REVIEW: Beef Takes Anger Management to a Whole New Level

Beef is a new Netflix dark comedy series that follows two strangers, Danny Cho (Steven Yeun) and Amy Lau (Ali Wong), who are quite the opposites; both are involved in a road rage incident in a Los Angeles parking lot that spirals into an all-out shady, one-up war, that definitely crosses all types of comfortable lines.

Everyone can relate to that one person that makes you blow your steam; the airline check-in counter moving an inch per hour, lost baggage, a dirty Airbnb, and then there’s road rage; hands start waving, and horns start blowing.

While the chance encounter with Amy and Danny is not that serious, they literally don’t catch a glimpse of each other outside of a middle finger flashing, yet they feel their lives are so miserable in each of their own perspectives that the almost violent encounter has tipped them over the edge. Pint-size Amy almost rams her SUV into Danny’s truck with him in it but stops short and drives off just to taunt him and make his life flash before his eyes.

Danny is a struggling side hustle kind of guy, trying to make it in the handyman or construction business as nothing seems to go right for him. He encounters a series of bad luck mixed with thoughts of possibly ending it all. He toggles back and forth with trying to return a handful of propane hibachi grills that the hardware store is really suspicious of on why he actually needs so many.

Amy is an idyllic woman in business. She has the perceived ideal husband, daughter, and friends and lives in a gorgeous home with her perfect white Mercedes SUV, but all isn’t what it seems. Danny and Amy put everything on the line as their “beef” escalates, involving license plate checks, google searches, and address finder apps, entangling their friends and families. People and things start getting hurt and literally damaged and the blend of dark comedy and violence will tantalize your perfect streaming series senses.

Created by Lee Sung Jin (Dave. Undone), Beef is a ten-episode series with each one interwoven into the next, that will keep you not only guessing but jaw-dropped at each sequence of events, with each of the two not realizing that actions have real-life consequences. Danny can’t keep a job and is literally robbing Peter to pay Paul while searching for Amy’s home address from her license plate. Once located he pretends to be a contractor and makes his way into Amy’s home and, before leaving, makes sure to urinate all over her newly renovated bathroom. Amy comes back with some poor Yelp reviews, and the “beef” is on and popping.

All is not so bad because the characters in Beef all seem to be good people that get themselves into destructive situations when they are tested emotionally. We’re talking about threats with guns, blackmail, kidnapping, and infidelity. Amy is miserable in her own mundane life, even with her loving husband, George (Joseph Lee), and her adorable daughter.

She had quite a rough childhood, with unresolved emotional trauma; her father wasn’t always honest with her mother. She thrives from getting off with the family’s gun, locked in their home’s safe, which her husband is weary of giving her the passcode to. She ends up making a fake Instagram account, takes screenshots of her employee’s sexy photos, and catfishes and sparks an affair with Danny’s brother Paul (Young Mazino) to get even, while he, in turn, befriends her stay-at-home husband.

Even Danny’s cousin, Isaac (David Choe), who had just kind of “gotten right” after his criminal past, lands himself back in the slammer entangled in Danny’s brawl with Amy. Danny doesn’t blink an eye to help get him out as he lets him take the fall for his road rage while he tries to steal from a local church to build his dream house for himself and his parents. Danny also decides to keep some of Issac’s possessions, which just so happens to be a bonus investment while he’s locked away. Pretty much every single character is making one bad decision after the next.

Things escalate by E9 and E10 as things between Amy and Danny are so exasperated by their selfishness and rage that they have so many of their personal contacts involved, including Amy’s daughter and her billionaire boss and girlfriend, as well as Danny’s brother and parents. With lives on the line, literally, anything goes as the adversaries find out that they may be losing everything they ever cared for, including their own lives.

Beef has some really emotional life lessons underneath the “crazy,” with a score that includes Smashing Pumpkins, Bjork, and Grant Lee Buffalo, and you are sure to get one wild ride on how we are all human deep down but sometimes just lose it, but we are all for the most part looking to do better and just wanting to be loved.

Watch all 10 episodes of Beef on Netflix on April 6.