Why some are already calling Netflix's BEEF the best show of the year

25:00AI Week wraps up, and why BEEF is the talk of the Internet

The latest hit from Netflix is a show called BEEF. 

It's a dark comedy about a road rage incident between two people who are willing to risk it all in order to get revenge. The increasing stakes of this feud between two strangers, played by Steven Yeun and Ali Wong, unravel their lives and relationships in a story of hate-at-first-sight.

Culture critics Jen Sookfong Lee, Rad Simonpillai and Michelle Cho joined host Elamin Abdelmahmoud to unpack what makes the show so compelling, why some of its casting is receiving criticism, and how it represents members of the Asian American diaspora.

We've included some highlights below, edited for length and clarity. For the full discussion, listen and follow the Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud podcast, on your favourite podcast player.

Elamin: Every once in a while, a new show comes out and it instantly has everyone's attention. This week, that show is BEEF and I'm excited to talk about it. Rad, please do the honors of explaining what the premise of BEEF is.

Rad: It's basically about how a road rage incident blows up and reverberates. You've got Steven Yeun, who a lot of people are familiar with from The Walking Dead. He plays a depressed, broke handyman. And then you've got comic Ali Wong playing a Calabasas entrepreneur, well-to-do but frustrated with life. They're both having a bad day, then they have this really shrill encounter in a big box store parking lot, and that turns into a Fast and the Furious kind of one-up-manship on the road kind of deal. And it just keeps on escalating from there, where these guys keep trying to get back at each other while dealing with the mess in their own lives. And of course, on this show, we love mess.

WATCH | Official Trailer for BEEF on Netflix:

Elamin: Love mess. Shout out mess. Good morning only to mess. The thing about this show is that it is both tragic and so funny at the same time, that sometimes you'll be laughing through your tears. It's just incredible. Michelle, BEEF features a largely Asian-American cast. Let's talk about the way that it centered Asian-American characters. How did that come out for you?

Michelle: I mean, I am an Asian-American and I lived in Southern California all through my twenties, so I feel like I had this jolt of recognition in almost every scene because I've been in these spaces, I've encountered these types before. But this is the aspect of the show that I think is really so remarkable because the Asianness of these characters is incidental to the story. They could be lots of other different types of people, and some of the conflicts would definitely still resonate.

But then at the same time, there's such a specificity to the kinds of experiences that are being shown, right? So things are presented without having to be contextualized; there's just an undercutting of ethnic stereotypes at every opportunity. Things like the smatterings of Korean that are left untranslated in the dialogue, and especially the way that the Korean-American church is portrayed — the kind of complicated feelings of both belonging and exclusion that are happening at the same time. I've just never seen anything like this in a Hollywood production before.

Elamin: I'm interested in that idea, Jen, that this show doesn't do what NPR calls "the explanatory comma," which is where you pause and be like, "Let me just explain this to an audience that might not be familiar with this." [The show] just kind of says, "You will catch up with the context that is needed here." In that way, the representation becomes just that much more meaningful.

Jen: Yeah, I think so, and I think that it shows a remarkable amount of respect for the viewer, too — trusting that the viewer can fill in whatever blanks there may be. And I think that the diversity of the characters just in general — softboy George is my favorite, but you've got crypto-bro Paul, art-world Fumi and Amy's working-class parents, who were a connection for me personally. There's never been in Western media another show that's done this for the Asian diaspora. I know my friends and family are super weirdos, but I'm so excited for the rest of the world to see that these weirdos exist, and that we're not just all really respectable accountants. That's really important.

Rad: Can I also add, with an all-Asian cast, you could ditch the respectability politics and you could have Asian characters behave badly.

Jen: Yes.

Rad: You don't have to be respectable.

Elamin: Right, "We've got one opportunity to show the community, and so as such we better not make it a negative one." You can sort of play around and have a range of expressions.

Rad: And trust your audience to just embrace it. I mean, I think we're seeing this now post-Parasite where we can have that kind of narrative.

Elamin: Before we go any further, we do need to mention what I think is a pretty troubling story surrounding one of BEEF's stars, David Choe. The story was covered initially in 2014 but is gaining traction again because BEEF came out. Back in 2014, David Choe was on a podcast and he bragged about his sexual encounter with a massage therapist. At a certain point in that podcast, he calls himself a "successful rapist." Since then, he has said that it was his style of humor and that he apologized for it. He states the story was made up, completely untrue, but he wrote in part, "If I'm guilty of anything, it's bad storytelling in the style of a douche. Just like many of my paintings are often misinterpreted, the same goes with my show." In 2017, he formally apologized again. Jen, when you hear the story, what's your reaction to it?

Jen: First of all, is his art or his storytelling being misinterpreted, or are they just not well-intentioned and [are] awful to begin with? I feel like this is a cycle that we've lived through so many times: we have a piece of art that we really connect to, and then someone connected to that has done something really terrible and it makes my stomach fall out. My first reaction is, how did he get hired in the first place? How much do the creators of the show know about that, and how much do they not care about it? Those are the questions — and those are really difficult questions for us to sit with. I don't appreciate it.

Elamin: Of course. Michelle, the unfortunate thing about this is it's right at that peak of the mania around BEEF, because there's so much excitement about the show and then this story sort of comes out. How do you think this ends up impacting the show?

Michelle: The story was a big deal among people who are following the space of arts and culture in Asian America and California. But then it faded. And to see it resurface, I had the same reaction that Jen had of nausea or being punched in the gut. This is going to be a stain on what is really an important and an amazing show in so many ways. But I do have that question: why did this person get hired? They must have known. Did they just assume that people wouldn't care enough? 

But then at the same time, I think that the show is getting so much buzz that it may be the case that viewership doesn't get impacted too much because there's enough excitement and curiosity about what the show is doing.

Elamin: I mean, Rad, he's not a distant character on the show. He appears in it quite frequently.

Rad: But I mean, I'm also of the feeling that this is an incident in 2014. We have to afford people the capacity to change. At this point, I haven't heard of any kind of repeat offenses or anything of that order. He's not a small figure in the show, but he's also not the main lead; my feelings toward him do not affect the way I feel toward the show overall, especially since he plays a character who has trouble rehabilitating.

Elamin: We should mention we have no idea if the story's real or fiction. I think the thing that it speaks to right now is just a completely awful sense of humor, but I don't think it should detract from people spending time with the show. I appreciate you guys. Jen, Michelle, Rad, thank you so much for being here. 

Rad: Thanks for having us.

Michelle: Thank you.

Elamin: Of course.

You can listen to the full discussion from today's show on CBC Listen or on our podcast, Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud, available wherever you get your podcasts.

Panel produced by Ty Callender.