Beef Season 2 Review: Oscar Isaac and Carey Mulligan Are TV's Next Great Hell Marriage

[The following contains spoilers for Season 2 of Beef.]

Considering that the words "limited series" have basically lost all meaning, it's easy — and justified — to be cynical about Beef's second season. Lee Sung Jin's Netflix series premiered in 2023 as a two-hander, starring Steven Yeun and Ali Wong, about a road rage event that spiraled wildly out of control. In Season 1, the show often got away from itself, drifting from the story it seemed to actually want to tell about a pair of lonely people who found an unexpected rage-fueled connection, padded with a number of underbaked subplots that never really went anywhere satisfying. It was obvious that there was a great show in there somewhere. Beef has since been retooled from a limited series to an anthology, and in a bigger, more focused Season 2, that great show has finally revealed itself.

If Beef Season 1 felt like watching an unsupervised pot repeatedly boil over, the second season operates at a well-maintained simmer. Season 2 begins with another inciting rage incident; this time, a pair of low-level country club employees (played by Charles Melton and Cailee Spaeny) catch their boss and his wife (played by Oscar Isaac and Carey Mulligan) in the middle of a vicious and seemingly violent argument. While Austin (Melton) and Ashley (Spaeny) are taken aback by the sight of Josh (Isaac) and Lindsay (Mulligan) screaming obscenities at each other, Beef makes it clear that this is far from the first time the older couple have fought like this. It's such old hat for them that their first reaction to the Zoomers spotting them is incredulity: "That was f---ing weird," Josh chuckles. But it shakes something in the younger ones, a somewhat airheaded engaged couple who seem to be almost cosplaying their way through adulthood, hardly able to fathom the idea of fighting with each other, let alone with such rancor.

It's one of the season's many brilliant methods of addressing the generational divide between the two couples. Ashley had the foresight to record the fight on her phone but demurs at Austin's suggestion to take it to the police, afraid of losing her job. Then again, working the beverage cart doesn't give her health insurance, and a disconcerting piece of medical news makes her reconsider her own morals. Maybe, she reasons, there's a way to use this evidence to her and Austin's benefit. The video is revisited often, quickly becoming the season's smoking gun, even as the conflict inflates well beyond that initial argument. Josh and Lindsay can't risk it getting out and destroying their tenuous standing at the club (when the season opens, Josh's contract as general manager hasn't been renewed), while Ashley and Austin are under the impression that the Martíns hold more power (and wealth) than they actually do. When Josh is blackmailed into promoting Ashley to a position she's neither qualified nor prepared for, Ashley is alternately surprised by and oblivious to the fallout the staff shuffling has caused. In securing a future for herself, Ashley has actively made the lives of others harder. Nothing is without consequence. This is the fascinating push and pull of Beef.

As he did in Season 1, Lee expands on his interest in themes of marriage dynamics and class disparity. Those ideas are threaded together here even more elegantly than they were the first time around. Season 2 has eight episodes compared to Season 1's ten, and trimming the fat has formed a more cohesive and tighter paced show. It all comes together to create an overarching story about perception: how these characters perceive each other, how they're perceived by outsiders, how they wish they were perceived, how they perceive themselves. Even what Austin and Ashley think they saw through the window of Josh and Lindsay's home isn't entirely accurate, with Josh's seemingly menacing wielding of a golf club making the younger couple paint him in the abusive husband role, though Lindsay had been the one smashing Josh's belongings moments before their employees showed up.

9.3

Beef

at Netflix

Like

• All four leads are exceptional
• The pacing and storytelling are excellent
• It justifies its own existence

Dislike

• Suffers from some of the same inconsistent stylistic choices as Season 1

As a backdrop to the action, the Monte Vista Port Country Club is as aspirational as it is grotesque. Josh astutely refers to the club as "the land of make-believe," but that awareness doesn't extend to a willingness to admit how replaceable he is in the lives of those he caters to at work each day. He speaks about them as if they're his close friends, though they're only using him to get a few rounds of free golf. It's what sets off that initial fight between Josh and Lindsay: He wishes she were more satisfied with their lives, while she's repulsed by him behaving as if he is satisfied. The subtext gets louder as the season progresses: Josh wishes Lindsay were better at pretending, and Lindsay wishes that he had enough backbone to walk away. "We had dinner with Bono," he shouts, to which she replies, "You're staff. You're an employee. They pay you to be around." The series' frequently kooky sense of humor makes all that ennui go down well, spinning everyday tragedy into farcical comedy.

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All four leads are outstanding, and the razor-sharp writing gives them plenty to tear into, but the season belongs to a never better Isaac. He gives a knockout performance from beginning to end, exceptional as an unendingly pathetic man whose white-knuckled grasp on sanity loosens with each episode. Like Yeun's Danny before him, Josh is an incredible loser, a perpetually clocked-in, pathologically avoidant pushover who spouts corporate-adjacent platitudes in the cadence of a LinkedIn post as he flashes increasingly pained smiles at the oblivious clientele. He takes work calls well into the night and regularly picks up tabs he can't afford, all in service of what he believes is the reward of easy access to CEOs and Olympic athletes and accomplished doctors, none of whom actually respect him. Here, Isaac deploys his entire bag of tricks, playing Josh's growing mania with mesmerizing intensity. As the season progresses and Josh's decision making grows erratic, his greatest tell is how the pressure begins to crack his veneer of bland professionalism, his eyes becoming bloodshot, a vein in his forehead bulging.

It's a blast to watch Isaac feud with Spaeny (Josh's eye-rolling dismissal of Ashley as "stupid" is a perfect encapsulation of his character, a man on the bottom who can't help kicking the person below him), and fascinating to see how the show contrasts Josh and Austin's experiences with casual racism. (Josh barely blinks when William Fichtner's Troy calls him "amigo," while the half-Korean Austin reacts with disgust after being asked if he's ever dated an Asian girl — it would be like dating his mom, after all.) But it's Josh and Lindsay who form the season's most honest connection, and the volcanic chemistry between Isaac and Mulligan (in their third on-screen collaboration, following 2011's Drive and 2013's Inside Llewyn Davis) is impossible to look away from. Josh is the type of guy who never breaks at work, while Lindsay is the type of woman to maintain her cool English demeanor at all costs. Money — their pursuit of it, their lack of it, their desperation for it — colors their every interaction. The brunt of their individual, deep-seated misery only comes out when they're alone in their unfinished, half-decorated home (as good a metaphor for their marriage as any), with only their beloved dachshund Burberry bearing witness to their squabbling.

Lee has credited The Sopranos as a reference for Beef's second season, which is of course the highest possible bar to clear in terms of creating television, almost a double-edged sword in itself. A Sopranos reference signifies excellent taste but creates unrealistic expectations. And yet this is the rare occasion where holding Josh and Lindsay up next to Tony and Carmela actually makes for a favorable comparison. Is there anything more richly compelling than meeting an unhappy TV couple and knowing by the end of Episode 1 that they're never really breaking up? What's divorce to two people who know each other inside and out?

Through a wild plot involving the club's new billionaire owner (Oscar winner Youn Yuh-jung at her most menacing), money laundering, and mysterious death, the season borrows plenty of crime elements from The Sopranos as well, especially in the final two episodes. (Though a highly choreographed fight sequence seems more inspired by Looney Tunes than by David Chase.) But Beef builds to it so efficiently that the genre jumping feels as surprising as it does inevitable. The show bakes telling observations about its characters into those big, highly stylized moments, giving the season the intimate feel of a chamber piece even as it jumps from swanky location to swanky location.

Really, Beef Season 2 is a study of three relationships. Josh and Lindsay's is long lasting and genuine; they see each other plainly and can't stand each other as a result. Austin and Ashley, only a year and a half into being together, don't see each other at all but are great at substituting flowery therapy speak for real affection. Chairwoman Park (Youn) and her younger surgeon husband, Dr. Kim (the great Song Kang-ho), are under very few delusions about the transactional nature of their union but still hope for easy joy where they can find it. "In your second marriage, you're not looking to be in love with someone," Dr. Kim says late in the season. "You're looking to love life with someone." Beef digs deepest into Josh and Lindsay's marriage, but we still get plenty of focus on how all of these people deal with (or don't deal with) stress placed on the relationship.

There are things worth picking at, certainly — that hard pivot to crime thriller won't be for everyone, and Lee has not fully shirked his tendency to inconsistently pepper in elements of surrealism — but by the time the credits roll on the finale, all gripes can be easily shrugged away. The journey there is so rewardingly, ambitiously confident. Beef pushes forward at its own rhythm, allowing its big ideas to bump up against each other. Sometimes they make for a jagged fit, but the imperfection is part of this show's charm. In that way, it's a bit like marriage.

Premieres: Thursday, April 16 on Netflix
Who's in it: Oscar Isaac, Carey Mulligan, Charles Melton, Cailee Spaeny, Youn Yuh-jung, Song Kang-ho, William Fichtner, Mikaela Hoover
Who's behind it: Lee Sung Jin (creator)
For fans of: Beef Season 1, The Sopranos, hell marriages
How many episodes we watched: 8 of 8