Beef Season 2 Review: Netflix Show Didn’t Need A Second Run

Netflix finally released the long-awaited second instalment of its hit rage drama Beef last week, with the series quickly rising to the top spot of the streamer’s most-watched TV shows, according to its public ranking system.

Season one of the Emmy-winning series starred Steven Yeun and Ali Wong as two strangers who turn a road-rage incident into a long, fury-filled feud. The 2023 series racked up awards for its writing and performances.

The second iteration features a new cast and a whole new beef, in which a struggling Gen Z couple goes head-to-head against a well-to-do millennial married couple in a blackmail saga.

Oscar Isaac stars as Josh, the general manager of a country club, who’s at odds with his wife, Lindsay (played Carey Mulligan), in season two’s opening scene. Two of the country club’s employees — Cailee Spaeny’s Ashley and Charles Melton’s Austin — catch Josh and Lindsay’s big fight on camera, and so ensues the beef that drives the season.

On top of that, the billionaire owner of that same club, Chairwoman Park (the latest screen outing for Oscar winner Youn Yuh-jung), is trying to cover up a big mess dealing with her husband, Dr. Kim (played by Song Kang-ho), and gets everyone entangled in that mess.

We’ve watched all of season two – and these are our thoughts about the show…

I thought the ensemble cast for season two was quite a mixed bag when Netflix first announced it, but given the millennial-versus-Gen Z plot, it makes sense now.

Oscar Isaac, Carey Mulligan, Charles Melton and Cailee Spaeny all give great performances. Cailee’s Ashley is an absolute menace by the end of the season, which I’m sure was the whole point of her character’s arc, but the actor played a clingy, controlling girlfriend well. I’m still thinking about those scenes on the planes where she loses it. Oscar was great, too, at flipping the switch between calm and unhinged with his character, especially in his scenes with Carey’s Lindsay.

The real standout for me was Youn Yuh-jung as Chairwoman Park. She was the perfect unexpected villain in this scenario. I have my qualms about season two’s story, but this cast wasn’t half-bad. — Njera

Out of the main cast, I was really only familiar with Charles Melton’s work, specifically his incredible turn opposite Julianne Moore in May December. So he was an exciting lead for me.

I’m still sitting with how I felt about Cailee Spaeny, Carey Mulligan and Oscar Isaac — mostly because their characters were so terrible that I can’t imagine saying anything “good” about them. But yes, I guess that is the whole point. We’re seeing the worst of people in this show — but I just can’t help but keep comparing their character arcs and personalities to the first season’s leads. They just didn’t grab me as much as I thought they should.

That said, I can’t praise Song Kang-ho and Youn Yuh-jung’s performances enough. Make them the leads in another, better Netflix series! — Erin

Charles Melton. Listen, I hated that his character was ridiculous and annoying. But he is so hot that I overlooked it during every moment that he did something questionable. I also loved Youn Yuh-jung and Song Kang-ho’s performances as Chairwoman Park and Dr. Kim. If the series had been focused more on them, I probably would have enjoyed it more. — Erin

Charles Melton’s Austin was probably my least favourite at the start of the season, simply because I couldn’t take him being the idiot boyfriend to Cailee Spaeny’s Ashley. However, I feel like he did his job because he played the role convincingly, and he may not have been as dumb as he seemed by the end!

Honestly, everyone’s characters pissed me off the whole show for different reasons, but I still think the actors delivered great performances.

The comedic moments are what really kept me tapped into season two, like when Lindsay went after that coyote trying to save poor Burberry (Lindsay and Josh’s dog) in the woods. Or when Austin thought “misc” on an invoice was a typo for “mist”. Austin’s ditzy moments actually had me screaming. He was the highlight of the show for me. — Njera

My biggest complaint about this second season is how incredibly overstuffed the story feels, from the plot itself to the many characters the show forces us to follow.

We start off with the basic inciting event: Ashley and Austin witness a horrific fight between Josh and Lindsay and capture it on video. They then use that footage to blackmail their boss and his wife to get Ashley health insurance and a promotion with a pay bump – nothing yet for Austin, as he points out.

But then the story unravels into all kinds of mayhem that goes far beyond each couple’s relationship turmoil and their “beefs” with each other. What starts off as a character study of these four peculiar individuals becomes some kind of suspenseful corporate thriller when the show turns its focus toward a third couple: the country club’s billionaire owner, Chairwoman Park, and her much younger husband, plastic surgeon Dr. Kim. We get into the flaws of their relationship as well, but the main focus is on the death that Chairwoman Park is trying to cover up after her husband accidentally kills a patient during surgery at their clinic in Korea. She has to pay off all the clinic employees to keep them quiet and used the country club to clean said hush money.

Somehow, this turns into a money laundering scheme/conspiracy, and while entertaining, this is where the show started to lose me. It felt so far removed from what the original premise was that it no longer felt like a follow-up to Season 1. Granted, it is an anthology series, so I knew season two wasn’t going to replicate everything from the first season, but it felt like the show tried so hard to top its breakout success that it got away from itself.

Beef season one wasn’t perfect, but there’s a reason why it resonated with so many viewers. It tapped into themes and ideas that the average disgruntled person could relate to. Season two has its moments as well, though more often than not, it trades them for wildly ridiculous plots that don’t amount to any great revelations. The finale is proof of that. — Njera

Season one of Beef was one of the top shows of 2023. It won eight Emmy Awards, including Outstanding Limited Series, and both its stars won the Outstanding Actor Awards in the limited series categories. Steven Yeun and Ali Wong were incredible leads who you were rooting for even while they were raging against each other. You could feeeeel their energy through the screen.

Unfortunately, that same energy just did not translate for me in season two. Maybe if I’d gone into the show knowing that it’d had a very different feel from season one, I could have adjusted my expectations. But from the first moments of season two, I knew that it was unlikely the show would reach the bar season one set. I imagine it’s pretty hard to replicate that success for any TV show, but season two of Beef felt totally undercooked. — Erin

The first season of Beef immediately grabbed me within the first five minutes of the show. The road-rage incident was the perfect setup — it had action, rage, suspense and you immediately wanted to know where the story was going next. Steven Yeun and Ali Wong were excellent in their roles and proved why that debut season was such a runaway hit.

Season two gets off to a much slower start, and even Josh and Lindsay’s fight didn’t feel as dramatic as it could’ve been. The stakes didn’t feel big enough, not even when they got caught red-handed by Austin and Ashley. The plot sounded boring on paper and played out exactly like I thought it would on screen (before things went haywire).

The season didn’t feel like a drag to me because the action of the Chairwoman Park storyline made up for the parts that were lacking, but if we’re comparing one and two, there’s no competition to me. — Njera

Alison Herman at Variety called it “overcrowded and unfocused” in her review. “But over eight episodes, Beef loses focus and overcrowds this already expanded premise,” Herman writes. “By the closing credits, season two is no longer mainly about the acrimony between its antiheroes and what it brings out from within them.”

Aisha Harris at NPR said ultimately the show is “well done”. “Season two is compelling enough largely because its stars gamely tap into the spirit of the show’s M.O.; at any given moment, each character may reveal the worst of themselves, which looks different for everyone,” Harris writes.

While I agree that each character has some truly terrible personality traits, I’m not convinced it taps into the same modus operandi as the first season and definitely not nearly as well.

Christopher Campbell at Rotten Tomatoes rounded up the early reviews of the season, with most critics saying season two was worth the wait. I totally disagree with that! Maybe if the show didn’t seem so sprawling — six episodes instead of eight, 30 minutes each instead of 45- to 55-minute episodes — it would have felt like less of a time investment for something not nearly as focused as season one.

It’s very interesting to see how mixed the reviews are. But I’m more curious to see what folks have to say about it on social media as more people dig in over the weekend. — Erin

If you’re looking for the same fervour as Season 1, skip it. But if you’re a huge Charles Melton fan, enjoy. — Erin

If espionage thrillers are your jam, you might enjoy the latter half of the season. Might not be the Beef you’re expecting, but it’s quite a series of events. Also, if you tend to get FOMO, you might just want to get this binge-watch out of the way to avoid spoilers on socials. — Njera