How a small parking lot argument turned into one of the most talked-about shows in years
Most TV shows need at least a few episodes before they really hook you. BEEF hooked me in the first five minutes. Two strangers almost hit each other in a parking lot, and instead of moving on with their lives, they chase each other through the streets of Los Angeles and then spend the next ten episodes trying to completely destroy one another. It sounds ridiculous, but somehow it ends up being one of the most emotional, honest, and human shows that has come out in a really long time.
BEEF is a Netflix limited series created by Lee Sung Jin and produced by A24, the same company behind movies like Everything Everywhere All at Once and Hereditary. It stars comedian Ali Wong as Amy Lau, a successful plant business owner who has money but is deeply unhappy, and Steven Yeun as Danny Cho, a struggling contractor who can barely keep his head above water. When the two nearly collide in a parking lot, neither one will let it go. What starts as a road rage incident slowly spirals into something way bigger and way more personal. The show premiered on April 6, 2023, and quickly shot to the top of Netflix’s global charts. By awards season, it had won eight Primetime Emmy Awards, including Outstanding Limited Series, three Golden Globes, and four Critics Choice Awards, among dozens of other honors. Critics loved it. The audience loved it. “People felt less alone. That’s been really lovely.” Creator Lee Sung Jin, Deadline
Where the Idea Came From
The origin of BEEF is almost as interesting as the show itself. Before he ever wrote a single word of the script, creator Lee Sung Jin had his own real road rage incident. He found himself angrily following another driver for almost an hour, something he later described as a moment of “madness.”
Lee spent years writing down thoughts, conversations, and moments in his phone’s notes app. He told Deadline, “My notes app is just full of scribbles. For [BEEF], I would go back on funny interactions and see if there’s a place where that psychology could fit.” He also brought together a writers’ room of Asian American writers who were willing to be honest about their own struggles with mental health, family pressure, and identity. He described the experience as “a therapeutic vessel to vomit our insides into,” which is a pretty raw way to put it, but it explains why the show feels so real.
From the start, he had Steven Yeun and Ali Wong involved not just as actors but also as executive producers and collaborators. “They really helped encourage me and really pushed me to a place where it was OK to write more honestly,” Lee said. That support system showed up in every episode.
Two Characters Who Are More Alike Than They Realize
One of the smartest things about BEEF is how it sets up Amy and Danny as total opposites on the surface but slowly reveals how similar they actually are. Amy has the house, the husband, and the deal worth millions. Danny can barely get clients and is stressed about supporting his parents back in South Korea. But both of them are carrying the same thing underneath all of it: deep loneliness, shame, and a feeling that no matter what they do, it will never be enough. Steven Yeun said the role forced him to “revisit a part of myself that when I was younger, I didn’t have a full handle over.” He also said he got genuinely exhausted from the constant anger. “I got tired being that angry for so long,” he told NPR. Both he and Ali Wong actually broke out in hives during filming, Yeun on his body, Wong on her face. Yeun said that detail ended up being the perfect symbol for their characters: Danny exists through his body, grinding and struggling physically, while Amy is stuck in a mental world of high-stakes business deals and performance.
There is something almost like a twisted love story going on between two people who can’t stop thinking about each other, who understand each other in ways nobody else does, even while trying to ruin one another. “Danny and Amy are equally matched rivals. They respect each other. There’s a connection underneath the beef connection.” Steven Yeun, NPR.
More Than Just Anger: It’s About Shame
A lot of shows about angry characters just leave it at that. BEEF goes deeper. Clinical psychologist Dr. Gauri Saxena wrote a detailed analysis of the show and pointed out that the real emotion driving both Danny and Amy isn’t actually rage; it’s shame. “Shame and grief almost always underlie anger,” she wrote. For both characters, the road rage incident becomes an outlet for everything they’ve been bottling up for years: feelings of failure, worthlessness, and disconnection. The show also looks at why getting help is so hard for these characters. Amy tries therapy but deflects every time her therapist gets too close to something real. Danny says at one point that “Western therapy doesn’t work on Eastern minds.” Dr. Saxena noted that Asian Americans are actually one of the least likely groups to seek therapy, even though they also have some of the highest suicide rates. She pointed out that the show’s therapy scenes, as awkward and failed as they are, reflect a real problem not just in the characters’ lives but in how the mental health system treats people from different cultural backgrounds. By the finale, the only way Amy and Danny actually break through is by accidentally ingesting psychedelic berries while stranded together in the wilderness, which leads to the most honest conversation either of them has had in years. It’s messy and strange and kind of beautiful. Variety’s Alison Herman wrote that the show is at its best when it “keeps its focus on these characters and the worlds they inhabit,” and the finale does exactly that.
Asian American Representation Done Differently
One of the biggest reasons BEEF resonated so deeply is the way it handled representation. Lee Sung Jin made a deliberate choice: he didn’t want this to be a show about being Asian American. He wanted it to be a show about being human with Asian American characters. “We just kind of flattened that whole landscape by being like, ‘It’s all Asian people,’” Yeun explained to NPR. “So now we can just get to who these people are. Then anyone can access them.” For a lot of Asian American viewers, that was a huge deal. BuzzFeed collected responses from Asian American community members after the show came out, and the responses were really personal. One Korean American viewer said, “It’s the first show that I could relate to. I could understand the inside jokes, the Korean church and the nuances of the churchgoers, and the lies told to the family to protect them.” Another said, “I never knew I was missing it from the media. Now, I’m craving more like it.” Dr. Saxena also pointed out that the show challenges the “model minority” stereotype, the idea that Asian Americans are supposed to be quiet, successful, and grateful. BEEF completely rejects that. Danny and Amy are messy and furious and deeply flawed. And that, for a lot of viewers, was the most refreshing thing about it.
“It’s great to see more Asian actors onscreen and being our messy, hopeful selves.” BuzzFeed Community Respondent
The Awards, the Reach, and the Legacy
By the end of awards season, BEEF had collected 44 wins and 46 nominations across major ceremonies, according to IMDb. The Emmy wins alone covered Outstanding Limited Series, Lead Actor for Yeun, Lead Actress for Wong, and Outstanding Directing for Lee Sung Jin. The AFI named it TV Program of the Year. The Golden Globes gave it Best Limited Series along with acting awards for both leads. The show’s reach went global in a way Lee didn’t expect. He told Deadline that while he was in Seoul last summer getting coffee, a Korean woman stopped him on the street and recognized him as the director of BEEF. “That was surreal,” he said, “especially since I’m in a country where I look more like everyone else, and still someone loved the show enough to seek me out.” At the Golden Globes, Lee found a moment of comedy in his acceptance speech, thanking the stranger who cut him off in traffic years ago: “Sir, I hope you honk and yell and inspire others for years to come.” It’s a funny line, but it also kind of captures what BEEF is really about the idea that the worst moments in our lives can, if we’re willing to look at them honestly, become something meaningful.
What’s Next
A second season has been discussed, and Netflix’s Tudum site has confirmed that BEEF Season 2 is in development, with Oscar Isaac and Carey Mulligan set to star. Lee originally pitched the show as an anthology, so a new season would likely follow completely different characters. Lee himself has been thoughtful about not trying to repeat what made Season 1 special. “I’ve let go of the idea that anything I work on next will feel the same as Season 1,” he told Deadline. “It was a certain configuration of people that may never come together in that way again.” In the meantime, the cast still gets together for dinner, usually Korean barbecue, sometimes followed by karaoke. Which, for a show born out of road rage, is a pretty good ending. BEEF is the kind of show that sticks with you. Not because of the revenge plots or the wild twists, but because it asks a question most of us don’t want to sit with: what are we actually so angry about? And it’s brave enough to answer it.
