You Were Right About... Beef

0:01 Voyage. Welcome to watch this tonight. I'm your host, Dan Bettimore. I'm a producer, writer of film and television, and now a podcast producer. And despite having every streaming service, I never know what to watch. So anytime I watch something good, I talk about it on the show. This way, you'll never have the same problem I do. I watch this tonight, there's always something good to watch. Let's get started. Today in the show, we were talking about beef. I'm titling this. You were right about beef because every human being on planet Earth has told me to watch this show. And I don't know about you. You know, maybe I'm just a contrarian asshole. But when everyone tells me to watch something, I don't know. I think it's like this human nature where you kind of hold back a little you know. I don't know why. It doesn't make logical sense if anything you think could be the opposite, But for some reason, when everyone is telling me the show is so good you have to watch it, I just kind of hold back a little bit. And I don't know why. I can't even explain it to myself why I do that, But I do think it is part of a human nature thing and so here's an example of that from another person. I saw someone post in some movie group that I'm part of on Facebook saying that the show Beef is meh m e h meh oh, it's just okay, you know, overrated. And I think again, this is a backlash that happens when everyone says something is good

1:34 because you know, we all want to be I think a lot of people want to be independent thinkers and you know, have your own opinions and that kind of thing. And and let me just tell you this show is awesome. Everyone was right. I there, it's great. It really is that good, you know. I this happens. You know, sometimes things come out everyone likes them, and there's a reason everybody likes it because it's awesome. And that the situation with Beef. So everyone who told me I watched this, you're right, Beef is a great show. What I love most about it is how it taps into this kind of thread of anger and you know, this idea of most men lead lives of quiet desperation, that kind of thing. That's a big part of what Beef is tapping into. I was thinking about it in regards to you know, my daughter does taekwondo and maybe sparring. Most of the time, when they do sparring, these are little kids. They just kind of kick the air near each other and you know, or maybe they connect, but it's like sort of, you know, pretty light. It's not really like a fight. And then she had in her last class a girl was like ready to like fucking roll. Like she like came at her and actually did spying, which was what they're supposed to do. And my daughter freaked out and cried, and then she went back and she you know, she got a point, she managed to get a kick in. But I was watching it thinking to myself. When I was younger, I was a pretty gentle dude, and you know, I wouldn't I would probably be similarly hesitant to like engage anyone physically. Now that

3:07 I'm older, I have so much pent up aggression. I would love to spar with somebody. I would do let's go. So that kind of thing is what beef is sort of about, is that we're all carrying around this odjita and there's nowhere for it to come out in our civilized society. And what if you point that energy and another person and actually release it. What happens, and that's not a healthy way to cope with your problems. And obviously we see that play out in Beef. Episode one is basically impossible to spoil. So I don't really think you need to worry about spoilers here, Like, if you kind of just want to know a bit about the show, I can tell you about episode one, and I don't think it's going to affect your viewing. The opening sequence, we know basically nothing about Steven as he's you know, he's coming out of part a lot. There's a Ali Wong gets behind him, honks at him, and then he chases her down, which is like a very overreaction to being honked at in a parking lot. But what's great about the opening sequence and the first indication that the show is operating at a higher level than most shows. You know, most shows would execute the same premise. Ali Wong is just as crazy as him.

4:23 She reverses like she's going to smash into him just to mess with him. If you've seen Ali Wong stand up, she has this gear, you know, much like Adam Sandler has an element of his personality that has rage. Ali Wong totally has that gear and we gradually understand that her and Steve und are very similar like they they're they're they're in different places in life. You know, he's working class and single, she's married and seemingly well off, but they're stressed in similar ways. They're they're they're carrying a lot and trying to sort of you know, they're not able to cope with the stresses of their lives. Steven has a cousin who's just come out of jail, who's played by David cho who was great. The supporting cast is so good at this show. The writing of the characters is really good, and the actors were really good. Ali Wonk's husband is this guy who seems so nice but then also like clearly takes his mom's side over his wife in a you know, in a domestic conversation. And then um c N's out of jail cousin played by David Chow. He is such a fun presence. Um there's some sort of backstory where the family had a motel and he was selling illegal goods out of it and then the matel got closed. He was in um the Anthony Bourdain documentary. If you've seen that, he's the guy who defaces Bourdain's mural at the end because he knows that's where Bourdane would have wanted, and has this really beautiful moment in that documentary. In the pilot, David

5:56 Cho gives CBN twenty grand. He says, he I feel bad about the motel. Here's twenty grand. Cfun invested all in the stock market and loses it, and then he says, there's always something. So this is a guy whose problems are of his own making, but he blames the world. It just really stuck out to me watching the show that it reminded me a lot of Israel and Palestine. Strange to say, but Israelis and Palestinians have so much in common culturally, and you know, so many similarities, but they are in this kind of senseless, long running conflict. And similarly, Ali Wong and Cfun, they're the things that they don't like about their lives are similar Like Cfuen has to trim a tree that doesn't want to trim.

6:40 Ali has to go to this networking Dinners doesn't want to go to. He's quasi suicidal. She is incredibly repressed sexually, and at one point takes a gun out of her safe and doesn't like this bizarre sexual thing with it, and they take the unhappiness that they have in their own lives and they kind of funnel it at each other. He looks up her address comes from her home. Under a pretense, he assumes that this other driver that upset him was male, and she doesn't realize that he was the other driver either, And so when they first meet, there actually is a charge between them, like they are attracted to each other, and they get along, and it's only until they realize that the other person is in the driver that he goes back in right and he pees in her bathroom and she finds out that he did it. Chases of the creator of the show, Lisangjin, he worked on another show called Undone, which was on Amazon and was very profound and really excellent, and then he also worked on Always Sunning in Philadelphia, And this show is almost like a fusion of those different elements. It has at times the sort of outlandishness and comedy of Always Sunning Philadelphia, but it also has I think the profundity of Undone and things of that nature. So it's a really great combination. The character work, especially is sensationally good. I ended up watching four episodes of this show last night. I really love half hour dramas or sort of becoming more in vogue, and I really love that format. I think it works really well. So now I am going to get into spoilers. So if you don't want to know about episodes two through

8:13 four, you should probably stop listening. If you have seen episodes two through four, then hang out. So at the start of episode two, Ali Wong's husband, as he's cleaning up Steve UN's piss in their bathroom, says, you never know what someone is going through in life, and I was like, wow, that's This is basically the theme of the show. Like, if if Ali Wong and Stvun had that sense of perspective, this would all have been resolved ready. They also have the husband wearing a great sweater in episode two. He's wearing this like soft grandpa sweater. I was sort of back in on the husband the beginning of episode two. But what's great about the show and the writing is that I keep going back and forth about him as we learn more things about the husband. Meanwhile, Steven has this seemingly goofy brother that seems like he's just like a du fist right, but he's actually kind of wise, and over the course of the show we see that he has the depth and of vulnerability to him. He tells Steven like Steven is like, hey, man, you know you shouldn't basically, you shouldn't date white girls. You know, eventually you're gonna want a good Korean girl to bring home to mom and dad. And he says and the brother tells him, you care too much about these arbitrary rules, like you should just live your life, which is you know, it's you don't expect that from the goofy brother character. At the end of episode two, things are just escalating, escalating. Ali Wong defaces Steven's car. He shows up at her house with a hammer. At the end of episode two, the fact that this show has been really popular to me reinforces the idea that we're all pissed off. We're all carrying a lot of you know, anxious, upset

9:45 energy. And I think that the success of the show, you know, really reinforces for me that I think that's pretty common. And then episode three, some really interesting stuff happens. I was wondering, how are you going to get ten episodes out of this? Because but you know, if at the end episode two he's at the house with an hammer, you know, you would think they're gonna run out of a road before ten episodes. But what they did, which is really smart, is they did almost like a reset. So Steve un gets scared off by Ali wong security system, goes to church, chries fixes the church sign for free. It almost seems like, man, maybe he's gonna find purpose in his life and not sort of fixate on this stupid feud he's having Alli Wong. But then there's this really nice guy at the church whose wife was Steve Yuen's ex girlfriend. And when he starts coming around and she's I think she's pregnant, like you know, the she starts acting really enamored of him, and suddenly the husband who's been really nice starts very subtly being a dick to see win. And in the same episode, Ali Wong's husband, this sweet sweater wearying guy, clearly indicates that he's been sexually obsessed with the instagram of her co worker. At one point later we see him like jerking off looking at the instagram of Value Wong's co worker. And in both cases, these characters who previously were almost like comically saintly are revealed to be flawed, petty, and considerate, cruel, selfish. And another theme of the show is that when you do something toxic, it's like poisonous to others. There's like a contagient effect. So all

11:18 it takes is that one guy being a dickt to CVUN and he decides he's going to try to scam the church out of one hundred thousand dollars. Later in a later episode, I think it is his brother says, I don't need that kind of energy around me, which continues this theme that when you behave this way, it poisons the people around you. Towards the end of the third episode, I think it is so Stephen's brother has been catfished by Ali Wong. They've been direct messaging and they talk on the phone, and then he goes to her workplace because he thinks that she is her co worker. She's used her co workers pictures, she was using it to try to somehow spy on CVN or something, and then he kisses her like they kiss even after he finds out who she is, So he's really emotionally connected to her and totally accepts her even though she was catfishing him. I was again, I'm so humbled by the character worked with the show because I think most writers, you know, you set up a character and you're like, all right, cool, here's my one big subversion of the character, my one big thing I'm gonna do that shows you the characters not who you think they are. But this show has like six gears like that, and that's really hard to do. And then I'll just touch on episode four. So an episode four, they go to Vegas. The brother takes Steve UN's car and runs off to Vegas to see Ali Wong. And there's this moment where she speaks at this conference and it feels like it's the pinnacle of her life, like she's so confident, she's so in her element. Everything's going great.

12:41 This big business deal she's been obsessing about looks like it's definitely gonna close. And then Steve Un and his cousin take the microphone and just start yelling at her, and it's this moment that it's ruined kind of and she sort of steers out of it. But again, it's karma, right, like you can't behave this way and have not have a repercussion of it, and it has one of my favorite parts of the whole show, which is as they're getting dragged away, David Show goes last stand is the best X Men Wolverine cannot be circumcised. And then Steve you N and his brother or his cousin played by David Show get arrested and Ali sees them and sort of waves a finger at ctvun and there's this great music hit that takes us out, and he's just really satisfying, and you sort of know, you know, obviously this is going to continue to reverberate in their relationship. But the half hour format works really great. It is very hard to stop watching this show.

13:35 You know, you're you're so engaged by the kind of end of episode moments are so strong. It's a half hour each episode, is I like, I want to go back and keep watching it right now. So could not recommend Beef more highly. Everyone who told me watch this, you're absolutely right. Go watch Beef. It's great. I don't think twice about it. I would love to know what you think. It's almost like, is there anybody who does it like this show? Maybe that one guy on Facebook? I gotta interview him. Thank you so much for listening. As always, that is the show for today. If you're enjoying the show, please leave me a five star rating on Apple Podcasts and or a written review if you're feeling extra generous. That is the best way you can support the podcast, and you can always reach me at Benamore Dan on Twitter, Watch This Night on Instagram, watch This Tonight podcast on TikTok, or you can join our Facebook group. Until next time, Bye bye,