I recommend watching the show Beef on Netflix like I recommend jumping off a cliff. It will be terrifying and exhilarating, and if you survive the thrill it will make an indelible impact (pun intended).
We had two episodes left of the season, and I was bracing myself for what horrors we were going to see and how (or if) it would be resolved. After getting the kids to bed, I poured myself a full glass of wine and said, “Okay, let’s do this.” I wasn’t sure if it would be enjoyable, but I knew I had to see it through to the end.
Others have written about Beef here on Mockingbird, but it is one of those shows that I can’t not write about. You have probably heard that it begins with a road rage incident that sets off a spiral of events in the lives of the two main characters, Amy and Danny, and then consequentially everyone else they know. Like a stone dropping in a pond, the ripples from this one honk of a horn are endless.
Growing up in Los Angeles (the general region where this show is set), I have witnessed my share of road rage. That part of the show is an everyday occurrence, but the continuation of these two lives intertwining is not. Although the road rage is the catalyst for the subsequent chaos, that is not what this show is primarily about. It is about hiding. Or maybe more accurately, the revealing of hidden ugliness.
Throughout the season, past events and current struggles are revealed in both Amy and Danny’s lives, events that they would like to hide and pretend do not exist. It seems like it is working for everyone else around them, so why can’t they seem to ignore the ugliness inside of themselves? Amy and Danny seem to be soul mates of hate who encounter each other at just the “right” time. They each become the outlet for the other to release these hidden things and bring them out of darkness into the light. There is almost a sense of satisfaction in the release of rage.
Despite how dark I am making this sound, there is definitely humor in the ridiculousness of the characters and the twists and turns of the plot. My husband and I found ourselves laughing out loud at nearly every episode. A tragic comedy for sure.
From the very beginning, we see that Amy is longing to bring the darkness to light when she begins to tell her husband, George about the road rage incident. But George (a dorky stay-at-home dad/cyclist/artist who is too sincere for his own good), cuts her off mid-sentence and says, “Before you spiral, I’m gonna have to stop you right there. Take a deep breath. Pause. You’ve got to start focusing on the positive, okay? You know, maybe we should start doing the gratitude journals again.” He wants to skip to the light and not deal with the dark. He doesn’t want to see the ugliness of life, but like his own artwork, you can’t make something be beautiful that isn’t.
In another scene, Amy is receiving relationship advice from her mother-in-law who says, “The moment you begin to worry, the moment you acknowledge the worry, you solidify it into existence … All you have is perception. There is no objective truth. You create the truth you want to inhabit.” This is how she functioned with her late husband, and it worked for her … at least she tries to convince herself and Amy that it did. But for those of us on the other side of the fourth wall, we see that her approach has left her sad and lonely.
Later in the season, Amy goes to her own mother to bring some past hurts to light. But before she can even say a word, her mom says, “You’ll realize this as you get older, but if you look back all the time, you crash. Whatever’s going on, put it behind you. George is good for you.” She dodges the truth about her own life and seems content to keep the ugliness hidden, just like all of the other characters surrounding Amy. Only they are anything but content.
Amy is learning from everyone around her that in order to have the perfect life, the ugliness has to stay hidden. She has to stay hidden. Her fear is that if anyone learns who she truly is that no one could ever love her. She will be alone to live in her shame.
Only, she is not alone … there is someone else who has the exact same fear of being left alone, of being found out, of having the ugliness come to light, and that someone else is Danny. Interestingly, he is the only person who seems to notice her ugliness, which might be why their lives are drawn to each other like moths to a flame; he is a light that might kill her but at least she doesn’t have to hide.
Eventually the ugliness that we want to keep in the dark has to come to light. It is a painful process, and the entire season of Beef is a painful, albeit comedic, process of unearthing the darkness of the past. This is why I hesitate to “recommend” Beef. It is painful to go on this journey with Amy and Danny. And although the ugliness is depicted to the extreme (in typical Hollywood fashion), there must be some real life truth to it because it definitely hits a nerve.
No matter how ugly it got, and no matter how many times I groaned and yelled at the screen, “Why are you doing that!?” I still strangely found myself rooting for both Amy and Danny. You would think that a show about enemies would push the viewer to pick one side or the other. But that wasn’t the case. I didn’t favor one over the other. They are both tragic characters who take all of their anger and hate (at themselves) out on each other, and yet I never gave up hope that somehow both of them would arrive at some kind of healing and relief.
It was Jesus who taught, “There is nothing concealed that will not be revealed, or hidden that will not be made known. What you have said in the dark will be heard in the daylight, and what you have whispered in the basement will be proclaimed from the rooftops (Lk 12:2-3).” This is a terrifying thought, of course, but Jesus is just stating a fact: everything will be brought to light eventually. But in its revealing, Jesus turns this terrifying truth into healing and relief, taking the ugliness on himself. He is at the bottom of the cliff, ready to catch us. He knows what is on the other side of terror — life, and maybe even laughter.
