A Comedy About the Misery of Having It All

The first time I saw Amy, Ali Wong’s character in Beef, I found myself sitting up a little straighter and leaning a little closer toward my TV. I knew Wong had a starring role, but Amy caught me off guard. Wearing a cream-colored bucket hat, her hands gripping the steering wheel and her face frozen in fear, she looked nothing like what I expected of the faceless driver I’d just watched in the show’s opening minutes—the one who’d careened recklessly across lanes, taunting, threatening, and throwing trash at a stranger.

Then again, likes toying with assumptions of who) is hard to categorize; it’s simultaneously a black comedy, a domestic drama, and a psychological thriller. It starts with a road-rage incident that Amy sets off when she flips the bird at Danny (Steven Yeun) in a parking lot after he nearly backs his truck into her Benz. Like a gnarlier , their ensuing feud leads to an escalating series of vengeful acts that build from petty pranks into horrifying, morally questionable schemes. That the show feels balanced at all is down to how well drawn both leads are. Amy is a wealthy entrepreneur with a loving husband, a cute daughter, and a state-of-the-art mansion. Danny is a contractor barely making rent who shares a cramped apartment with his slacker brother. Both are deeply, desperately unhappy.