Spoilers for Season 2 Beef to follow. You have been warned.
Season 1 of Beef was the exploration of unquenchable rage that stems from the dissatisfaction that the characters had with their lives. Season 2 is still about that dissatisfaction, but more of an examination of the system that perpetuates and sustains it: capitalism. The show, through Chairwoman Park (Youn Yuh-jung), posits the perspective that relationships are transactional by nature; we do things for others because of the benefits we reap for ourselves. We stay with the other person for as long as we perceive their value, and once that’s gone, the relationship breaks down. The quicker we accept this reality, the easier it is for us to settle into comfortable and empty lives. Troy (William Fichtner) demonstrates this status quo during his Facetime with Josh (Oscar Isaac), where the best relationship is two individuals existing side by side, their lives never intersecting.
Chairwoman Park remarks that it is better to choose someone you can love life with as opposed to someone you love. This is reflected in her first and second marriage, where she shared a great passion with her first husband, but suffered because of his infidelities, and thus chose a second husband that she would be able to enjoy life with but didn’t really love. However, without love, there is nothing to tether them to each other, seen in how quickly they betray each other when it becomes easier to. And despite her assertions, Chairwoman Park still yearns deeply for her first husband. She chooses to support his child Woosh even though she is not his mother, and when it comes time for her to cut him out of her life, the last thing she does is kiss Woosh’s eyes as his eyes remind her of first husband’s. At the end, she is seen tending to and hugging his gravestone, clearly still mourning him despite having all the money and power in the world. Because real genuine love means having beef with the other person.
If you have beef with someone, it means they have showed you their flaws and vulnerabilities, their demons and neurosis. That’s why it’s difficult to build genuine connections, because we have to sit in the discomfort of knowing that this person knows what we are like at our lowest, and can weaponize this to hurl back at us at any time. Just think about Josh and Lindsay’s (Carey Mulligan) multiple fights over the course of the show; because they love and know each other so well, this makes them capable of hurting each other.
When Burberry goes missing, their first instinct is to blame the other instead of sticking together, and when Burberry dies, it is a sign to the both of them that their relationship is not functioning anymore. They still love each other, but neither are bringing much value to the other – he is basically cheating through using cam girls to get off, and she’s seeking emotional validation from other men because she isn’t getting it from her husband. Josh makes that sacrifice at the end because he does love her, and she remarries not because she doesn’t love him, but because she knows that if they get back together, it would play out in the same way, and they would hurt each other once again. The show telegraphs this over and over by placing a visual barrier between the two in their scenes together – be in a pillar or a literal wall. So she settles for someone she can love life with, that way she can get everything she wanted that she never got with Josh. Truly loving someone and accepting them with no benefit to yourself will always lead to dissatisfaction because we live in a system that does not see this as valuable.
The world we live in is built for a relationship like Troy and Ava’s (Mikaela Hoover), where both are driven to keep the other happy in a superficial way due to a perceived value. Troy often praises Ava for her beauty and perfect face, and Ava works hard to keep herself looking good so that she can continue to enjoy the lifestyle she gets from being with Troy. This is why Ashley (Cailee Spaeny) ultimately decides to blackmail in order to improve her life. If she lets things be status quo, then she is dooming her relationship to a world of perpetual dissatisfaction. That whole hospital episode is proof of how important having money is, and how not having enough can lead to upheaval and impact one’s future in irreversible ways. Hospital staff are not paid enough to care, and even though some might be empathetic to your plight, they will still ignore your humanity because this is the order of things. Ashley and Austin (Charles Melton) overhear a cancer patient whose pain and suffering is overlooked because no one cared enough to give a shit.
At Ashley’s lowest moment, instead of showing her empathy and getting her help, Josh decides to manipulate the situation to his own benefit. If he had just showed her kindness and treated her like a human being, she might have just deleted the videos on her own accord without his prompting. This is why the show has so many moments where the people the characters are conversing with suddenly become their doppelgangers. Every single relationship is viewed through a lens of value to ourselves. Josh is polite and helpful to his guests not because he truly wants to be, but because of how they will value-add to his life. His friendship with Troy combusts the moment Troy discovers that Josh has embezzled from the club – they never saw each other beyond their use to each other.
In a system like this, there’s very little use for morality. Austin bemoans the lack of morality Ashley has exhibited in their relationship, but his moral code is merely performative. He tells her that forging the physical therapist license is not right, yet when a pretty woman like Eunice (Seoyeon Jang) makes him feel special, he is willing to overlook this and take the job. Instead of being honest with Ashley, he emotionally cheats on her and does small things to undermine her, like getting her clothes from Goodwill when she asked for H&M. So many viewers could not understand why he stays with Ashley and doesn’t turn the drive in to the police. This is because he doesn’t really care that Chairwoman Park has done all these immoral things, this was just a means for him to play hero and be with Eunice. While her life is clearly on the line, all Austin cares about is her declaring her love for him.
After Eunice’s lackluster ‘love you’, Austin realises that he is essentially blowing up his life for someone who doesn’t really love him. However, if he truly loved her, he would still turn in the drive, but he doesn’t, so he goes back and makes the easier choice. He knows he doesn’t love Ashley, but at least she will never leave him because of her abandonment issues. This kind of relationship feels easier than trying to find someone you truly love, because that means being vulnerable and accepting that they will hurt you and maybe even leave you.
So what does this mean for us then? Are we doomed to lead lives of dissatisfaction? Well, yes. Any choice we make will ultimately bring emptiness. We can love someone so deeply and yet be dissatisfied in the relationship, or we can choose materialism and be outwardly contented yet never connected. Pick your poison, choose your beef.
