorce is increasingly seeming like it’s on the horizon for them. On the other side of things, Ashley and Austin are happy but broke. She works the beverage cart at the the club, while Austin does personal training and also does some work at the club on the side.

When Josh leaves behind his wallet one night, they go to return it and discover the couple arguing and throwing things. Ashley has the idea to record everything going on in front of them, as she believes they just witnessed Lindsay being abused by her husband.

All of this happens while Chairwoman Park, the new owner of the company, prepares to visit the establishment to see what’s going on. By the end of the first episode Austin and Ashley have a plan: with the content of the video being very negative and harmful, they can use this for blackmail.

And they do just that when Ashley gets diagnosed with an ovarian cyst and they can’t afford to pay the medical bills. This creates an awkward dance of resentment and tension, as Ashley got a promotion she didn’t earn in the first place, while Austin, getting comfortable with Chairwoman Park’s assistant and finds himself being hired as the head of the fitness section of the club despite being highly unqualified for it.

This feels like a slow motion disaster on so many different levels, especially when we add in an event of malpractice that feels out there and adding to the disaster that’s happening at the country club.

Overall Thoughts

This season is really interesting and touches on some themes that the first season didn’t get to do. I liked the element of adding in the Korean characters, as it felt like it added a more interesting cultural dynamic to what was going on. It was also fascinating to see Youn Yoh-jung and Song Kang-ho play a husband and wife considering their age gap.

I think the strongest aspect of Beef has always been its writing and characters, and Season 2 does an excellent job of playing into those strengths. I didn’t like it as much as season one, but I wasn’t comparing the two, I would say this is a very good season of television overall.

Go see it if you haven’t already. If you haven’t seen season one yet, you could also watch them independent of each other and not miss anything important.

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