![‘Beef’ Season 2: Jake Schreier On Lies, Class Warfare, Generational Divide, & Why It All Matters For ‘X-Men’ [Bingeworthy Podcast]](https://cdn.theplaylist.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/13142811/beef-jakes-schier.jpg "‘Beef’ Season 2: Jake Schreier On Lies, Class Warfare, Generational Divide, & Why It All Matters For ‘X-Men’ [Bingeworthy Podcast]")
What made the first season of “Beef” so good is that it refused to shrug off a ridiculously small thing, a little bit of road rage. It didn’t let that incident seem small. Instead, it became a complete and total falling apart for two people. They just kept making a conflict that should have ended in a parking lot get bigger and bigger, until it was uncomfortably, painfully true to life. It flourished in specifics, being both amusing, shockingly harsh, and really honest about how quickly people can lose it when they don’t feel like anyone notices them.
Season two of “Beef” pulls the same kind of nasty trick, but it begins with something incredibly simple and contained. A couple happens to witness something they shouldn’t. They really ought to walk away. They don’t. They decide to use what they’ve seen, and that’s what launches Season 2 into pure petty chaos.
This season follows two couples at very different stages of life. One is young, barely a couple of years into their couplehood, and still believes a relationship is smooth sailing if there are no arguments. They haven’t really been tested. The other couple is older, quite wealthy, and sitting on a mountain of resentment… resentment that bursts out in ways that are harsh, unpleasant, and, frankly, disgusting.
Ashley and Austin, played by Cailee Spaeny and Charles Melton, are the younger couple and work at a country club owned by Joshua Martin (Oscar Isaac). They end up with his phone, and when they attempt to return it, what they find isn’t a simple return. They stumble into a violent and intimidating argument between Martin and his wife, Lindsay (Carey Mulligan). It gets physical, and Ashley films it. That video becomes something they can trade. Favors are done. Boundaries are broken.
The stress builds. The first season began with two strangers tearing at each other in public. This season starts with something far more unpleasant, because it’s happening in private. A marriage is crumbling behind closed doors. And a young couple filming it understands that it has worth. Not morally, but in a very real way; it’s something they can use for jobs, security, a foot in the door. And from there, everything spirals out of control.
On this episode of Bingeworthy, Mike DeAngelo interviews director Jake Schreier, who helmed both the first and last episodes, establishing the season’s feel and bringing it to a satisfying close.
Schreier says he didn’t want to do the same things that worked in Season 1; he wanted it to grow into something else.
“I think one thing that Sonny always talked about is that it had to feel different,” he said. “It had to feel like a band progressing, and this is the next album. What are the aesthetics of that album that feel different?”
And that growth is obvious immediately. This season is more restrained on the surface. The camera doesn’t hurry, it watches. The scenes are longer. You’re left with the awkwardness for longer.
“There are a lot of things bubbling underneath the surface,” Schreier said. “It’s scored more like a thriller in the first episode than you might expect, given what’s actually happening. But it’s letting you know, like, we’re going to get there. Like, there is violence underneath what might seem like a comedy of manners at first.”
That’s the core of the season. It’s not less turbulent, simply quieter turbulence. Schreier points to a small detail as the thing that binds it all together, the central idea of every single scene of “Beef” (both seasons).
“There’s a lie in almost every scene of the show,” he said. “Sometimes it’s a lie someone’s telling someone else. And sometimes it’s a lie that they’re telling themselves.”
This plays out with both couples: the younger ones believe they’re unbreakable, the older ones think they can still patch things up. Isaac’s character believes he’s in charge because of his job and how well-off he is. No one is being truthful, and the show lets us know that before they do. Schreier believes the show really works when no one is “the bad guy”.
“So much about ‘Beef,’ including season one, is about seeing into perspectives from people that you might otherwise dismiss,” he said. “It’s never just there to be a kind of obstacle or a villain.”
That same attention to emotional cycles is also present in Schreier’s work on Marvel’s “Thunderbolts*”, which he was developing as he finished Season 1 of “Beef”.
“It wasn’t necessarily a conscious choice except that, like, when I was working on ‘Thunderbolts,*’ when The Void was in it, it was just so interesting because we were just finishing up ‘Beef’ and The Void was such a concept in that show,” he said. “But I think that with any of these stories, whether it’s ‘Beef’ or any of the Marvel stuff, I mean, they succeed because of the personal, they succeed because of the characters, and because you can connect with something even if it’s on this grand kind of canvas.”
The conversation eventually turned fully to the MCU. Schreier did reveal that the major twist of “Thunderbolts*”, the asterisk and the late-film reveal that rebrands the team as “The New Avengers”, was planned from the beginning.
“It was part of the pitch,” he said. “Like when I came on, that idea that that was going to get unveiled at the end was part of it. I said as a joke, ‘oh, you should actually just put an asterisk on it.’ I think it was for like one marketing thing, not the actual title. And everyone just sort of left. And then I think we forgot about it for a while, and then we came back to it.”
He’s approaching “X-Men” with the same idea: first concentrate on what’s going on inside the characters and their connections with each other, and the action will flow from that.
“When you go and read those early runs, you know, it’s good to remember like how much of it is this kind of young soap opera as well,” he said. “And much of the kind of divisions within the team often start from kind of personal rifts and things that are going on.”
And that idea connects directly to this season of “Beef”. Take away the location, and it’s still about people misunderstanding each other and keeping pushing until something snaps. This time it happens at a country club. And soon, with Schreier staying in the MCU, it will happen at Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters.
“Beef” Season 2 hits Netflix on April 16th. And you can hear the whole conversation with Jake Schreier by listening below.
Bingeworthy is part of The Playlist Podcast Network, which includes Deep Focus, The Discourse, and more. We can be heard on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Soundcloud, and most places where podcasts are found. You can stream the podcast via the embed within the article. Be sure to subscribe and drop us a comment or a rating, as we greatly appreciate it. Thank you for listening.
