‘Beef’ review: Ali Wong and Steven Yeun play LA drivers whose road rage spirals into a battle royale

Nina Metz | Chicago Tribune

Two strangers let their road rage get the best of them in “Beef,” the 10-episode series from Netflix starring Ali Wong and Steven Yeun as a pair of hotheaded Angelenos locked in a battle royale that spirals out of control.

Their mutual reign of terror begins in the parking lot of a home improvement store. He’s backing his pickup truck out of a spot. She drives by in a gleaming white SUV, nearly hitting him — or he nearly hits her. They’re probably both wrong! No harm, no foul, you’d think. Except she lays on the horn for an aggressive length of time, flips him the bird and peels off. That’s all the provocation he needs to floor the gas pedal in pursuit.

That initial encounter is bad enough. But their feud takes on a new dimension when they figure out one another’s home addresses. Destruction and total annihilation become the goal, no matter the personal cost. Created by Lee Sung Jin and styled as an uneasy comedy of bad manners and even worse personal instincts, I admire the show and also found it pinged all my anxiety receptors.

Its two stars have said they experienced much the same, but these are terrific performances full of uncomfortable nuances. His toxic insecurities smashing up against his desire for validation. Her dissatisfied striving smashing up against her wonderful tenderness with her young daughter. There’s a lot of humanity in their increasingly ridiculous behavior.

In one corner, you have Wong as the well-to-do entrepreneur named Amy, who is looking to sell her upscale plant boutique to a major buyer. She just needs to close the deal, which is proving elusive. That’s created all kinds of stress in her life. In the other corner, you have Yeun as an ambitious if socially maladroit contractor named Danny who is struggling to get work. That’s created all kinds of stress in his life. He’s not a bad guy, but not a particularly good guy either. He’s often his own worst enemy.

Neither Amy nor Danny move through life seeing slights around every corner. The slights are most definitely there. But this hasn’t made them into rage machines at home. Instead, they’ve each been suppressing some deep-seated unhappiness and barely keeping it together. That conflict in that parking lot is just the excuse they need to open the floodgates. If the 1993 Michael Douglas exercise in anger mismanagement known as “Falling Down” comes to mind, well, you’re not that far off.

I respect “Beef” more than I enjoyed the experience of watching it, but it is wonderfully compelling. And importantly, it doesn’t play out like a piece of intellectual property destined to be rebooted and spun off, which feels like a singular accomplishment in a TV landscape that prioritizes franchises over original ideas.

Some key choices stand out, both good and bad. The story abruptly changes tone as it nears its climax, abandoning its dark but very disciplined and measured absurdity to embrace something far more over the top — so much so that the last two episodes fail to add or deepen the themes already established. This throws off the pacing and I actually thought Episode 9 was the finale until “next episode” popped up in the corner of my screen. The show just doesn’t stick the landing.

But it’s incredibly smart and wily in other ways. All the main characters are Asian, including Amy’s husband (a wonderfully guileless Joseph Lee) and Danny’s fast-talking bad influence of a cousin (an entertainingly slippery David Choe). This feels both subversive and entirely believable — why wouldn’t everyone in their social circles be Asian, from their church community to their couples therapist? There’s just one lone white person in their orbit, played by Maria Bello as the frenemy billionaire whose passive-aggressive taunts Amy must swallow if she wants to sell her company. It’s a dynamic that presents a complex commentary all its own, especially in the kind of subservience Bello’s character tacitly demands.

Both Amy and Danny are a mess, but I understand her issues more than his. She’s let her problems and dissatisfaction eat away at her better instincts. Whereas he’s constitutionally incapable of making good choices. As children of immigrants, both have complicated family histories that have shaped how they see the world — and how they see themselves. Real class divisions fuel this fight, but they share a taste for transgression. They have so much in common, and maybe that’s the crux of it: They’re equally self-destructive.

It’s easy to feel beaten down these days. We’re powerless against larger forces that are responsible for so many of the rigged systems we’re stuck with, and here’s a portrait of two people who take their frustrations out on each other instead.

It’s a coping strategy destined to blow up in their faces while the real enemy gets off scot-free.

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‘BEEF’

3 stars (out of 4)

Rating: TV-MA

How to watch: Netflix

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