Inspired by a real-life conflict experienced by creator Lee Sung Jin, “Beef” follows the escalation of a road rage incident between wealthy entrepreneur Amy (Ali Wong) and failing contractor Danny (Steven Yeun), as the pair sets their minds on tearing each other’s lives apart.
Despite the far-fetched amplification of their feud, which begins to implicate Amy and Danny’s families in their subsequent revenge plots, the Netflix comedy series touches on a deeply human sentiment: Amy and Danny are done hiding their true feelings.
“They’re both just really fed up — they’re really fed up and overwhelmed,” Wong told TheWrap, adding that their characters share repressed shame and anger. “It’s just at their threshold point … Sometimes when you see people … they’ve come down from being overwhelmed, but they’re just both like right here, it’s like ripe.”
In the show, which premiered Thursday, April 6, Amy and Danny first cross paths outside a home improvement store as the two are within the margins of their breaking point. Amy is narrowing in on a deal to sell her small business to a home improvement giant, and Danny struggles to return equipment he debated using to end his own life.
“In that overwhelmed state, too, it feels very isolating, you feel very alone,” Yeun said. “Maybe they’re just looking for someone to relate to.”
On the heels of these intense moments, the rage building inside Amy and Danny unleashes itself in a stress-induced car chase that leaves all but the pair’s sanity and a freshly gardened lawn unscathed. After Danny fails to catch up to Amy, he tracks down her white SUV and eventually shows up at Amy’s door under the guise of a concerned contractor.
Danny’s facade works as Amy lets him into her home, unaware of his identity, and by the time Danny learns that it was Amy who gave him the bird in the parking lot, not her husband as he first assumed, chaos ensues.
“Danny is in a real rough spot — the world feels like it’s crushing in,” Yeun said. “I think he’s just really petty at that moment, and he just wants any type of victory.”
As the pair tumble down a vengeful spiral, Amy conceals the extent of her rage to her happy-go-lucky husband, George (Joseph Lee), who encourages her to focus on the positive when she begins to confide in him about the incident, which shuts down any slight chance she had to lean on her husband through the nerve-wracking ordeal.
As Amy inches closer to inking a deal to sell her business — at the fickle will of boss Jordan (Maria Bello) — and her revenge schemes with Danny heighten, George fails to be a compassionate and reliable partner throughout Amy’s struggles, a quality Lee credits to George’s own trauma as the son of an acclaimed artist.
“I think he’s been forced to create this veneer that everything’s zen and everything’s okay,” Lee told TheWrap. “I think, at a certain point, that he’s probably, in his development, just realized that ‘I will live and die by this veneer.’”
Snide comments from George’s mother-in-law also pile onto Amy’s mountain of stress as Fumi (Patti Yasutake) shares endless suggestions about ways his son’s wife could improve their home and parent their daughter, June (Remy Holt). While each piece of Fumi’s advice digs into Amy’s already-full plate, Yasutake assures that her recommendations are not “anything negative,” instead seeing them as her way to help the family.
As Amy’s business slingshots the couple into even more affluence, while George pursues his less-than-profitable sculpture business, Yasutake also says Fumi’s actions might be a way to “restore the balance” of their marriage.
“When it started, Amy’s character was a lot more reticent,” Yasutake told TheWrap. “The fact that she’s changed, the power has switched … there’s concern from my son that he doesn’t get eaten up in those things, so I think that’s how it’s developed to being maybe a little hard on Amy.”
Even as their revenge fantasy crashes down with some brutal consequences, their shared repression and rage leads Amy and Danny to develop a deep bond that keeps leading them back to each other, as Wong says “there’s obviously something that connects them that is really unique and they just keep going back to it.”
“It feels like sometimes that, for Danny at least, Amy’s the only person that keeps it real in his whole life,” Yeun added.
As Amy and Danny move full-force on a path of destruction that threatens to invade every part of their life, the pair find twisted solace in knowing they’re not alone in their discontent.
“Ultimately, at the end of the day, we’re all just kind of hoping for someone to look at us, transparent and naked, all our warts and all, and still accept us,” creator Lee Sung Jin told TheWrap.
All episodes of “Beef” are now streaming on Netflix.
