Netflix's Beef trailer sold us a show that doesn't exist
Ali Wong and Steven Yeun's road rage saga isn't about what it says it is. Plus, the return of Dave and Barry, and how to stream Coachella all weekend long.
Kia ora and Happy Friday! Everyone seems to think linear television is dying a slow, painful death. Statistically, that seems to be true, but after my recent stint on local reality show The Dog House, broadcast TV’s demise seems to be greatly exaggerated – anecdotally, at least. I have been recognised constantly since my family’s episode aired, getting pointed at, yelled at, accosted and at one point, laughed at on a beach. It happens so often that in one day I had five conversations with complete strangers about our cute doggo adventures. Maybe TV still has legs (or paws?) in it after all?
-Chris Schulz, senior writer
Ali Wong’s Beef sizzles and fries – until the Netflix bloat kicks in
Ali Wong is seething. She’s furious. No one does mad better than Ali Wong, and she’s completely going for it. She’s flipping the bird. She’s yelling, then grinning maniacally, her eyes lighting up as the rage takes control. She’s pointing a gun at her phone and screaming into the digital abyss. “I’m going to find you and I’m going to take what little you have,” she seethes. In the background, Billy Corgan gently coos the lyrics to The Smashing Pumpkins’ seminal grunge anthem ‘Today’.
Wong’s foil is Steven Yeun, The Walking Dead’s surly standout. Here, he’s playing against type as a construction worker for hire who runs scams on the side. He has money problems, family issues, his own burning internal angst. He inhales Burger King – four chicken sandwiches at once – like it’s his last meal, and dreams of the day he has enough money to build a house for his parents. Then he runs into Wong and his plans quickly change. Now, he’s got ambitions that are a little more… violent.
All this is in the ridiculously good trailer for Beef, the latest Netflix hit racking up views and hitting top 10 lists around the world. It’s compelling. It’s funny. It’s electric. It uses one of the best songs from the 90s – that Jimmy Chamberlain drum fill maps exactly to Ali Wong’s crazed facial expressions – to perfection. It’s a work of art. Someone put time into this. It shows. I was so sold when I saw it I watched it twice. As someone who sits in Auckland traffic every day, give me a road rage revenge saga and I will inhale it.
I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but the show is nothing like its trailer.
Instead, Beef is an ode to middle-aged boredom. It’s about those in-between stages when work, kids and mortgage payments combine into the daily grind. For Amy (Wong) and Danny (Yeun), all this boredom comes to a head in a convenience store parking lot. There’s a minor infraction. A finger is raised. A chase ensues. They fight. They plot revenge. Someone’s bathroom rug gets pissed on. The 90s alt-rock vibe continues: think Bush, Incubus, Tori Amos and bung old Hoobastank. The credits – a slab of weird art, a dicey quote and those Nolan horns – throw you off-kilter from the get go.
For a while, it’s a good time. For Beef’s first few episodes, any of the scenes involving Wong and Yeun are as explosive as the trailer promises. The pair have so much chemistry that producers don’t seem to know what to do with it all. So around episode four, they start to pad. Things get stretched. What could have been a great movie, or a terrific six-part series, gets pulled to last 10 episodes. But there isn’t 10 episodes worth of story here. It kills all the goodwill, and momentum, built up over those first few episodes.
There’s a phrase to describe this: Netflix bloat. In the streaming era, it happens a lot. You can always tell when a show starts bloating. Characters you’ve never met before show up. There are sudden plot twists and turns that don’t make sense. Things slow down. The story gets boring. Things start to sag. Characters have random affairs. In video game terms, there are side quests. Everything feels like it could be pulled from a Days of Our Lives script. Then, at the end, things sometimes get good again. There’s a great show in there, if they’d just cut all the fat out.
Just like it did in the final season of Ozark, or throughout Jessica Jones, that god-awful second season of Making a Murderer and the insanely long fourth season of Stranger Things, all of that happens in Beef. Suddenly, the guy from Dave shows up. David Choe’s character Isaac gets far more screen time than he deserves. A meaningless church scam plays out for several episodes. Netflix wants people to stay watching, to keep bingeing, to watch four, five or six episodes in a row, so content creators are forced to stick to strict rules. Seasons must be as long as possible. No one seems to care how that might impact the story.
Beef’s saving grace is Ali Wong. The stand-up comedian (remember how she savaged her husband in her second Netflix stand-up special Hard Knock Wife, then the pair split? Awks…) is a captivating performer. She’s just so watchable here, owning every single scene she’s in. She has so many good lines – my favourite is when her husband tells her he had an “emotional entanglement” with her assistant and she replies: “What, do you work for Goop now?” – it makes it worth eating Beef up to the bitter end. It might be bloated, but there’s a good show to be found in there somewhere.
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Why you need to see … Barry
If there’s a particular genre of television that I absolutely love it’s those shows that manage to successfully blur the lines between drama and comedy. Think Better Call Saul or Succession. And think Barry. The Bill Hader series started out as a quirky 30-minute comedy but has since morphed into a stress-inducing crime drama that still manages to make me laugh week-on-week. This is the final season of the HBO series and I am going to miss it so much. It has an exceptional cast, killer writing and is simply so different from anything else on TV. Will Barry, the hitman-turned-aspiring-actor, live to take a final bow? We’ll know in just eight weeks. /Stewart Sowman-Lund
Why you need to see … Dave
You don’t need to see Dave. No one needs to see Dave. Dave is stupid. Dave is dumb. Dave is Atlanta if Fred Durst replaced Donald Glover. Dave is a smorgasbord of terrible rap music, dodgy sex jokes, awkward innuendo and bro-downs all fronted by the worst white rapper alive. My wife calls Lil Dicky “bad Bret McKenzie” and I don’t disagree, yet I’ve seen every episode. I hate myself for it. Dave is the sheer definition of a hate-watch. And now that season three’s here, I’m not about to stop any time soon. /Chris Schulz
On the Spinoff: Amplified’s second episode
In the six-part series Amplified, music journalist Jess Fu connects with exciting local artists to embrace and explore their cultural roots. Made with the support of NZ On Air, Jess catches up with David Feauai-Afaese of Samoan rock project LEAO about music as a form of rejoice, LEAO’s famous high-energy live performances and what it means to “think Pacifically”. Directed by Litia Tuiburelevu. Watch part one here.
All the new stuff you can watch, right now…
This year’s headliners are Blackpink, Frank Ocean and Bad Bunny but it’s who’s on the undercard that makes this year’s Coachella festival far more interesting. Blondie’s in the mix, so’s Björk, Charli XCX and the Chemical Brothers, as well as the first ever performance from Jai Paul. You can watch all six stages from 11am Saturday-Monday (and again next weekend) with the expanded Coachella YouTube stream right here.
If you have any screentime available after that, the fourth and final season of Bill Hader’s hitman comedy Barry (Neon) gets underway on Monday, the fifth and final season of The Marvelous Mrs Maisel (Prime Video) begins today, and the first two episodes of the third (and not final) season of hip-hop comedy Dave (Neon) are out now. Also set to debut is the Wild West series Django (TVNZ+) from today, Jennifer Garner’s missing person saga The Last Thing He Told Me (Apple TV+) and the documentary Longest Third Date (Netflix), about a couple’s never-ending Covid date.
If you’re heading out to the movies, expect cinemas to be booked out with Super Mario Bros screenings after last weekend’s block-busting run. Elsewhere, Ben Affleck’s Air takes on the Michael Jordan / Nike story and has great reviews, and Russell Crowe’s The Pope’s Exorcist has slightly worse reviews but it has been lambasted by the Vatican as “unreliable … splatter cinema” so … it should be fun?
Everything you need to know…
Good news: we’re getting the new Warner Bros Discovery streaming service Max. Bad news: it’s not coming until late 2024. Neon, then, has a little breathing room.
One take and non-stop grief for 28 minutes. That’s how the stars of Succession filmed that pivotal, emotional wrecking ball of an episode. Director Mark Mylod breaks down how they did it for Vulture. While we’re talking Succession, go watch the new mid-season trailer because shit’s about to really kick off now.
Super Mario Bros smashed so many records during its opening weekend that it’s hard to keep up. Variety breaks them down, and expect sequels, spinoffs and many more video game film adaptations coming to a screen near you shortly.
Here’s the first trailer for the Jodie Foster-starring new season of True Detective.
Here are the teams making up the new season of Lego Masters NZ, including a contestant who drove a rideable Lego motorcycle around his school.
I am split on the bonkers new Barbie trailer. It’s either film of the year, or a complete dud. Perhaps it’s both? Why am I so invested? I never even had a Barbie.
I seemed to be in the minority when it came to Matt Reeves’ take on Batman in that I enjoyed his back-to-basics take on the Dark Knight. Here’s the teaser for follow-up The Penguin. Colin Farrell keeps doing what Colin Farrell does.
What does Prime Video think it’s doing? Really loved this Hollywood Reporter feature from Kim Masters on whether or not all these expensive shows and big bets are worth the money the retail company is spending.
A24 promised Talk To Me was its scariest trailer yet. You be the judge.
Finally, Pearl – the Whanganui-shot, Mia Goth-starring follow-up to X that famously received taxpayer funding but didn’t make it into cinemas here – is finally making it into cinemas here. It’s happening April 30. Tickets here.
That’s it for Rec Room for this week. If you liked what you read, why not share Rec Room with your friends and whānau.