“Beef Season 2” will invariably be compared to Season 1, and while it’s not quite there it’s in the same neighborhood.

As a whole, the new season of "BEEF" is a stunning achievement: fiendishly funny and deeply thought-provoking. Sign me up for 10 more seasons, please.

Lee’s new story is more wacky, condescending, romantic, and nastily, wonderfully furious than the already nastily and wonderfully furious first season.

While the new episodes don’t offer quite the same depth of character or adrenaline rush as the original, the show remains a sharply observed, virtuosically acted, and artfully shot study of human behavior at its ugliest.

When the show is reaching for the heights of its first season, there's a tension there, the series unfurling into something a little messier. As a conspiracy grows and envelops all of our main characters, Beef season 2 can feel unwieldy, but Lee and his co-directors Jake Schreier and Kitao Sakurai maintain a sleek visual style that evolves as the series progresses.

A-listers notwithstanding, it’s a surprisingly slight return engagement.

The new bosses’ high-class problems are always tertiary to the Josh-Lindsay-Ashley-Austin quadfecta and never stop feeling tacked-on, even when plot contrivances transport the entire ensemble to Seoul for the finale. But they’re just present enough to distract from the core conflict, transforming the season from a group character study into a corporate espionage thriller such that neither half feels fully fleshed-out. It’s a shame, because before they peter out, there are threads worth following.

Season 2 decided to go big, with more people, more chaos, and more drama. And it actually works, because the writing remains sharp and the biting humor hits the **** the bigger it gets, the more it seems like the series starts revolving around intrigues and gossip that sound more sensational than they actually are. There are good ideas there, but many pass by too quickly or fall by the **** various points, you even get a sense of déjà vu, as if it were flirting with something a bit like The White Lotus, just without the same **** the end, it’s still one of those series you can easily binge-watch. Only, this time, it doesn’t stick with you in the same way after it’s over.

Sorry, but I didn't understand why Beef's second season turned into 'The White Lotus.' Starts very strongly, but it fails when trying to encompass so much and turn the initial conflict into an international conspiracy. At least it is well-acted.