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Spoilers ahead for Season 2 of Netflix’s “Beef.”

How do you like your “Beef”? 

If you enjoy TV heavily seasoned with polarizing characters, high drama, and plenty of WTF moments, then Netflix has the perfect dish at the ready. Lee Sung Jin’s follow-up to his anthology’s Emmy-winning first season is not only rife with complicated character dynamics, but the eight episode-binge (now available to stream) is also infused with hair-raising antics that will make your skin crawl. 

Why? Because these people are terrible. 

But who’s the worst of the bunch? Let’s set the stage. Season 2 centers around two couples: Josh (Oscar Isaac) and Lindsay (Carey Mulligan), a privileged, wealthy pair who manage a ritzy California country club; and Ashley (Cailee Spaeny) and Austin (Charles Melton), two broke twenty-somethings who work low-level jobs at the same club. Late one night after closing, Ashley and Austin witness a horrible argument between their boss, Josh, and his wife. As the domestic fight teeters toward getting physical, Josh and Lindsay see that Ashley and Austin are watching them, leading to a cyclone of depravity that completely crashes out from there. 

As Josh and Lindsay work to maintain their status at the club and keep their marital struggles hidden from its members, Ashley and Austin use the situation to their advantage, since the very Gen-Z Ash recorded the entire beef on her phone. The story continues Season 1’s exploration of classism, while also delving into money issues, blackmail, embezzlement, fraud, and more. Nothing’s off the table as the show’s central four fight to survive in a world where using people is the only way to get ahead, and no one gets off scot-free. (Read Dave Nemetz’s review here.)

Below, we take stock of each character’s crimes and misdemeanors (social or otherwise) that had our minds racing long after the credits rolled. So who came out as the season’s best-worst character?  Review all of the horrific (and sorta funny?) details, then weigh in via the poll below!

Look, we’re not including Chairwoman Park in our poll (because she’d win by a landslide), but we’d be remiss if we didn’t at least mention Youn Yuh-jung’s nefarious businesswoman. A woman whose reach is so far she can affect politics in her homeland of Korea, all while employing henchmen to execute all of her illegal whims (murder!) with ease. 

Park has zero morals. When her doctor husband accidentally kills a patient on his table, she’s really only invested in how it affects her bottom line. She views the mishap as merely an inconvenience that she’s stuck covering up. But her depravity doesn’t stop there. She orders a hit on tennis instructor Woosh after he tries to blackmail her for a higher paying job. And he was only able to do that after finding out about her blatant tax evasion ploys, which includes heaps of shell companies and other shady financial dealings.

Park also attempts to kill Josh after discovering that he was skimming off the top of the club’s earnings. Not only did she think that was a great idea (one that she ultimately picked up for her own benefit), but she tries to stage Josh’s death as a suicide and frame Lindsay in one fell swoop! And what does she blame for all her self-serving acts? Capitalism. Then, the woman has her husband killed and does not give one single F! Ice cold.

Park is truly villainous, so let’s instead focus on the ants swarming beneath her. At least they have a tinge of humanity left inside them (… maybe?).  

Josh forgetting his wife’s birthday in the Season 2 premiere is a big red flag: This guy’s priorities are way off! 

The porn-addicted club manager not only overspends on cam girls, but he’s sexually avoidant with his wife. Negligent, even. And what do sexually frustrated human beings do? Some of them get into scary, aggressive fights like the one Ashley and Austin witnessed! Lindsay isn’t totally free of blame in this argument (see below), but Josh definitely crosses a line being the male in this situation, especially when things heat up and he grabs the golf club from Lindsay. (Was he just keeping the club away from his wife, or was he planning to use it? We hope the former, but we’ll never know for sure how things could’ve escalated.) 

But Josh, Josh, Josh. He spends all of Lindsay’s inheritance on his dying mother’s bills, and doing so doesn’t even solve his financial burdens. He still gets caught skimming from the club. As the season progresses, it’s increasingly frustrating to watch an upper-class man with privilege steal when he already has way more than most. (That house? His den of fancy tech and instruments? C’mon, guy!) And that’s not even touching his poor/weird/sketchy treatment of Ashley once she starts working for him, despite the fact that she kinda asks for war in the workplace by blackmailing her boss.  

He does have redeeming qualities, which leave us conflicted. In order to save Lindsay from legal ruin, he takes the fall for the embezzlement and money laundering charges, which according to Park’s official story, was done to help cover up the death at Trochos for Dr. Kim. Josh does eight years in prison for his (and others’) crimes. Also, before his time in the slammer, he agrees to give Lindsay half of all his future earnings. Who ever said love was dead?

We’re not blaming Lindsay for the fight, but she does play a part! (She’s the first to start smashing their home to smithereens.) It takes two to tango. Josh and Lindsay both spew vitriol at each other, and as uncomfortable as it is, we’re really left wishing these lovebirds had a good therapist on speed dial. 

And while Josh has his porn addiction, Lindsay engages in some questionable online flirting, both with strangers and an ex. Innocent fun or playing with fire? You decide! They’re both seen making obvious mistakes, and lying to their spouse and hiding brutal truths is all a part of their twisted marriage. 

When Josh tells Lindsay about his plans to embezzle from the club, the look of excitement she has is dumbfounding. Stealing other people’s money seems like a fun game to her, and to keep it 100, it’s not a great look. Lindsay is also a master manipulator, both in how she handles relationships at the club and in her dealings with Ashley. While we do see Lindsay and Ash connect in certain ways throughout the season — Lindsay teaches Ashley how to get what she wants out of the club members, plus they share a couple sweet-ish moments while searching for Burberry — it’s all done with selfish motives (like getting her hands on the fight video), making Lindsay seem like an expert-level puppet master toying with Ashley’s inexperience.

Last, but not least: The Shirley Temple on the airplane. The absolute horror!

It’s far easier to empathize with Ashley and Austin for a couple reasons. These youngsters are poor and treading water with nothing but love for each other in their hearts. (Awww!) Plus, they’re so out of their league at the start of this that you want to see them get out of aaaall this unscathed. To Ashely’s credit, after witnessing their boss’s fight, her first take is: “I think we should stay out of it.” But the Ashley we meet in the premiere is not the Ashley we leave come finale. Not only does she go along with Austin’s plan to blackmail her way to an office job with benefits, but she also fakes up a document to get her beau a full-time physical therapist position at the club. (Uh, fraud’s a big no-no, mmmkay?) 

Her eventual insecurity in her relationship also widens a crack between herself and Austin: She grows suspicious of his relationship with Eunice, going through his phone at the hospital, all while the guy’s seeking out the perfect flavor of Gatorade for her. And the fact that she starts checking the guy’s phone every single night? With his consent? Ring the alarm. Ring every alarm! Jealousy truly makes her cuckoo, cracking her sanity wide open as the season barrels on.   

Oh, and SHE KILLS BURBERRY! OK, well, not directly, but she does break into Josh and Lindsay’s home, leaving the screen door ajar enough for the pup to get out and become coyote food. (R.I.P., Burberry!) And about that break-in. 1) What the actual eff?! and 2) The glass of orange juice! She takes damning photos of her boss’s financials and completely invades his privacy, but putting her post-surgery, bloody hand in Josh’s freshly squeezed OJ? File that under: Scenes We Wish We Didn’t See. 

It’s worth noting that Ashley’s emotional downfall and financial stress stems from a very serious health issue. She has an ovarian cyst which will require her to pursue IVF. It’s emotionally taxing, and will cost a heck of a lot of coin. But that doesn’t excuse her wrongdoings. By the time Ashley orders one of every single dessert on her flight to Seoul (that poor flight attendant), we actually kinda hate her?

Austin, you lovable doofus. 

His and Ashley’s naivety is all sorts of adorable to start, but as Ashley begins to push him more and more, we couldn’t help but get frustrated with his people-pleasing persona. Sure, it’s nice to make people (Ashley) happy, but dude needed to grow a serious backbone and learn how to communicate better. While Ashley’s jealousy certainly isn’t a relationship booster, Austin’s failure to deal with his growing feelings toward Eunice is problematic. And the gaslighting?! No wonder Ashley’s freakishly checking his phone every night. They need a pair of besties to tell them to call it quits because they’re on a high-speed train to disaster-town. 

We can’t help but have a soft spot for Austin. A bee died in his house and he cries! He also thinks Kim Jong-un was a member of BTS. (Bless his heart.) He still takes part in a healthy amount of blackmail, and while it may have been Ashley’s plan to fake his way into a therapist role, he goes along with it. 

The season ends the way it begins, with some more good, old-fashioned blackmail! Austin exchanges the USB evidence of Park’s dirty deeds in order to get what he wants, and before the credits roll, we see Ashley usurps Josh’s managerial role at the club, while Austin appears to be settling in as her house-husband. But the moral of the story? No amount of money can buy happiness because eight years later, Ashley and Austin seem miserable — just like Josh and Lindsay at the beginning of our tale.

The common thread among this crew: They allow their delusions to control their moral compasses. The fight wasn’t that bad, right? It’s not blackmail, really. It’s not fraud. It’s not murder. Josh, Lindsay, Ashley, and Austin are all, as Park says, looking out for themselves in a capitalist society that doesn’t care one iota about them. And in pursuit of bettering their individual situations, they try and ultimately fail to convince themselves that their transgressions are not corrupt. 

So who do you think is the most wicked and despicable character from “Beef” Season 2? Vote in our poll below, then explain your reasoning in the comments!