Exploring Generational Tensions in Beef Season Two
Netflix's acclaimed series Beef returns with a new season that delves deeper into themes of rage and anger, featuring Carey Mulligan and Oscar Isaac in central roles marked by conflict not only between themselves but also involving their younger Gen Z employees and broader societal tensions.
While the inaugural season, released in 2023, revolved around a dispute between strangers triggered by a minor car accident in a parking lot, the second season shifts focus to conflicts among individuals with closer personal ties.
Oscar Isaac portrays Joshua, who manages an exclusive country club in California, while Carey Mulligan plays his British wife, Lindsay. Their volatile marriage reaches a critical point when two employees in their twenties witness a heated argument between the couple. These younger employees capture the confrontation on film and subsequently use it as leverage for blackmail.
The series highlights the friction within and between these two couples—one representing the millennial generation and the other Gen Z—creating a dynamic that resonates throughout the episodes.
"They can't stand us and we can't stand them. Everything they do is annoying, particularly after the inciting incident of the whole show. We have a common enemy in them, and that's the way we stay together,"explains Mulligan, known for her roles in An Education, Promising Young Woman, and The Ballad of Wallis Island.
The marriage between Lindsay and Joshua appears fragile and strained.
"When we meet this couple, it's not a spoiler to say they're on their knees,"Mulligan adds.
"Their relationship is really hanging on by a thread and actually it's their mutual disdain of this Gen Z couple, and all the things about them that are annoying, that binds us."
The younger couple consists of Austin, a personal trainer played by Charles Melton of Riverdale fame, and his fiancée Ashley, portrayed by Cailee Spaeny, known for Alien: Romulus. Both work at the country club.
"We thought it was so funny,"Mulligan smiles.
"We were always trying to find ways to be more annoyed by them. We called them 'the kids', which seems unfair because I think Charles is 33."
In reality, Melton is 35 years old, only five years younger than Mulligan herself. At 47, Isaac, who has previously worked with Mulligan in Drive and Inside Llewyn Davis, belongs to Generation X.
"That really rubs us up the wrong way,"Isaac comments on their characters' disdain for the younger couple.
"The sense of entitlement, and how they're entitled to all these things that we feel we worked really, really hard for and to prove ourselves for."
"Also there's a cynicism that we have about their view of love - all these plans and all these things they seem so certain about, where they haven't experienced any of the real pitfalls in what being in a relationship is,"he continues.
Isaac notes that the show's creator, Lee Sung Jin, gave the older couple an "acidic point of view towards the others while not seeing our own petty behaviour."
Mulligan describes the bitterness as being
"rooted in envy."She elaborates,
"It's what we used to have - they have this first flush of romance. We had that sort of wild romance and we were obsessed with each other, it was us against the world, and no-one's ever been in love the way we've been in love. We believed all the exact things they believe about themselves when we first meet them. So to accept that's gone is also part of it. But instead of having grace [to accept] that and where they are, they rubbish it - because they can't stand them."
At one point, Lindsay, an interior designer who owns a dachshund named Burberry, remarks on their experience.
"We have so much more experience being petty,"she notes.
Generational Divide and Social Commentary
Meanwhile, Ashley and Austin's initial idealism and belief in true love are challenged as they become entangled in a complex underworld involving the country club's new millionaire owner, Chairwoman Park.
Melton describes his character and Ashley as being
"in the honeymoon phase"at the series' start.
"What you see them do is navigate a world with the constructs of capitalism,"he explains.
"The country club was a great example and a great structure for that, with the hierarchy of class."
The drama unfolds within the setting of the prestigious country club.
Lee Sung Jin reveals that the inspiration for the new season came from a real-life dispute he observed, originally involving baby boomers (those aged 60 and above). However, he chose to focus on younger characters to explore a smaller generational gap.
"Much like society, we're brainwashed - by social media, by the headlines, by those in charge - to beef and squabble with each other. You've got Gen Z and millennials having this feud, when really the thing that we should be beefing with is the billionaire characters in society like Chairwoman Park, and it's all kind of a distraction that actually enables those in power to puppeteer everybody. That felt like an appropriate microcosm for what's going on right now,"Lee explains.
The anthology series uses anger as a thematic device, which Lee describes as
"just the wrapping paper"for deeper societal issues.
"When you open the box, there's actually other stuff going on. And I think that's true of the world,"he adds.
Beef season two is currently available for streaming on Netflix.
