Rating: 5/5 stars

Have you ever had those days? Someone steals your parking spot, a bad driver does a hit-and-run on your car or maybe you have things stolen from you. Those days when one bad experience with a stranger comes up again and again are when you wish your worst impulses would happen. “BEEF,” the new mini-series Netflix show by Lee Sung Jin (“Mothman”) turns those moments into something of a meet cute or a hate cute.

The titular leads Danny Cho (Steven Yuan, “The Walking Dead”) and Amy Lau (Ali Wong, “Tuca and Bertie”) meet again and again. Danny’s truck almost ends up backing up into Amy’s SUV and after a chase both memorize each others’ license plates. After the road rage incident in the first episode, both equally petty leads try to escalate the situation and make each other’s lives miserable. In the process of them destroying each other’s lives, the audience learns more about each lead and their struggles with life and depression as there are cathartic comedic moments and dark shameful ones. 

Amy is a high-strung woman who tries to hide the fact that she is barely hiding her anger and stress as a very successful bougie plant brand. She has the perfect life with a caring husband, a little girl and a business. All she wants is to sell plants for millions of dollars to Jordan Forester (Maria Bello, “Grown Ups”). Her home life seems to be a facade.

Ali Wong is a very successful comedian, writer and even an executive producer for “BEEF.” If you have watched any of her comedy specials on Netflix there is a definite parallel in archetypes between her as Ali and Amy. The writing exposes many of her vulnerabilities and it seems to be how she is processing her public divorce from her ex-husband.

Danny Cho is an owner of a failing construction company and handles all the family responsibility. The family motel is shut down because of illegal activity caused by a cousin named Issac (David Cho, “Choe Bros”). His younger brother Paul Cho (Young Mazino, ”Glass”) is supported by him. His only dream is to have enough money to buy land so that his struggling parents back in Korea can live. Familial pressure and depression seems to have accumulated in suicidal tendencies. When we first meet him he is returning a bunch of hibachi grills and a carbon monoxide detector without a receipt.  Danny especially has moments where you want to root for him to leave the beef alone. Again and again his character struggles between being an underdog and a coward specifically with Paul.

At this point both are stressed beyond belief and that incident at Fosters is the spark that sets them off. Unable to let go of any disrespect, both leads want to hurt each other as much as possible. They find out all about each other and aim at the people they love most. Both of them they want the same thing: to live comfortably with their respective families. There is a tension between the two– is it obsession, sexual or romantic? The acting and writing makes the audience guess and in some respects empathize with their awful decisions.

“BEEF” is one of many Asian American all cast movies and shows coming out this year and it is great to see the normalization of those experiences. Showing that not all experiences are monolithic and that race, ethnicity and class are intersectional. The climatic ending, while not gory, is shocking especially since there is not that much violence in a show about revenge.

Image from Netflix via Twitter