Personal Beef

 I watched series 2 of Beef, I almost gave up halfway through because the beef in series 2 got a bit bleak, a bit morbid and I wasn't in the mood.

What got me back, eventually to ride out that emotional nadir, and I want to stress it wasn't bad just more than I could handle at that time and particularly with my watching habits of after gym and before bed, was my memory of liking the conclusion of the first season, where Amy lies down beside Danny in his hospital bed, both having successfully blown up their lives through their eponymous 'beef.'

Horse Holding

When it comes to textual analysis, I don't subscribe to authorial intent - indeed, particularly when it comes to fiction, I would say the point of telling a story is to surrender authorial intent. As such, I don't truck with what my sense being, the numerous people who believe that through the dubious art of "close reading" a text they can "get it" as though there is an authoritative thing to get.

Consider for a moment, what a stupidly grandiose game it is: we essentially have to buy into the notion that the point of some text is for the author to communicate what they want to say to us, by not just out and saying it. 

I'm much more in the camp, that the utility of stories lies in the fact that they are flexible. That one can relate to a story by projecting oneself into it. 

Okay, now we can mount up and get back to the regular programming:

Second Season Finale

For me, I'm not interested in a final shot where a living mandela of characters are revealed to imply a never ending story. What interests me personally about the resolution of the season 2 finale, is what I project to be the same release of dramatic tension that allows the story to resolve.

Specifically, I feel in both season 1 and season 2 what the protagonists obtain from the destruction their actions bring about, is the revelation that they don't hate someone or something but in fact love.

Danny and Amy realise that they love each other, having destroyed their most important relationships in the process, and possibly in all other material ways, have ruined their lives.

Season 2 is more complicated, more bitter sweet. We have two couples juxtaposed, perhaps four but we don't need the other two for my purposes.

We have Josh and Lindsay, and Ashley and Austin.

Josh

Josh's ending is the sweetest. He falls in love with his wife Lindsay after their relationship and lives are totally destroyed. He obtains this epiphany in their divorce proceedings, releasing all acrimony that came from the illusion of hate and resentment and simply lets go of the conflict. Signing his contract extension then his divorce papers. 

He's then able to make the ultimate sacrifice for Lindsay, putting her needs not so much above his own, as as his own. He needs to go to jail in order for Lindsay to obtain the life she wants.

Josh goes to jail for 8 years, on fraud charges where he gains control of his life by relinquishing it. He is offered Lindsay's address so presumably he can go after her, but he chooses not to know, confident Lindsay doesn't wish to be found.

Lindsay

Lindsay's ending is bitter-sweet. She falls in love with Josh after he destroys his own future to save her. She is almost too late in her revelation that she does not hate her former husband but in fact loves him. She does get to embrace him as a lover, after his arrest and before his incarceration. We learn that they lose touch, that she relocates.

We find Lindsay in the epilogue, grieving her lost life, love and happiness. She watches Josh interviewed after his release, where Josh is able to communicate with her, but she can no longer reach him. She has imprisoned herself in a new life, with a partner and child away from the man she loves. She cannot leave her family to go to him.

As such, Lindsay's story is kind of the direct opposite of Amy and Danny's in season 1. Lindsay's destruction of her own life severs her relationship with Josh, the most important relationship she has, and she obtains important relationships without the same love.

For me, Lindsay's circumstance elevates an observation like she "still has feelings for" from the non-trivial via a subtle social taboo. A superficial evaluation of the situation would weigh a child more heavily than an ex-husband. But consider it from the child's point of view - her mother is hiding, upset, lying and keeping secrets from her. This is the significance of Lindsay's "still has feelings for" her daughter is a consolation prize, after life did not work out.

She does not hate Josh, she loves him, her daughter is the second Burberry to her, which Josh took custody of in their divorce settlement, as a likely foreshadowing that he would figure out his feelings sooner than Lindsay.

Josh is free, Lindsay is in hell, receiving the wages of her sin of cowardice, for not taking responsibility for the failure of their marriage as Josh ultimately did.

Austin

Austin gets the worst ending, his epiphany is that he doesn't love Ashley. He doesn't love Ashley, tells her this, and then fails to leave her. 

Austin gives me a bit of a guessing game, I suspect the key factor driving his decisions is actually that he is young and correspondingly naive. The tantalising option is the ironclad law of projection, he can recognise that Ashley is impeded from real love by abandonment issues, and possibly this is because Austin has his own.

Less mysterious is why holding the MacGuffin, he makes a seemingly impulsive decision to choose Ashley. Eunice can't give Austin what he wants for it, appealing instead to his morality. So he becomes Ashley, someone he cannot love.

I find the silent maths pretty trivial, Eunice understands that Austin doesn't love her, he is expressing something else, because he doesn't know her, and she can't lie to him, as she doesn't know him. They were merely attracted, but Austin in his desperation escalates it to crazy town, and crazy attracts crazy taking him right back to Ashley.

Much like Lindsay, Austin is left trapped in hell with Ashley and their son, again hidden by a taboo that Beef tackles - the child doesn't outweigh in Austin's case - the love he does not feel for his wife. 

Austin is worse off than Lindsay though, because his epiphany is in realizing who he doesn't love, but he has no Josh, nor Lindsay. There is nobody to reach for or who can reach him, he's all alone in his destroyed life.

The sliver of hope for Austin is in his relative freedom, he is young, he can divorce Ashley much as Lindsay did Josh and perhaps find someone he loves. But again, rather than Ashley and Austin simply stepping into the vacuum left by Josh and Lindsay, Austin is trapped by the complication of the child he has with Ashley, more so than marriage, tethering him forever to her. Furthermore, there is no epiphany for Austin to attain like Josh and Lindsay, that he does in fact love Ashley. 

The tension has been released already, Austin is stuck narratively, there is nowhere for his character to grow, he is living the hell he signed up for, that he chose.

Ashley

Ashley's story concludes when she hands Austin the thumb drive. She has had the epiphany that she loves Austin in only a slightly delayed response to Austin's sharing his epiphany that he doesn't love her.

Again, there's a bit of a guessing game as to the silent maths, but there's enough there that it isn't a wild guessing game.

Throughout the series, Ashley is the most egregious in using someone as a means rather than an end, that person being Austin. We can infer from what Austin tells us, arrested in egocentricity due to the abandonment she suffered at the hands of her parents. From the second episode, we see that Austin doesn't factor into Ashley's equations as a person with his own wants and needs.

What I'd guess is that by 'naming the game' and losing Austin, Ashley finally sees Austin as an end, rather than a means. He wakes her up, and confers her personal epiphany that she does indeed love Austin by giving him the thumbdrive, mirroring Josh who frees himself by relinquishing control.

But Austin deprives her of the liberation Josh gets to enjoy, and it's probably a tedious quibble to ask if her fate is worse than Austin's. Austin in the same act of nihilism, returns both he and Ashley to the prison of their relationship - invalidating Ashley's epiphany by lying through his actions and suggesting that he was not a worthwhile end, but merely a means all along.

Ashley is left disconnected, she is stripped of her epiphany by being returned to control. She is stuck with Austin and a child from whom she is alienated. 

Again, unlike Josh and Lindsay, Ashley has no hope of escape where Josh and Lindsay were out of control, Ashley is in control she aspired to become Josh, whereas Josh began in a position neither he nor his wife waned him to be in, the job was a diversion.

Brazen Bull

My first real relationship was going alright until my girlfriend had to relocate to the northern state of our country. It was an insurmountable obstacle to someone who was 16 years old and we kind of left our breakup ambiguous.

What was unambiguous, was that Sarah had gotten with another guy, I didn't take it well. This was somewhat of a surprise to the both of us, as I had expressed repeatedly that I didn't really care if she hooked up with other guys so long as ultimately she came back. I was way ahead of my time in terms of polyamory and open relationships, but I was also way ahead on discovering sexual jealousy is physiological thing you can't always think your way over, around or even through.

Prospero Colonna was a noteworthy Italian condottiero who despite being seperated by centuries and also considerable military achievements, had an experience not dissimilar to my own:

Confident in the constancy of the lady of his affections, Prospero took for his companion a gentleman of low degree, to whom she, unfortunately, transferred the love he thought was his own. Feeling that he had been the author of his own ruin, Prospero took for device the bull of Perillus, which had proved the death of its inventor, with the motto, Ingenio experior funera digna meo, "I suffer a death befitting my invention." ~ from his wikipedia page.

The bull of Perillus is better known, if known at all as the execution device "the brazen bull" a hollow bronze bull-shaped casting that a person can be trapped inside and cooked to death in. Perillus supposedly invented it and then died in it.

Prospero, unlike me, was likely a mature man and living in a time when marriages were likely still mostly property transactions so we can't really know how hard his wife's infidelity hit him. For me, the jealousy and subsequent dissolution of my first intimate relationship hit me hard and I certainly moped and became despondent and disinterested for quite some time. 

While I have vivid memories of telling people it took me two years to get over Sarah, reflecting on the timelines it seems impossible for that to be true. Certainly it took me about two years before I started seriously dating again, but I could probably name four or five girls I crushed on in between Sarah and Suzanne, so I must have regained my will to play at reproducing earlier than I boasted.

What I remember more vividly was the release, a profound thing that didn't follow from any dramatic event. I was walking, and could no longer place myself on an exact street, because I walked so many of Ballarat's streets so frequently the memories have become the equivalent of memories of brushing my teeth - so routine and similar I couldn't pick a specific one out.

But the sweet release of flipping a switch and realizing "oh I don't hate Sarah I love her." is vivid. It honestly still feels like a death-rebirth experience. A lesson I am incredibly grateful that I learned early.

Everything's Ruined

I remember a bitter resentment my friend Brenton evoked because he had this girlfriend that kept cheating on him, and they kept getting back together. My experience of relationships was not that, and has never been that. I haven't come close to the dysfunction and misery of on-again-off-again indecision.

But I did resent that Brenton got second chances, that someone kept giving him another go. My partners just left me, and that was that. I had to deal with it. Get over it. 

Yeah, I had some backslides with Claire and Chantelle, but this was more just part of a dumping process, the part where my partners processed their guilt, Chan and I got back together for maybe a week, seeing each other maybe once and feeling the ruined nature of our new reality as a couple before Chan regained her confidence that she'd been right the first time. Claire was the closest I ever got to reconciling with an ex, but after giving it much thought, she chose to move onwards and forwards.

For me though, there has never been a real triumph of hope over experience. I don't know if its me, or a specific combination of me and the women I've grown close to. 

I don't think I've ever been dumped for stupid reasons though. Like nobody has ever broken up with me over something they thought they cared about but turned out not to.

This is what I think Beef captures and resonates for me personally. Yes, I would say pretty much the best feeling in the world, the best breakthrough, the most liberating experience is to realise you love something you thought you hated. This doesn't mean a happy ending is on the cards.

That happy ending you are hoping for? You just had it. Furthermore, I would say most of the benefit is in the relationship you now have with yourself. 

It's so good not to waste time and life hating someone you love. Sarah was my first girlfriend, I've never hated a girlfriend since, I never fed that dog named hate again.

This benefit doesn't in my experience translate into any greater relationship success. As the great Airplane! (1980) said:

Elaine Dickinson: It takes so many things to make love last. But most of all, it takes respect, and I can't live with a man I don't respect.

I think its fabulous if you can realise you actually love someone who cheated on you, took advantage of you, discarded you, neglected you, abused you...and that's why their treatment of you hurts so bad. I think its a wonderful gift you can give yourself to forgive them, and free yourself.

From none of this fabulosity and wonder does it follow that you should, could or need be with them. Beef shows people blowing up their lives again and again to attain this sacred knowledge, but nothing gets fixed, there's no going back, the actions have consequences the most important of which is disillusioning the protagonists.

The liberty is in how you feel about something. Perhaps the relationship you have with your own memory. Again, Josh is in agony living with Lindsay, anxious and on edge, incompatible, reaching, stressed, isolated, alienated it's all there on screen. Lindsay's misery, makes him miserable.

Also on screen is how much happier he is in jail. He loves Lindsay, and is relieved of all the self-destruction when he is no longer with her. It is not important to him that he is in a position where he can control Lindsay, as a means to his own ends, just that he knows she exists, that she is in control of herself.

Sarah and I are still friends, she has photos of us as a couple she sent me recently. There can often be years between us speaking, but it seems that what attracted us to each other was and remains real. Our lives parted, we've lived more of them apart than we ever shared. I've fallen in love with other people and had much more significant relationships as has she. But I appreciate what we had, it was a good start and it put me in good stead, even if later partners have been confused by how well I've taken the failures of our relationships, its because I just don't have time for that illusory hate.

Missing

I think my take on Beef will be a rare one, I watched a video 'explaining' the end of season 2 because the thumbnail suggested Lindsay's time-skip femullet had some significance. 

That person's take was that Lindsay was the only one to escape, as in, she had the best fate and leaned heavily into Ashley becomes Josh and Austin becomes Lindsay and the wheel of time just keeps on turning.

I do think my interpretation is in there though, in the text, not even the subtext. I just don't think most people will take it away, an abject lesson in the limited effect of media, so ah, stop policing language it doesn't matter that much.