What on Earth was Beef season 2? A complete departure from the first season of the hit Netflix series, it follows the slow-burn chaos at an country club run by slimy manager Josh (Oscar Isaacs) and his wife Lindsay (Carey Mulligan).
After witnessing one of their bosses' fights, young employees Ashley (Cailee Spaeny) and Austin (Charles Melton) decide to blackmail Josh to get health insurance... and it's all downhill from there.
Even without including the explosive season finale, Beef season 2 feels like the dictionary definition of 'dumb fun'. Sure, there's some social commentary in there, but it always gives way to the show's entertainment value.
Beef season 2 does 'being down with the kids' incredibly well, without feeling like a parent who's trying too hard to be cool. If it was a person, it would be signed up to Reddit and know what Pop Crave is.
This means the unhinged cultural references peppered into the dialog shine thanks to the show's sheer idiocy. In fact, I watched all eight episodes last week and I'm still laughing.
Letterboxd, Kim Jong Un and BTS all get unhinged shoutouts in Beef season 2
Ashley and Austin are the pair responsible for keeping Beef season 2 young. If you strip away the health problems, blackmail, extortion, extreme secret keeping and qualification fabrication, they're actually pretty relatable.
Austin in particular is the heart of the show's humor. He takes on a full-time physical therapist position after The Chairwoman (Youn Yuh-jung) takes a shine to him for being Korean. In an attempt to win over over assistant Eunice (Seoyeon Jang), he tries to keep up with cultured conversation at their first working dinner... resulting in him mistakenly thinking that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is "that guy from BTS... I love his solo work."
Ashley, on the other hand, is having a rougher time. She blackmails boss Josh after finding out she needs health insurance for a life-saving operation, which worsens when she's admitted to the ER for a swollen knee. When the nurse asks her to gauge her pain levels, she claims that a five is neutral rather than zero. "I thought it was like Letterboxd," she explains.
Not only is film-logging app Letterboxd having enough cultural relevance to be referenced in an A24 TV show absolutely mind-blowing to think about, but the flippant nature of the younger generation's dialog is a perfectly-captured zeitgeist moment. You need boots on the ground thinking to truly be relevant in 2026, and this will be remembered as a fantastic example.
Is there a somewhat scathing commentary of the empty-headedness of Gen Z, who appear to lack critical thinking? Probably. Am I going to block that out and enjoy the humor instead? Most definitely, and I'm a millennial.
We live in a world where a K-Pop supergroup could feasibly include members of government. Nothing is impossible, and Beef season 2 knows that.
