Today I will be doing a spoiler-free review of BEEF. This was a limited series on Netflix and only 10 episodes long, but it was a fantastically told story and has so many layers to it. This show follows two strangers who get involved in a road rage incident with each other, which brings chaos down on each other’s lives. The two main characters in this show are Amy Lau, played by Ali Wong, and Danny Cho, played by Steven Yeun. Amy is of the elite rich and lives with her husband, daughter, and wealthy mother-in-law. She also is a business owner whose main goal throughout the show is trying to sell her store so she can stay at home with her husband and daughter all the time. Danny however, is of the working class who is fighting for everything he gets. He runs his own contracting business that is not doing well, and he is very frustrated throughout the show with his financial situation which leads him to do crazy things to fix it. This is because his main goal is to buy land and be able to build his parents a house in America, however,r with his business not doing well, he has a hard time getting the money to do this, which leads him to make some repetitive bad decisions.
While all of this is going on throughout the show, the two main characters keep getting involved in each other’s lives in crazy and different ways. All of this leads to their families getting involved and getting hurt because of their actions and what they’ve done. This show also does a great job at diving into the characters’ pasts and explaining why they’ve become the way that they are. For the most part, each episode is 45-50 minutes long, and they make great use of that runtime in each episode. There isn’t one episode where I thought anything was really dragging, and the writers did a fantastic job at getting good use out of every minute they had. The performances of the leads in this have to be talked about as well. Both Yeun and Wong absolutely kill it in this, but for me the best performance was Wong. She portrays this really complex character so well in both her good and (mostly) bad. Even the side characters like Young Mazino, who is Paul’s younger brother, and Joseph Lee, who is Amy’s husband both do a great job at pushing the story forward.
I always rate shows and I rate them based on 10 things in the show. Those things are: acting, cinematography, pacing, score, comedy, side characters, ending, plot, main character, and dialogue. I gave this show an 87/100, and as I’ve said throughout this whole review it’s very good, led by two great performances and a never stopping plot that has many twists and turns throughout. Comedy usage is very good as well and the layers this story has is unmatched. One of Netflix’s better releases of the 2020s so far.
