Lee Sung Jin thinks about cycles. The Beef creator knows how life loves to give us different flavors of the same problem, over and over again, even when we think we've figured it all out. How every generation faces similar challenges—no matter how said generations love to punch up and down to another era—because money, family, and work always tend to get in the way of a happy life. And if, along the way, you happen to find a shred of peace? Well, another cycle is right around the corner.
So is there any hope of breaking the cycle of cycles—or a way to pause it all? For Lee, there's hope in the eyes of his one-year-old daughter, who was born in the middle of shooting Beef season 2."Time stops when you're with your kid," Lee tells me over Zoom, about a month before Beef's return to Netflix. "This season of Beef is so much about cycles and this eternal trap of samsara that we're all in. And you look at your kid and there's hope, you know?"
