SPOILER ALERT: This essay contains spoilers for Beef season 2.
It took me way too long to finish the second season of Beef on Netflix. Every time I sat down to watch it, I would tire in the middle of an episode, nothing having to do with the quality of the show, but instead with the heavy themes of capitalism and Marxism that Lee Sung Jin, the creator, went to lengths to explore. And every time, my brain was too wary, my body too tired, to focus on it the way the show deserves.
Beef focuses on two couples: an older couple Josh (Oscar Isaac) & Lindsay (Carey Mulligan) and a younger one, Austin (Charles Melton) & Ashley (Caileey Spaeny). Josh and Lindsay have spent years chasing proximity to wealth and status and move to California to run a prestigious country club that caters to the 1 percent. Austin and Ashley are deep in the kind of naïve, all-encompassing, idyllic infatuation that only young love can produce. They don’t have much, but at least they have each other.
Wh…
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Digestifs to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.