'Beef' Season 2 is an exquisite masterpiece all over again

Netflix has another helping of "Beef" on the menu, and dang, it tastes so good.

The deliciously uncomfortable series about a feud between strangers was a breakaway hit in 2023 when it debuted starring Ali Wong and Steven Yeun. It won Emmys and acclaim and put common road rage incidents into stark perspective. And now creator Lee Sung-Jin is serving us more.

Season 2 of "Beef" (streaming April 16, ★★★★ out of four) takes on a whole new conflict with a whole new cast, but is every bit the excruciating masterpiece the first season was. Everything you hoped would come back to this series does: Squirm-worthy and awkward interactions; deep commentary on class and status; plot twists that are outlandish but oh-so-satisfying.

Culinary-adjacent title or not, you'll want to gobble up all eight episodes of the new season, starring Oscar Isaac, Carey Mulligan, Cailee Spaeny ("Priscilla)" and Charles Melton ("May December"). Instead of two strangers with beef this time it's two couples in conflict, with Isaac and Mulligan as the happily married Josh and Lindsay, and Spaeny and Melton as bright-eyed young lovers Ashley and Austin. After the younger pair witness a semi-violent altercation between the older two, the couples become intertwined in an ever-worsening web of blackmail, resentment, embezzlement, fraud and deception.

This one regrettable fight between husband and wife has far-reaching implications for the community surrounding a ritzy LA country club, where Josh is the general manager and Ashley and Austin are his underlings. The couples' antagonistic relationship with each other is further complicated by the arrival of Chairwoman Park (Youn Yuh-jung, "Minari" and the first Korean actress to win an Oscar), the club's new billionaire owner from South Korea, and her alluring assistant Eunice (Seoyeon Jang). The newcomers threaten everyone's livelihoods and perhaps even their romantic relationships.

Lee has put together a sublime cast for his complex and deep characters, whose inner lives are as juicy and gripping as the drama they cause. Isaac, easily one of the most magnetic actors of his generation, has been transformed into a sleazy, lurid middle manager with a penchant for "manosphere" podcasts and a deep inferiority complex. It turns out the "Star Wars" star can play revolting just as easily as heroic (his greasy slicked-back haircut helps). Mulligan, who similarly usually gives off a warm presence onscreen, is icy and sharp here, her Lindsay stuck up and miserable in the life she's made for herself but completely trapped by her own ego and selfishness.

Spaeny and Melton, who are both speedy up-and-comers in Hollywood, are endearing and talented; their performances here provide ample evidence for their meteoric rise. Ashley and Austin are sweet and dangerously naive, navigating a world they resent for its inequalities and broken systems, and too inexperienced to try to game them.

The show is a propulsive hurricane of misery and cringe, from the violent incident that sets off this series of unfortunate events to the twists and horrors that unfold.

I'm loathe to explain too much of the plot because it turns in so many directions, and unwrapping each episode like a Christmas present is one of the joys of watching the series, even as it ratchets up the tension and anxiety. Its themes are layered and thought-provoking, and like the first "Beef" the show is preoccupied with the idea of the "haves" and the "have-nots." From the perspective of Ashley and Austin all the way at the bottom of the food chain, it's cash-strapped and indebted Josh and Lindsay who are the elites, even as that pair resents the rich big-wigs at the club they are still forced to serve. Looming over them all is Park and her plastic surgeon husband (Song Kang-ho of the similarly-themed Oscar-winning film "Parasite") with their billions of dollars, yet steep problems of their own.

They're all playing the game of survival in late-stage capitalism, but no one gets to pass go and collect $200. The desperation that all the characters feel as they strive for what they want and need − be that money or power or respect or a promotion or their own business or even just health insurance − is universally relatable. Lee takes his characters to their extremes, but they never stop being unmistakably human.

At the end of the day we all have beef with someone or something. Watching this show might just be an alternative to screaming into the void.