Thrumming with Dark Vigor, Beef Is a Terrific Rebound for Netflix

There’s a great scene toward the very end of The Wire when Marlo Stanfield, the former drug kingpin who dodges jail time and attempts to become a straight businessman, leaves a meeting dressed in a suit, walks the streets of west Baltimore, and approaches two dealers on a street corner. “The f— you looking at?” he asks, unprompted. A moment later, one of the dealers draws a gun, Marlo wrestles it away, and gets grazed on the arm as he drives the dealers off the corner. He’s left standing by himself in the glow of the streetlight, and analysis of the scene often depicts Marlo as wistful or defeated in this moment—the king of nothing, without even a reputation like dead nemesis Omar. There’s truth to that, but I see something more. In his smile, there’s the sense of returning to life; he’s been shot, yes, and he’s lost his street status, but he’s once again found himself where he wants to be, and where he feels most alive: In a fight. The sense of electricity he feels in that moment is worth more than all the millions he acquired.

There’s an argument to be made that struggle and conflict is at the heart of the human condition, perhaps more so for someone born to a hard life like Marlo than for others who live more comfortably, but still fundamental and even necessary for fulfillment. At the end of the first episode of the new Netflix series Beef, the brilliant Ali Wong, playing the well-off boutique entrepreneur Amy Lau, has become engaged in a feud with the suicidal contractor Danny Cho, played by Steven Yeun. It started with an instance of road rage, in which Lau almost kills Cho, and escalates when Cho, pretending to do his nemesis a favor, gets access to her home and urinates all over the bathroom floor. Enraged, Lau chases him to his truck, but Cho is too fast, and he gives her the finger as he speeds away. And however this sounds, wrapped in the language of plain description, be advised: It’s one of the most invigorating sequences on TV in the past year.

Why? Pick a thousand reasons: the slow-motion footage, complete with Wong’s enraged cursing as she holds back her olive dress; Yeun’s delirious grin; the almost too-perfect musical choice of Hoobastank’s “The Reason;” and, best of all, just before the action flashes to the credits, the flash of a smile on Wong’s face.

From this scene alone, you know you’re in expert hands, and it all hearkens back to that scene from The Wire: in their own ways, the two main characters are trapped and desperate in their lives, victims of circumstance and more powerful forces. One is rich, and one is poor, but fundamentally they’re both prisoners who feel no sense of control of their lives. What this short moment shows is that, briefly, they are resuscitated; they need this. It’s not healthy, it’s going to harm them both, but you know beyond any doubt that they are going to chase this high as long as they can. A raw thrill brought them both back to life, from a chance encounter in a parking lot, and through it they’ll even come to depend on each other.