After a whopping three year wait, Beef is back on Netflix. While the increasingly psychotic revenge actions of Amy (Ali Wong) and Danny (Steven Yeun) from season 1 will be forever etched in our memories, it's great to have a fresh take on the human response to anger from the all-new season 2 cast.
Airing from April 16 on the streamer, Beef season 2 centres on relationships. Low-level country club staff members Austin (Charles Melton) and Ashley (Cailee Spaeny,) are one couple in the young and naive flush of their relationship.
When they witness a huge fight between their bosses Josh (Oscar Isaac) and his wife, Lindsay (Carey Mulligan,) Austin and Ashley's lack of understanding about how relationships evolve and can sour, sparks the 'beef' of the show.
A third couple get some airtime while the beef plays out, in the form of the Monte Vista Point country club's new owner, Chairwoman Park (Youn Yuh-jung), who’s having her own marriage struggles to her second husband, Doctor Kim (Song Kang-ho).
The innocent way Ashley and Austin's love has no understanding of how life stages and the pressure of marriage can impact how people live, throw the apparent "total lack of respect" of Josh and Lindsay's relationship into even sharper light.
Carey Mulligan delved deep into the dynamic of her on-screen character and her husband, in conversation with Extra TV. "You're meeting them at their worst, and this doesn't massively improve," she says.
The actress shares that the couple once had the same perfect, all-encompassing love as their younger nemeses, but that's now long gone. "They now don't have filters in the way they speak to each other, and there's a massive loss of respect on both sides," she explains.
However wild and ugly the couple's connection might've become, Carey also believes viewers might see their own midlife relationships reflected back at them, and feel less alone in their own challenging marriages while tuning in.
"You've got grace for these characters in the end, you've got hope that none of them are irredeemable," she says.
Carey adds, "Ultimately, as annoying as they are, they're flawed and aren't we all flawed?" she asks, continuing, "We're all just trying to figure out how to do this," suggesting that viewers will likely empathise rather than judge the characters by the end of the show.
Poignantly, series creator and showrunner Lee Sung Jin sums up just how relationship timelines play out in real life. He tells tells Tudum, "Each generation starts off thinking that they’ll never become what they see in the older generation."
"But with the passage of time and the pressures of capitalism, each generation soon discovers why the older generations are the way they are."
Beef season 2 airs on Netflix from April 16.
