transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:04] The first season of Beef was a huge hit for Netflix and won a bunch of Emmys. It starred Ally Wong and Stephen Young, and followed a road rage incident with devastating consequences. Now, it's back for season two, and this time, there's an all-new cast and an all-new beef. It involves two couples, Oscar Isaac and Carey Mulligan face off against Charles Melton and Cailee Spaeny. Just like in the first season, their feud reveals way bigger underlying issues for each of the parties involved. To put it mildly, everyone's a mess, and it's a surreal journey to behold. I'm Aisha Harris, and today we're talking about beef on Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. Joining me today is one of the hosts of NPR's Code Switch podcast, Gene Denby. Welcome back, Gene.

Speaker 2:
[00:50] In my personal experience, the colors don't affect the quench. It was a good job.

Speaker 1:
[00:56] No, they don't. Great to have you here. Also with us is Walter Chow. He is a writer, critic, and film instructor at the University of Colorado. Welcome back to you too, Walter.

Speaker 3:
[01:06] Hey, thanks so much for having me.

Speaker 1:
[01:07] It's so great to have you both here. So much to talk about because so much happens this season, which feels like compared to last season, it's like, whoa. But yeah, Beef Season 2 stars Oscar Isaac and Carey Mulligan as a married couple, Josh and Lindsey. He's the general manager of a Montecito Country Club, and she's an interior designer. Now, their relationship is hanging by a thread, and one evening they have this nasty drag out fight at home that teeters on the edge of turning violent. Their spat is accidentally witnessed by Austin and Ashley, an engaged couple who are low level staffers at the club. They're played by Charles Melton and Cailee Spaeny. Austin and Ashley captured the worst of the argument on video, and they have the intention of bringing it to the police at first. But then they see an opportunity to leverage the video for better pay and health benefits. And that's when the beef starts cooking and cooking and sizzling and all that juicy stuff. Beef was created by Lee Sung Jin and is streaming on Netflix. And Gene, I'm going to start with you. You know, how are we feeling about the beef this season?

Speaker 2:
[02:12] I really dug this season. It's like a very different tenor. The last season, the two main characters literally slam into each other and they hate each other and it becomes this animating thing for the rest of the season. And in this season, there's all these different sort of crossbeefs. The couples are squaring off against other couples, but they're also squaring off against each other. Sort of it's like all these different sort of layers and directionality in their beef. It feels sillier than last season. I feel like there are moments of leaning into goofy, particularly Charles Melton.

Speaker 3:
[02:44] I'll take the red one.

Speaker 4:
[02:45] It's for my fiance. How about the yellow?

Speaker 1:
[02:48] I'd rather not.

Speaker 4:
[02:51] Well, if I may say this, man, in my personal experience, the colors don't affect the quench.

Speaker 2:
[02:56] I've never seen this cat before, but I was like, I'll watch anything he's in.

Speaker 1:
[02:59] Have you not seen May December?

Speaker 2:
[03:00] I did not see May December. You're the second person to say that to me.

Speaker 1:
[03:02] Yes, yes. OK, anyway, you have to see that movie, you know, Natalie Portman, Todd Haynes. Anyway, but yes.

Speaker 2:
[03:08] I will absolutely check this out. But the beef seems like a little more muted, like even though it's happening in all the different directions. But the stakes are so much higher than last season. Like all the stakes seem like really, really big this season. And it's just like, and at first I thought this was going to like turn into like a, you know, squid game type of thing where it was like, oh, this is about like class anxiety and contempt, right? And actually kind of isn't that right? It ends up being sort of a bunch of things. I really dug the season. I thought it was exceptionally well cast. There were moments of like laugh out loud humor in this season, but also just like tonally is kind of odd, you know? I think it's like kind of it's doing a lot of different things anyway, but I dug it overall.

Speaker 1:
[03:45] Yeah, yeah, definitely kind of all over the place. But Walter, I want to hear your initial impressions of this season.

Speaker 3:
[03:52] Yeah, man, I kind of polarized maybe the opposite way. I totally agree their laugh out loud moments. There's really totally agree that the cast is great. I do fear that that Mr. Melton perhaps is being typecast at this point. Sort of like a dim, pretty boy kind of character. I hope better for him in the future, but he is good here. He essentially plays the same role that he played in May-December. I've seen him do this before and seeing him do it for eight hours is tough for me a little bit. It reminds me of the Asian character on, what was that show where she's a survivor of a cult?

Speaker 1:
[04:26] Oh, Kimmy Schmidt.

Speaker 3:
[04:28] Kimmy Schmidt. Yeah, and she has a boyfriend for a while in that, who is also this really beautiful Asian guy.

Speaker 1:
[04:34] Oh, that's right.

Speaker 3:
[04:35] It's pretty dim. It's pretty dim. And I understand the cross casting of like, let's dispel this really dangerous stereotype about Asians being smart. Believe me, as an Asian guy, I know a lot of really stupid Asian people. Let's dispel this stereotype. Let's do that. I get it. Let's cross cast. At the same time, the show is really skirting on some stuff that's made me kind of uncomfortable. If the bad guys are these Koreans who are very organized and very cold and very whatever. It's like, I don't know, man. I don't know. The first season was kind of groundbreaking for Asian Americans to have just a normal contractor guy getting in a roadway beef with a normal woman. They don't know martial arts and they're not mystical. Their dad's not 100,000 year old snake monsters. You know what I mean? There's nothing mystical about these Asians. But even during the middle of the last season, I felt like maybe they're running out of steam a little bit and they're starting to escalate to a place where it's like, it's starting to feel a little desperate. I was glad that it was over after 10. This season in only eight episodes, it felt like to me a continued escalation where there's so much stuff getting thrown out the wall here. I feel like they really left some really important stuff off of it that I wanted to know more about, to the point that I'm not even sure what the beef was exactly. What are we mad about at each other? They bring up this idea that Gen Z workers are lazy and uninformed. They make a lot about how Ashley, and she thinks that an insurance deductible means a refund.

Speaker 4:
[06:06] She said, you have a super high deductible, 5,000. Oh, wow.

Speaker 2:
[06:12] We can deduct $5,000? What if it costs less?

Speaker 1:
[06:15] Did they give us a difference?

Speaker 4:
[06:16] It's kind of the opposite.

Speaker 3:
[06:18] He thinks MISC was a typo for MIST instead of a shorthand for miscellaneous. It's like the degree of their ignorance is so out of bounds. But I was left feeling like you actually did dishonor to some of the stuff that you did establish in the first season, which was itself marred with some controversy. It's just like that lack of sensitivity to those sort of issues seems to be explored in full in the second season. And I'm not sure on purpose. And I think maybe that's where I am.

Speaker 1:
[06:47] Interesting. I mean, you mentioned the Korean sort of subplotter, though I think it's eventually becomes plot, like it becomes a plot. And so that's involving the chairwoman of the country club that they all work at, who's played by Yoon-Yea Jung. I think most American audiences will recognize she's the Oscar winner for Meenary. I think the grandmother in that movie. I think she's actually great in this role. She seems like she's having fun with this role. And I was so happy to see Soon-Kang Ho playing her much younger husband, Dr. Kim. He's, of course, if you've seen some Bong Joon-Ho movies like Parasite, The Host, Memories of Murder, he's a very recognizable face and he's always great to see. But I agree with you, Walter, that it does feel as though that subplot turned plot, it just becomes kind of unwieldy because there's just too many other things now. I mean, Gene, you did mention like it felt less like a class situation, I did feel like it kind of turned into that with that Korean subplot because we learned after a while that it's not just about this very sexless, unhappy marriage between Oscar Isaac and Carey Mulligan. It's also like they are in debt, they're drowning in debt, they are doing illegal things to try and make their dreams come true and try to put a patch over this leaking boat.

Speaker 2:
[08:07] It's a little embezzlement to keep a couple together. You know what I mean?

Speaker 1:
[08:09] I know. It kind of is in many ways like a keeping up with the Joneses type of season, right? It felt less fresh than the last season. It felt more like White Lotus to me and that's not necessarily a compliment. Like have I seen every season of White Lotus so far? Yes. Do I find pleasure in it? The fact that I have, maybe not. And that was kind of where I felt about this season.

Speaker 3:
[08:34] Yeah, I care a lot less about really rich people being met at really, really, really rich people. I feel less interested in the travails of Oscar Isaac and Carey Mulligan.

Speaker 1:
[08:44] But they're not even rich though. To me, the more interesting relationship, it's still not the most original, but like the Oscar Isaac and Carey Mulligan characters, they have this proximity to wealth. You could argue it could be just as or like even more kind of difficult to manage emotionally because you've tasted what it can feel like to be in that world. And just the way that like Josh, the Oscar Isaac character, kind of has to maneuver his job where he's like kind of friends with some of the people who are clients there, but he also resents them because he works for them. Yeah, he works for them. And also they're demanding. And it's that weird relationship that you often see with like employer, employee or like your job depends on them liking you.

Speaker 4:
[09:29] We get to be friends with politicians and CEOs. We had dinner with Bono.

Speaker 3:
[09:34] You think that they're your friends, but they're not. Your staff, you're an employee.

Speaker 2:
[09:39] They pay you to be around.

Speaker 4:
[09:41] Well, one of us has to get paid.

Speaker 1:
[09:43] It's a weird dynamic. And I thought that was an interesting thing to see, but I've also seen that before.

Speaker 3:
[09:50] Yeah, there's a really interesting scene where Oscar Isaac is essentially told by the chairwoman that his butt is hers now because she's discovered, you know, the shady stuff or whatever, makes them bow in front of the webcam, like all the way down.

Speaker 1:
[10:04] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[10:05] In Korea, you show respect, you bow, bow down, lower, lower, lower. You bow, Josh, to show respect.

Speaker 4:
[10:13] Yes, I respect you very much.

Speaker 3:
[10:18] Lower the bow, bigger the respect.

Speaker 4:
[10:23] Got it. Yes.

Speaker 3:
[10:28] Oh, man, that's really triggering. I mean, that was one of my corporal punishments as a kid. But even as I'm looking at that, I'm thinking about, not only have I seen it before, to your point Aisha, but the idea that the two representations of Asian women in the show are as the sort of really cold, icy dragon lady, the chairwoman, and then this really kind of-

Speaker 2:
[10:47] Sexy Anjanu.

Speaker 3:
[10:48] Sexy Anjanu, played by the amazing Zhang Suiyang, very intelligent, but also very flexible. And I just feel like- Yeah, Eunice, exactly. And I feel like, why are these the two representations of Asian women? When in the first show, you have Ali Wong, who is amazing. She's just an ordinary person with ordinary beefs, right? But not Eunice, who is the translator for the most powerful women in the world, according to everybody, right? She influences political elections, we hear it, we see it, to the point that I just feel like, why is this even a thing? And the Carey Mulligan character also is such a difficult character to like, especially after an event that happens pretty early on for me. There are certain things that people do in shows or movies that it takes a lot for them to come back from.

Speaker 2:
[11:39] It's like, okay, now I can't access this.

Speaker 3:
[11:41] Exactly, I just don't know that there's forgiveness for this in my heart, you know? And so, do I need to forgive all the characters? Do I need to like, of course not, of course not. I like ambiguous films, I like Candy Ears, I like all this stuff, but really, the entire character of Austin, I don't entirely understand his motivations. I don't understand why he's doing whatever. I thought he was gonna be the sweet kid who has regrets, but then he takes full advantage of the situation that he's in, but then he doesn't and he wants to do the right thing, but then he doesn't and he wants to... I guess I don't need characters to be black and white, but I do need characters to not be so divided, right? So like, you know, he's like...

Speaker 1:
[12:16] There's definitely a tonal whiplash going on there.

Speaker 3:
[12:18] Yeah, he reminds me of Two-Face in the Batman comics, right? It's like, you know, I would not have been surprised if he pulled out like a scarred quarter at some point, just started flipping it. He took a side, what do you think he's gonna be for that episode?

Speaker 2:
[12:30] It very much seemed like he was the sort of voice of reason when Ashley was like sort of cooking up these like, you know, cockamamie schemes. You know, he seemed to be when he had this like, obviously like very intense flirtation with Eunice. He felt really guilty about it. Ashley sort of suggested him that he could pretend to be physical therapist, a licensed physical therapist, which he was not. And at first he was like, this is nuts. I can't pretend.

Speaker 1:
[12:51] This is illegal.

Speaker 2:
[12:52] Yeah, exactly. I'm gonna get in trouble, right? And then very quickly he sort of turns, which I can get like, he's like, oh, he sees like this nice life he can have. Like, you know, but it felt like, to your point, like he kept being the naive voice of reason. And also, you know, he wasn't working when she was like, grounded, you know, but like, I do think he's like, there are a bunch of his line readings that suggest that he's like more savvy. There's a bunch of stuff that suggests that he's not a complete rube. You know what I'm saying?

Speaker 1:
[13:17] I think his character holds a little bit more emotional intelligence than he does, like, practical.

Speaker 2:
[13:23] Actual practical intelligence, yeah, for sure.

Speaker 1:
[13:26] To me, he was like the most emotionally intelligent person on this show. And he made some mistakes, but he's also supposed to be, you know, pretty young. And some of that you could chalk up to inexperience or just like not being out in the world in a way.

Speaker 2:
[13:40] I don't even know that where this fits in the conversation. I just thought it was like a funny sort of like, oh, these kids don't know anything. When she's like, when they let the couple know that they have this video of them and this horrible sort of scene, they're in the car driving away, and she's like, 45K, 10 days paid vacation, f***ing health insurance.

Speaker 4:
[13:59] We're set.

Speaker 2:
[14:00] We are set for life.

Speaker 4:
[14:02] For sure.

Speaker 2:
[14:02] We're living the dream. And he's like, I feel like we could have got a little bit bored from that. Yeah. From that.

Speaker 4:
[14:09] I just wonder if maybe we could have gotten something from me, too. You know?

Speaker 2:
[14:16] Oh.

Speaker 4:
[14:17] I'm just now realizing that we didn't even think about that.

Speaker 2:
[14:20] Do you want to go back?

Speaker 4:
[14:21] It's too late now.

Speaker 2:
[14:23] I was like, oh man. I was just like, I just remember when I got my first job at the New York Times a million years ago, and it was basically that. And I was like, oh, you can't tell me nothing. You know what I mean?

Speaker 1:
[14:32] That was incredibly realistic and just shows how, especially younger people are just encouraged to just like take the first thing you get. And I mean, yes, is Blackmail not a good book? Sure. But also if you're going to do it, do it right. And I wanted more for them.

Speaker 3:
[14:54] I don't know that you can show introspection that easily at that point. And I think the same goes with this other character, Whoosh, who's played by a big star.

Speaker 1:
[15:04] He's a rapper, right? Yeah. He's played by a rapper named BM. And Whoosh is like, we come to find out he has a connection with Chairwoman Park.

Speaker 3:
[15:15] And when you talk about F Boys, that's really just what he's there for, to take off his shirt and provide whatever. And I feel like this is very broad. This is very broad. And you're sticking these people into these categories. And ultimately, it's not that interesting. You've got really serious actors. You know, my favorite part of it maybe is the part where it involves psychedelics. And you know, Oscar Isaac is phenomenal.

Speaker 2:
[15:38] That Achilles heel is just going to give out.

Speaker 4:
[15:42] And you're going to fall. And you're going to grasp at everyone around you. But it's too late.

Speaker 2:
[15:51] You're going down.

Speaker 3:
[15:52] It's phenomenal. And I feel like we've missed something here to either go all the way in or to back out and make it a different kind of drama. But what they try to do in the middle is sort of like, you know, when the Brady Bunch goes on vacation and they find the haunted thing. It feels like this to me, like a late sitcom, where I'm out of ideas. Hey, somebody get on the phone to Phineas. Is he available? Just make a cameo real quick.

Speaker 1:
[16:14] Yeah, there's a lot of cameos in this season.

Speaker 2:
[16:17] Those are the things, the moments I was like most taken out of the sort of the current of the show was when random celebrities popped up. At first I was like, wait, is that Baron Davis? Like, why is there a former Golden State Warrior here? That's so random. And then the scene in which this happens is like a high stakes poker game. And they wanted to sort of signal to us, the audience, that these are a bunch of high rollers, including a bunch of celebrities and very well-known athletes.

Speaker 1:
[16:41] It's giving that early scene in Ocean's Eleven, where it's like Topher Grace and a bunch of other people.

Speaker 2:
[16:47] A thousand percent.

Speaker 3:
[16:49] I've seen some Sunset Boulevards with a card game with all the old silencers.

Speaker 1:
[16:53] Yes, yeah.

Speaker 2:
[16:54] This scene would have worked fine without the wooden line deliveries from Baron Davis and Michael Phelps, and later Suni Lee. It felt very like when the sitcoms where somebody was randomly coming in, like whoo.

Speaker 1:
[17:07] When Biggie shows up in Martin.

Speaker 2:
[17:09] Biggie on Martin, exactly. Biggie on Martin. They didn't have Suni Lee for no reason whatsoever do a backbend, flip over. It's like, wait, what is happening right now?

Speaker 1:
[17:19] Got to make sure everyone knows who she is, just in case they don't realize she's in an Olympic.

Speaker 2:
[17:25] At one point he says, I loved you at the Paris Olympics. That was right on the nose. Oh my God.

Speaker 4:
[17:31] It's an honor. You were incredible at the Paris Olympics.

Speaker 2:
[17:35] Thank you.

Speaker 4:
[17:36] So Josh says that you'll work with my team to get me right for LA.

Speaker 3:
[17:38] Well, and also beyond that though, there's this implication that he's able to, this master of treachery, Austin, is able to fool a professional athlete non-who-fully, and this world-class professional athlete is saying, yeah, yeah, all right.

Speaker 2:
[17:54] That's legit, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1:
[17:56] I mean, you'd be surprised, you'd be surprised how someone being as attractive as Charles Melton, how much they can get away with. Like, even with the world-class athlete, like, I don't know, you know. I mean, I think that's the silliness, right? I mean, for me, where I liked the show the most and where I wish it had kind of focused more on overall, is the relationships, and when it was really honing in on the fact that these two couples, they start off seemingly to be very different, you know, different generations. One is very doe-eyed and like the younger couple is like, they don't know anything, you know, and they're like, oh, we're in love. And it's like, girl, you've known this guy, how long? And then the older couple who's jaded and whatnot. And the fact that they both are trying to convince themselves, like even after Josh and Lindsay, you know, the Carey Mulligan and Oscar Isaac character have their big, big spat at the beginning, right after they're kind of trying to convince themselves, oh, this is normal, people fight. That to me is interesting. It's like the delusions that we tell ourselves in relationships and how that might go head to head with both like this couple's needs and wants and this couple's needs and wants. And like how that beef could really sort of like cause that tension. And you see it here and there. I think for me, the strongest episode is the one where they're in the hospital, the ER waiting room. That's when the show starts to get really kind of tiptoe into the surrealist territory where weird things are happening and they don't really explain it. That was when I felt like the Austin and Ashley character were really locked in in terms of like how their relationship was falling apart and how they were both kind of clinging to this idea of what it could be. But then you also have like this example of how Josh, the Oscar Isaac character is able to like continue that beef that is happening in a way that is absolutely like devastating and awful, more awful maybe than anything that happened in season one. I don't know, it depends on how you feel about it. But like the way he's able to wield his power and his proximity to money to harm them is just really devastating. And I kind of wanted more of that.

Speaker 4:
[20:02] Delete the videos or I'm going to walk away right now. Are you seriously toying with my health right now? You're toying with your health right now. I don't need your help you boomer.

Speaker 2:
[20:11] And maybe that's why that episode was so, I thought so effective to me because there was enough sort of more ambiguity on both of those characters in a way that is maybe not true to your points for the rest of the season.

Speaker 3:
[20:22] Such a good episode, yeah, totally, to both your points. I love the ambiguity of that. I love the fraughtness of it. And I also love how smart that episode is. And the show occasionally is really smart about identifying exactly what's wrong with us right now and all the things that we're actually worried about. It does have its finger on the pulse sometimes. But it seems like the ultimate moral of this is like, go along to get along is the ultimate moral of this thing. And I think that maybe misreads the temperature of the room a little bit. I think people are filling the streets right now not to go along with billionaires. I think there is a problem now that we're recognizing that we put these people in positions of power who don't deserve it. And yet it seems like the show is kind of nihilistic in that sense where it says, hey, ultimately money will corrupt you, you become what you hate the most and then you're satisfied, you want to keep it.

Speaker 1:
[21:11] Which is a tale as old as time. We know this.

Speaker 3:
[21:15] Full circle. What did I learn from this? People on the margins are desperate.

Speaker 1:
[21:20] Noted.

Speaker 3:
[21:21] Got it.

Speaker 1:
[21:21] Noted.

Speaker 3:
[21:21] Got it. Thank you. I got this.

Speaker 1:
[21:24] Well, it sounds like we all had varying reactions to the show. Season two is not quite as juicy as season one was, but we enjoyed it. We had a good time. Definitely recommend checking it out.

Speaker 3:
[21:37] Well, look, I was uncomfortable by it, but I couldn't stop watching it. So he pulls you in and you kind of want to find out what happens.

Speaker 1:
[21:42] That brings us to the end of our show. Gene Denby, Walter Chow, thanks so much for being here. This was very fun.

Speaker 2:
[21:48] Appreciate you, Isaac.

Speaker 3:
[21:49] All right.

Speaker 2:
[21:50] Thanks for having us.

Speaker 1:
[21:50] And just a reminder, signing up for Pop Culture Happy Hour Plus is a perfect way to support our show and public radio. And you get to listen to all of our episodes sponsor free. So go find out more at plus.npr.org/happyhour or visit the link in our show notes. This episode was produced by Liz Metzger, Hafsa Fatima and Mike Katsef and edited by our show runner Jessica Reedy. Hello Come In provides our theme music. Thanks for listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. I'm Aisha Harris. We'll see you all next time.