Beef Season 2 Review – The Best Show on TV Becomes an Unloved White Lotus Heist | television

WWe may have to start calling it White Lotus Disorder Syndrome. This is a condition that has been spreading across the television operating system since Mike White launched his brilliant anthology series five years ago, in which drama is produced by placing poorer Americans alongside richer Americans in a position the latter chooses to come to and from which the former cannot escape. At The White Lotus, they are staff and guests at a variety of luxury resorts. In Sirens, the personal assistants of billionaires. In whatever Nicole Kidman is in, they could be single mothers with children in assisted-school placements with cashmere-wearing elites, or expatriate maids nursing their secret sorrows in luxury apartments, or masseuses or other service providers in exclusive spas, or exploited or sexually harassed nannies for people who would not think to exploit or harass their nannies. In non-Kidman derivatives, avatars for blue-collar viewers can also include policemen, novelists, or struggling academics. Unless the academic is a tenured professor, in which case the underdog becomes a sexually harassed student, who should perhaps unite with nannies.

Now we have Season 2 of Beef to join the crowd. The first, starring Steven Yeun and Ali Wong, both giving the best work of their careers, received near-universal acclaim as the story of a simple parking lot brawl between two characters, gradually turning reliable triviality into a credible psychodrama that built to an operatic climax. The new film stars Carey Mulligan and Oscar Isaac as a married couple who run a luxury country club. Josh is the general manager (with a penchant for gambling and video girls), and Lindsay is an interior designer and hostess (with a penchant for reclaiming the social status she had as a buchu in her native England and an icy hard streak). They’re both frustrated with where life has led them – so close to real money, but so far away from getting it themselves.

In contrast to their middle-aged dissatisfaction are their newly engaged employees Austin (Charles Melton), a personal trainer, and Ashley (Caille Spaeny), a golf course soccer player. When the pair witness – and capture on camera phone – a disagreement between Josh and Lindsay that could threaten Josh’s position at the club, they use it to blackmail him into promoting Ashley so she can get the health insurance she needs to treat a medical condition.

Escalation ensues. Not just in terms of this plot but in terms of the whole. More and more characters and complications are introduced, through the new club owner and her responsibility to the husband, the new tennis coach and his team, his love interest for Austin, increasing debts and much more. too much. Unlike the original series, this one begins to spread out and the tension spreads rather than builds around the main story.

There are plenty of references directed toward racial tension, aging (particularly for women), the precariousness of many jobs, the desire for security and the bitterness its absence brings, and the fundamental corruption of the U.S. health care system—but nothing is ever satisfactorily investigated. We learn that corruption begets corruption. Love is fragile. People are weak and corrupt. Imitating those who are better than you – or at least those who are rich – never ends well. But some people are really rich, and if you resist them long enough you won’t be able to stop yourself from trying.

This, you know, is true enough. But it’s not new information, and much of it has been dramatized better before – not least Beef and The White Lotus (and even some of Kidman’s outings). There’s also the fact that it’s hard to care about almost everyone in the new series. Lindsay is a cold, spoiled brat. Josh is weak (and despite Isaac’s talent, he’s little more than a collection of useless traits, with grief over the loss of his mother a guaranteed element of the show). Austin is a cipher (his stupidity makes him an unconvincing choice for Ashley’s smart, ambitious fiancé), and the less central characters even more so. Ashley gets better service, but many of her actions seem forced. Overall, Beef feels like a fun movie and not the dark march toward truth that the original was. There is not enough meat on the bone.