'Beef.' It's What's for Inner Reflection.

Netflix's new series knows why we're all so mad at each other.

This is Clusterhuck, my newsletter about faith, culture and a flourishing future for all! I’m glad you’re here. I can only do this through the support of my readers, and I’m grateful for every one I’ve got. If you’d like to join, just click here. You’ll get a free seven-day trial, including access to all the archives. 

---

Lost in media conversation around Nashville politics and gun violence over the last few weeks was another, smaller shooting here in town that happened at a Walgreens last week. A Walgreens employee suspected a customer of shoplifting, and began recording her on his phone. When she left the store and went to her car in the parking lot, he followed her, accusing her of stealing. She told him to beat it, she hadn’t done anything wrong. He refused. She pulled out a can and maced him. He pulled out his gun and shot her. She was seven months pregnant. The baby was delivered prematurely in the emergency room, where both mom and kid remain in critical but stable condition as I write this. The employee is saying he shot in self-defense. 

The first thing that struck me about all this was, honestly, the proximity. This Walgreens is about a block from my house. But the second was harrowing escalation, how many opportunities there were for things to go a different direction. I have no idea whether or not the new mom was actually shoplifting but even if she was, who cares? If you’re a retail employee, you have no responsibility to be a hero in the event of shoplifting. They’re not stealing your stuff. If the Walgreens CEO is worried about shoplifters, he should start roaming the aisles himself instead of just budgeting for product shrink. When I worked retail, we were explicitly instructed not to get involved if we suspected someone of stealing stuff, especially after they exit the store. 

But this employee did follow his suspected shoplifter out of the store, and from there, things went from recording to yelling to macing to gunfire. I’d argue that this highlights the absolute insanity of Tennessee’s permitless firearm carry law — where what could have been an unpleasant but ultimately victimless interaction instead ended with a premature infant on the operating table — and I’d be right. But I started thinking about this story from another angle when I dove into Netflix’s Beef. 

Beef stars Steven Yeun and Ali Wong as two Southern Californians on opposing ends of the class spectrum who have a date with destiny. Danny (Yeun) is backing out of his parking spot at a home improvement store. He almost hits Amy (Wong), who is driving towards the exit. She slams on the breaks. He lays on the horn. She flips him off. He cusses her out. So far, an unpleasant but ultimately victimless interaction. 

But Beef’s genius is in exploring how much baggage we all bring to these run-ins. The ensuing incident of road rage, in which Danny and Ali chase each other through red lights and over medians isn’t the result of two strangers who just happen to hate each other. It’s the result of two people facing their own respective hurricanes of personal issues. Danny is trying to make enough money to bring his parents over from Korea, but faces setback after setback and barely makes enough to keep his own head above water. Ali’s bougie plant store generates enough income to keep her husband and daughter very comfortable, but the work is stretching her thin and the stress of a potential lucrative acquisition threatens to break her entirely. 

So Ali and Danny don’t actually hate each other, exactly. They hate their lives, and their chance interaction gives them a more convenient, tangible outlet for that hatred. The result is a propulsive series of escalations over the course of the season, as their feud becomes an all-consuming war that poisons the rest of their personal lives, their relationships and their souls. Even as we see Danny and Amy become more and more vindictive and maniacal in their quest for victory, Beef never lets us lose sight of their humanity. But we do see how Danny and Amy have lost sight entirely of each other’s humanity. That’s how beefs escalate. You don’t see a person. You just see the target. 

It’s the best Netflix show in ages, with lots of interesting conversations to be had around class and class. It’s been a while since we’ve seen a show with such keen insight into resentment, the way it eats at us, cancer-like, transforming our self-loathing into a prism through which we view the world and start to loathe everything else in it, even the people the people we’re supposed to love. 

And just like the Walgreens parking lot story, Danny and Amy have opportunities for a cease-fire. There is a remarkable scene where Danny goes to church (like so many of us, he mostly goes for a girl) and ends up crying during the worship music when the band plays Chris Tomlin’s spin on “Amazing Grace.” As Jeremiah Warren noted on Twitter, “I’ve *never* seen a film portray this feeling in an evangelical church service this accurately (not even in Christian films).” I’m inclined to agree. 

Being an evangelical means pop culture representation is both ubiquitous and unrecognizable. Most onscreen depictions of church come from either well-meaning Hollywood tourists who do some truly wack shit like put a Southern Baptist preacher in a collar (2017’s Last Flag Flying) or from evangelicals who depict themselves as superheroes in the culture war (the God’s Not Dead movies). Beef is just the latest example of a Korean-American filmmaker getting it right (see also Lee Isaac Chung’s Minari). 

I understand what people mean when they say music like this in church is emotionally manipulative, but I don’t really agree. Music manipulates! It is inherently “manipulative,” if that’s the word you want to use for it. If it doesn’t manipulate your emotions, it’s bad music. If you’re going to accuse Tomlin of being “manipulative” with his music you’re probably going to have to accuse Adele of the same thing. (Now, you could say some churches use worship music to pry congregants away from their tithes to pay for the senior pastor’s vacation home under the guise of “giving to God,” and you’d have me there). This scene gets at just how powerful church music can really be. 

But it also shows the limitations of such emotionally moving moments, as Danny’s come to Jesus moment doesn’t stick. I won’t spoil the rest of the series here, mostly since I haven’t finished it yet. But I’d recommend you get into it, if only for a better understanding of the sorts of interactions that have ended up animating a distressing amount of American life. Whether you’re firing a gun in the Walgreens parking lot, yelling at a stranger on Facebook or just seething at your romantic partner for some benign little quirky habit of theirs, Beef has something to tell you about why that might be and who you might actually be mad at.