- by Peter Farmer
- The Guardian
- Issue #2200
On one level, road rage is pretty silly. Someone cut you off, or indicated after they changed lanes. Some ratbag was on their phone instead of looking at the traffic, so you missed the green light they would have gone through if they’d been paying attention.
These things are annoying, but not life-changing. You’re going to get to where you’re going anyway. Why waste perfectly good fury on a stranger you’re going to forget about by tomorrow?
There must be something else going on in the lives of those people who take it further and start fights – or even vendettas over a traffic incident.
That’s the premise of Beef. Beef as in an angry dispute, not part of the cow you can eat.
Amy Lau (Ali Wong) has a honking fit after Danny Cho (Steven Yuen) almost reverses into her car. She stops and gives him the finger before driving off. The feud escalates from there, getting crazier as the show goes on. Both have their reasons, and in both cases it’s capitalism US style that’s got them leading such strained existences that the increasingly insane feud is a relief. The pressure to get ahead and make it is palpable in this show. It’s always funny, but there’s no let-up from the pressure both main characters are under. Beef is not a relaxing experience.
Class is always an issue with the wealthier ones treating working people with contempt while treating each other with suspicion and fear at the possibility of falling into the working class.
Danny is trying to get his Korean family to move to the US. In this quest, he’s up against a dishonest cousin, a lazy and sulky younger brother who spends all his time on games, and chronic insecurity as a handyman for hostile and distrustful rich people.
Amy, who is of Chinese-Vietnamese heritage, looks like the rich one, with her nice car and fancy house. However, she has her own pressures. She’s under constant stress because her hostile Japanese mother-in-law demands perfection for their young daughter, while her husband George doesn’t help, beyond producing hideous sculptures she’s expected to sell in her gallery.
George is a wealthy spoiled man who’s a poster boy for ‘toxic positivity.’ The first time Amy tries to tell him about the road rage incident, he stops her short and tells her that they need to start “gratitude journalling’ again. He and his mother want Amy’s child to compete in every area, while Amy just wants her to be a child.
Both Amy and Danny have to suck it up with a smile in a competitive and atomised US system. Danny is basically a handyman who’d like to be something else. He calls himself a ‘contractor’ instead because it sounds classier.
There’s a lot of racism through cluelessness, with Amy being told that she’s “got that Zen Buddhist thing going on” by a patronising rich white woman.
Season Two attempts that difficult trick, continuing the premise without the original protagonists. The ubiquitous Carey Mulligan and her husband are two wealthy Californians who face blackmail from a poorer couple.
The US health system, responsible for so much misery as well as a few seasons of Breaking Bad, plays a part in compelling people to make horrendous choices under pressures they wouldn’t face in a country that put its people ahead of profit.
The creators pull it off reasonably well for Season 2 but this viewer missed Amy and Danny.
Beef is streaming on Netflix.
