The pressure cooker life?

Beef (Miniseries, S1E1-E10; 2023)

Netflix

This convoluted drama reveals the whole message behind its story only in the last two episodes of the season. Suddenly everything made sense. It tries to show how fragile we are as a society, to maintain peace and to fit in. We pull up a front to portray an image of Zen to the outside world, but deep inside, we hate the person beside us. We wish we could just wring their necks. Unfortunately, civil society does allow this. So we suppress that urge. As we did in our cavemen days, we yearn to be part of the pack to hunt together. Our strengths lie in our numbers.

We exhibit specific behaviours in front of people but let our hair down and show our true inner demons under the cloak of anonymity. In public, we are expected to utter certain pre-ordained niceties. When somebody mentions death, the automatic response is, "I am sorry!" irrespective of whether he died as a national hero or OD'ed. We are expected to put a smiley face in public, no matter how low morale or bad our day has been. We may have had a shitty day at the office, or a Damocles sword could be hanging over our necks over a misadventure. Our professional reputation may be at stake over a misjudgement.

In this cut-throat world where everybody is trying to make a cut for himself, the stresses of the job bring out the worst in us. Yet we are expected to wear an Odin mask but with a perpetual grin.

In a world where siblings care for each other, sometimes love smothers. Instead of stirring interests, it muffles them. In the name of doing the best, it is quite the opposite.

Many things are expected of us in this lifetime - to leave our mark, succeed in life, acquire wealth, continue our progeny, exhibit filial piety, conform to societal expectations, and so on. Go marry and be merry, but can you?

This film shows two characters who are actually on the same life journey with similar life ambitions but end up on opposing sides of society. They kept bottling up the anger of their unfulfilled dreams and the pressures of wanting to mould themselves into doing the 'correct' thing. It reached a point of no return when these two characters honked at each other at a supermarket car park.

Danny, a Korean American handyman, was in the USA with his brother Paul. Danny's sole ambition is to make it big in his business with his brother, build a house and bring his parents from Korea. Somehow all his endeavours proved unfruitful. On the other hand, Paul is just loafing around, just playing computer games. Danny feels he is a failure and wants to kill himself. He was at the supermarket returning the wrong burner that he had bought. He had tried to gas himself dead.

The other character is Amy. She is an example of a rags-to-riches success story. She was born Vietnamese and made it big, selling boutique potted plants. He has a husband and a young daughter. She is planning to lure a wealthy lady into investing in her company. Deep inside, she is still unhappy, undergoing an existential crisis, and finding no purpose in it all. She has many unresolved long-standing issues with her parents growing up.

The near hit at the car park was the straw that broke the camel's back. It spiralled into road rage, a tit-for-tat, social media trolling, and sabotaging, which climaxed to each other going for the jugular.

In the last two episodes, we see them stranded in the woods and fighting for survival. They have to depend on each other to stay alive. A good watch which showcases the Maya of what we see. The world is a big show, and we are acting our roles, reading the script. We are to follow the scripts carefully or risk expulsion. Just maybe, if we alter the words slightly, the final product may shine brighter. Is it worth the try?

PS Sometimes Easterners go with a chip on their shoulders, thinking that their way of living is superior to the Western philosophy, which they believe to be so individualistic and self-centred. At the end of the day, they would soon realise that either way of thinking has its shortcomings.

Quotable Quotes from the Miniseries


    'You ever notice how people who have money think that money isn't important?'

    'Jesus did all those nice things, and look at what they did to him.'

    'Western therapy doesn't work on Eastern minds.'

    'God's just trying not to feel alone in nothingness.'

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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