Season 1 expressed a lot of things I don’t think I’ve seen in American TV, namely Asian American characters being sloppy and impulsive while trying to deal with their inner demons and navigate micro aggressions. The only other show I can think of that’s done this in the past few years is Industry on HBO, with the character Ken Leung plays (if there’s a season 3, he would actually be amazing in Beef.)
I also loved Season 1’s “beef” centered on Asian Americans driving. It’s something that’s usually reduced to hack, racist jokes (e.g. that Family Guy cutaway gag of an Asian woman crossing four lanes saying “good luck everybody else”). It’s subtle, but the road rage obviously isn’t due to Amy and Danny being Asian, but because they’re just as messy and distracted as a lot of other Americans behind the wheel of a car. That chase sequence in the first episode was fun to watch, as was their overall, alternating Tom and Jerry dynamic throughout the season.
Season 2 was interesting to me. It felt less emotional to me,but it still had some subtle and interesting perspectives. I actually didn’t care about the Gen Z vs Millennial relationship dysfunction dynamics but I was really interested in the dynamics between Koreans and a mixed-race Korean American.
I’m not mixed race but a lot of Austin’s style of communication and navigating his American and Korean identities stood out to me, particularly the way we witness a phone call with his mom and she’s talking Korean while he responds in English. Plus his trust in Filipino nurses at the hospital. It gets kind of played for comedy but it does speak to an unspoken thing I’ve felt before of like, appealing to someone who has a similar background in my immediate proximity to validate me and take me seriously.