Feeling bad can feel good

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This article was published 14/04/2023 (883 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Welcome to the latest instalment of Don’t Sleep on This: a semi-regular series in which the Free Press Arts & Life department will offer up (spoiler-free) recommendations of the shows you should be watching.

Here, we look at three half-hour dramedies that, despite having radically different premises and tones, tackle anger, self-destruction, knotty family dynamics and the cost of a dream, American or otherwise.

Beef

Netflix

No. of seasons: 1

This black comedy from Lee Sung Jin starring Ali Wong and Steven Yeun just dropped on Netflix on April 6 and it’s already one of the hottest shows of 2023.

Yeun, who was nominated for an Oscar for his role in Minari, is Danny Cho, a perennially stressed and depressed contractor whose business is failing.

“It’s always something,” is his sighing catchphrase — that, along with his belief that “Western therapy doesn’t work on Eastern minds.” Danny feels like a constant letdown to his parents, who are back in Korea after losing their motel, and is frustrated by his brother Paul’s (Young Mazino) lack of ambition.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFPIMHBzGDs

Wong, probably best known for her work as a standup comedian, is Amy Lau, who seemingly has it all: handsome stay-at-home husband/mediocre sculptor George (Joseph Lee), who comes from Japanese art royalty, an adorable, pigtailed daughter (Remy Holt), a tastefully minimalist house, and a successful business she’s about to sell for millions.

But Amy is miserable: she feels stifled and like she’s never good enough, the result of a childhood wound that never really healed.

Both shove their simmering anger down with both hands, but it’s always there, ready to boil over. And so, when Amy’s gleaming white SUV cuts off Danny’s hunk-of-junk pickup truck in a parking lot, they get into a road rage incident that escalates into an increasingly entangled (and increasingly unhinged) beef with each other.

Wong and Yeun have incredible chemistry and turn in masterclass performances of two people who have way more in common than they realize. Amy is living the American dream at its most #GirlBoss Instagram esthetic; Danny’s American dream — a wife, children, a house he built with his own hands for his parents, whom he just wants to make proud — is always frustratingly out of reach.

But both know what it’s like to have anger with no place to go but inward. Both know what it’s like to carry the weight of wanting to do right by their immigrant parents, who sacrificed everything to give them the lives they have — or want to have.

This show is deftly written, imbued with Shakespearean levels of familial betrayal (a plotline involving Paul is particularly sad) and humour, too, often courtesy of David Choe, who plays Danny and Paul’s life-of-the-party cousin Isaac, whose get-rich schemes often land him in prison.

The last two episodes are, in a word, wild, but trust the ride: Beef gets where it needs to go. (There are also some excellent ’90s needle drops in this show, including a tremendous use of Incubus’s 1999 hit Drive.)

Shrinking

Apple TV+

No. of seasons: 1

If Beef’s Danny Cho believes “Western therapy doesn’t work on Eastern minds,” Shrinking’s Jimmy Laird (Jason Segel) believes Western therapy could stand to be a little more, uh, immersive in this warm blanket of an Apple TV+ comedy created by Segel, Ted Lasso co-creator Bill Lawrence and Ted Lasso writer and star Brett Goldstein.

Jimmy is a therapist grieving the untimely death of his wife while navigating being a newly solo parent to his teenage daughter, Alice (Lukita Maxwell). He’s increasingly frustrated by the limits of his job, listening to patients talk about their problems, sometimes for years, but never taking any meaningful action.

Jimmy starts blurring ethical lines by not only telling his patients what they should do but actively helping them do it, a breach he tries to hide from his colleagues, the whip-smart and witty Gaby (Jessica Williams, a true ray of light in this performance) and his curmudgeonly mentor/work dad Paul (a note-perfect Harrison Ford).

Gaby and Paul are dealing with their own problems: the former, the breakup of a marriage, the latter, a medical diagnosis.

Everyone in Jimmy’s life is trying to figure out how to inhabit new roles in their own lives; viewers will feel a lot of tenderness for his overbearing next-door neighbour, Liz (Christa Miller), a bored empty nester who has a lot of Big Mom Energy left to give, so she mostly gives it to Alice.

Everyone in Jimmy’s orbit comes together as a motley crew, a rag-tag island of misfit toys. But while Shrinking is, at its core, a heartwarming show about the families we choose, what makes it so good is that it doesn’t shy away from the fact that even chosen families are complicated.

Wellmania

Netflix

No. of seasons: 1

Australian comedian Celeste Barber absolutely shines in this comedy based on Brigid Delaney’s memoir of the same name, about a free-wheeling, hard-partying writer who is forced to make some serious life changes after a health scare.

Barber plays Liv Healy, a New York City-based food writer who travels back to her hometown of Sydney, Australia, (for the weekend!) for her best friend Amy (JJ Fong)’s 40th birthday.

She’s on the precipice of a major career break, but a series of events keep her in Australia, including the loss of her green card and the medical event that throws her into a fit of self-improvement — not so she can get truly well, but rather so she can pass her medical exam to get back to the U.S. Even though her relentless pursuit of status and celebrity in NYC is very much killing her.

Barber, who rose to prominence via her popular Instagram account in which she parodies celebrity/model photos, is a gifted physical comedian, which brings a lot to a role in which she must fall through a table, undergo a colonic, get ensnared in aerial silks and have the worst possible thing that could happen to someone in a spin class happen to her in a spin class (Barber did all her own stunts on Wellmania).

But she also brings emotional depth to a self-absorbed character whose messiness is affecting her mum (Genevieve Mooy), brother (Lachlan Buchanan) and bestie, and isn’t so charming anymore as she stares down middle age.

Liv isn’t just forced to get well — she’s also forced to deal with some familial trauma head on. The result is a show that will make you laugh, certainly, but it may make you shed a tear or two, too.

jen.zoratti@winnipegfreepress.com