Lee Sung Jin On The Spirituality Of Netflix’s ‘Beef’

32:45And that, you know, when it comes to mountains, there's actually mountains in the East where you're not allowed to climb them. It's illegal to climb them because spiritually it's sort of like something that's a very like looked down upon to feel like you have to like climb it. Achieve something. Yeah, reach it. And really what they do is instead just kind of go around it, which is so beautiful to me. And my brain is so trained to climb mountains. and so even the act of breaking out of samsara it's like a mountain that i want to achieve and so i think season two at least for me and you know i'm speaking more overtly about it here probably then i try to be more vague in other interviews because i do want to leave the show up into interpretation but you know i know you like truly deeply get this but for me like the feeling of being trapped in samsara can be so suffocating at times that it is truly the root of my mental health struggles.

33:45I feel like this thing is a prison and I just want to break out. And I used to want to break out in a very detrimental way through self-harm. And now it's almost the opposite side of the same coin where it feels like a mountain where I'm like, okay, if I work on myself, if I do this, if I do that, then like, okay, I got to climb this mountain and break out. And season two for me was trying to learn to accept that like, hey, it's okay to just go around the mountain. Not only is it okay, that's actually the solution. Like the sort of striver's approach to like, I am going to achieve, you know, like my mental health is applying the problematic aspect of yourself to the problem.

34:29You know what I mean? Instead of like, actually, if you just let go and not approach it like it's a goal to be achieved, you're more likely to begin to inhabit the solution. It's so counterintuitive, but it's so correct. Steven Yeun had a Ursula K. Le Guin quote that was a big North Star for beef, where she says, to oppose something is to maintain it. and yeah that letting go is actually the thing yeah but we we keep forgetting yeah my wife always says uh if you're if you're fighting against something like even for good reasons like you're an activist or you're you know applying yourself to resolve you know you have a cause like you're still fighting yes you know and that's the that's sort of the the brain pretzel of it all the conundrum.

35:21Well, and I think that's, Alan Watts talks about it a lot with that concept of wu-wei, of how do you feel where the natural momentum is in life and sort of like use it against itself. Like you can like, in activism, you can fight right up against it. It usually causes more friction, but how can you actually like judo the thing that you're up against? And I tried to apply that just in writing and in my collaborations. Oftentimes with networks, you can get into a standoff and they're like, don't get a script. And then suddenly you're like, just, all right, I'm going to dig my heels in. And that's never worked.

36:07It usually ends up where you have to, at the end of the day, lose because they're ultimately the network or you end up in this weird compromise that neither party likes. but I think you can learn to judo it where you can like take their fervor of notes and why they're saying the notes and try to like use that to your advantage and be like well I'm on the same team as you I want what you want but here like come over here let me show you like a different way to achieve that and let's talk about it together and then suddenly they're actually doing exactly the thing that you wanted it just it required a little a different angle right right right element has been with this show for a very long time but it has been really fun to watch them expand first into sparkling cans and now into something brand new lemonade iced tea which is now the newest edition and my morning go-to in my home gym and what i've noticed by incorporating this into my routine is a reduction in my coffee consumption something i confess to drinking more than I should, often because coffee does a pretty good job of quieting the signal that my body is tired.

37:17But what actually supports energy at a foundational level is hydration, replenishing your electrolytes. And by practicing this more consistently with Element, I've discovered a better and more sustained degree of energy in my workouts, of course, but also over the course of the entire day. Element is the electrolyte formula that has everything you need and nothing you don't, no additives or sugar, and their new lemonade iced tea builds on that. Same electrolyte formula, plus 50 milligrams of naturally occurring caffeine from tea, along with L-theanine and polyphenols. So it feels smoother, something more strategic than typical caffeinated drinks to reach for when you wanna stay sharp.

37:59So check it out. Try out Element's new lemonade iced tea. Get a free eight-count sample pack of Element's most popular drink mix flavors with any purchase at drinkelement.com slash richroll. There is an occupational hazard to my job, and that is that everyone wants to send me their newfangled wellness gadget, 98%, 99 % of which just end up in a drawer after a single use. Ironically, the funniest looking thing that has ever cleared this bar is the iRestore Illumina face mask. Yes, it's a glowing sci-fi robot face. Yes, my family has thoughts. But red light therapy is surprisingly credible with growing evidence behind it.

38:46It's dermatologist recommended with 360 medical grade LEDs, about double what most masks carry, running red and infrared light for collagen and anti-aging, plus blue light for blemishes and breakouts. And it's one of the first masks that can run all three wavelengths simultaneously. They also make the iRestore Elite, which is what you see right here. It's their most advanced hair growth system. 300 lasers, 200 LEDs, same philosophy, light therapy, working quietly while you live your life, supporting thicker, healthier hair in as little as three months. Right now, you can bundle the Elite and the Illumina Mask together for their best value, all backed by a 12-month money-back guarantee.

39:30Just head to iRestore.com and use code RICHROLL. That's richroll at iristore.com. Please support our show and tell them we sent you. Give your hair and the skin the upgrade they deserve so you can feel confident and refreshed.

39:46I want to get into your career path, but you mentioned your mental health journey. And I kind of want to start there. Like, you've been pretty transparent about your struggles with depression and how your personal life experiences find their way into the beef. narratives like when did that start for you and how do you make sense of what caused it you know i mean i i do therapy every week and you know i'm still trying to unravel it all but uh yeah i think it started at a very young age um uh i i think i remember like in sixth grade i started like just devouring CS Lewis because I wanted to make sense of this and and I think part of it is you know I moved around a lot I moved every three to four years of my life and I love my parents so much and you know they did so much to give us a better life but then also you know we were constantly on the move and also you know and i think part of that is they were sort of chasing a uh sense of happiness that would always go awry and then they try to clean slate it every three to four years and so like home never felt like a safe space to me um uh and again like i know my parents might watch this so like I do love them and they did create safety in many ways but for a variety of factors I think emotionally I home wasn't safe there's this one line that Ali Wong says at the finale of season one where she says where nowhere feels like home you just go inward and that started really really young and I think also as a Korean kid kind of moving up and down the Midwest not having a sense of home with your family and you don't feel at home in society, then you really feel alone.

41:52Like, I just remember for at such a young age, like truly understanding like loneliness. And back then, I think loneliness felt like a thing to solve. Like again, the mountain where like, I need to fill it with this. I need to like find connection this way. I need to throw myself into music or, you know, also, I think for a lot of people my age, that's when the internet was invented. And I think a lot of guys my age, then we like also, you know, it was like suddenly access to porn, you know, and then that becomes like a thing that you scratch the itch with. So I was always kind of like finding, trying to find these crutches that would eventually collapse and then that would just make me more depressed and more depressed because there's always just emptiness on the other side of them well i think eventually we all have to grapple with the fact that like i mean i wrote a lot of this into the finale of season one that i think the world is the way it is because we're just an extension of god like like and i say god in a sort of a loose sense, like we're the branches of a tree and that tree is everything.

43:15So it is alone. Like God is alone in nothingness and we are just working itself out through this eternal process. And I think we all have to grapple with the fact that we're alone. But we've created all this as an illusion to like, feel not alone. But then this is all that word, lila, divine play. It's a play. It ends. And then you have to grapple with the fact that it's just - We're operating in our Maya. And in the same way that music and story structure works in this rise and fall method, we craft these identities, archetypal identities to help us make sense of who we are and where we fit in.

44:04And that's just a story and an illusion as well that we think makes us feel more connected, but actually becomes an obstacle. And you're somebody who has this incisive ability to deconstruct the generational divide, and you do it explicitly in season two with the difference between millennials and Gen Z, but it comes full circle to say, it doesn't really matter. We're all just becoming our parents and doing the same thing. You can be under this illusion for a little while, and then the older you get, you realize there really isn't the difference that we think there is. Yes. Yes. It's why the finale was titled, It Will Stay This Way and You Will Obey, which is based on a Marianne Woodman quote.

44:49That is literally like, I think it starts with like, old mother God, old father God, you have trapped us here. Yeah, it's like this feeling that, like you said, it doesn't matter. The four seasons are going to come for you. I love talking to you about the finale because you're sort of the first person who explicitly is getting all the things that we put down. But we also ultimately wanted to leave that final shot really open-ended and a blank canvas for the audience. Because I don't know that, I know if I watched that in my 20s, I wouldn't really be speaking of it like this. I would probably be speaking of it as more of like a negative ending which I have found amongst my like Gen Z peers when they watch the show they have a very different takeaway than when my 40 something friends watch the show and I'd imagine boomers who watch the show also take away something different and I think that's the beauty of Samsara is that as you go around the mountain every time you go around you're feeling and thinking something different Yeah.

45:55Far be it from me to demand the artist explain his work. I don't want to put you in that position. But I think that you walked a tightrope in ending it in the way that you did because you don't want to leave the audience with this cynical feeling about their fate. and you do a beautiful job of threading that needle by leaving us with some hope. But I do think, yeah, it is, the interpretation is on the beholder and that's gonna depend upon your lot in life and your set of unique life experiences and your age as well. And so it's this interesting combination of timeless, like if you go back and watch season two, 10, 15 years later, you're gonna interpret it differently because you've matured into a different, you know, kind of period of your life, season of your life, but it's also terminally online.

46:49You know, you have this ability to really understand like youth culture and their relationship to the internet in this very authentic way that doesn't feel like patched on by a boomer. You know, it's like, this is, you are conversant in a way that I think that is another reason why audiences are responding to it because it just feels so real. Oh, thank you. I think it's unfortunately due to me being terminally online and I need to stop. I've been researching for like six months. I don't know if you found something where I really don't want to have my phone anymore. and there's all these new gadgets where like you can have the phone in the other room and it's just like a brick that you can just access Spotify, things like that.

47:33But then I just haven't found the right thing and then I end up getting my phone and the next thing I know, I'm reading every single negative comment about the show that exists online. Still. Oh, I like did it yesterday. Oh, you did. Yeah, it's become almost like a daily routine and I need to stop. But I think, you know, then I try to take that spirit and then put it into the work. And then hopefully other people who are terminally online will relate. But yeah, I'm hoping the next project I do, I'll have reached that goal of being less online. And you can feel it in the work. Yeah, it's almost like we need a new Maslow's hierarchy of needs that takes into account our relationship with the digital world.

48:22Oh my gosh. Have you seen that Adam Curtis documentary, Hypernormalization? I haven't. I think he's the most brilliant documentarian alive. And if you haven't seen The Century of Self, that's so up your alley. It literally goes through pre-World War to now and how we've basically created this century of self. And it really comes down to three people that started it. And he did this other documentary, I think in 2016 called Hypernormalization that just has spot on predicted what the internet has done to us. And then yet, like we were talking earlier, I watch it, I feel moved, and then I get my phone and I go to Reddit.

49:10What do you think is the fulcrum between understanding and behavior change? I was hoping you would tell me. Yeah. Well, I mean, this is a question I ask everyone because it's a confounding one. People change when they are ready to change, when they're visited with some degree of willingness. And pain is always the obvious motivator. Yeah. But you usually take something, depending on what part of your life is rigid and how rigid it is, I find that it's like the more calamitous of an event, the more you're able to shake up the pattern. But it's tough because I think as we get older, especially if you have privilege, you start to create a life that doesn't have any of those earthquakes.

50:03like Josh's monologue in episode six after doing Bufo where he talks about his inability to change. I wrote that in like two minutes. It just came pouring out of me because I do feel that sometimes where, like I don't know when the tipping point is, but in your 20s and 30s, you keep feeling like, oh, I'm gonna work on that. I'm gonna change. Like, I feel it, but it's not that big of a problem yet. And I'm going to work on it tomorrow. And then you blink and then it's become who you are. And suddenly it feels like you are unable to change at all. And that window closes so fast, at least in my experience.

50:55And I do wish, I kind of love that Josh is giving that advice to Austin and then Austin applies it to something so small. Like, have you ever found someone else attractive while you're with? But I remember older people giving me that advice in my 20s and me registering it, but then still you can't. You know, and I think that's why so many religions, I think the people who started those Abrahamic religions are literally just us having this podcast, but like in the desert having eaten some, you know, psychotropic, like, you know, root. And then they are thinking these things and then their solution was like, well, that's why you got to pray every day.

51:44That's why you have like these daily routines. We're just going to write a bunch of rules because you need strict rules to be able to offset everything we're talking about. And then I think in modern life, I went to Korean church when I was growing up and I don't as much anymore. We need a new set of modern rules, which I think is why self-help podcasts have become such a thing. Yeah, it's secular religion. This obsession with self-optimization, but it plays into the hyper-individual, kind of like the prioritizing the individual self above everything else, which loses sight of the best of what religious traditions teach us, which is it's about togetherness.

52:34It's about the oneness. Yes. But we're operating in our identities and our illusion. And you're a storyteller. I mean, my theory on this is that there's nothing more powerful than a story well told. And we're very vulnerable to these stories. And we craft stories about who we are, like a version of like, we have this sense of like, I am this person. I do these things. This is who I am. I can't do this and I can't do this. it's just a story. We could rewrite that story at any time, but we don't. We buy into it and we believe it. And we then get stuck in these patterns of behavior that just play that story out again and again and again.

53:21And we basically imprison ourselves through storytelling. I was thinking about it the other day of the shapes that we were talking about. When you think about kind of old shamanic cultures, or even like, you know, you listen to like Tibetan monk music, there's no shape. They're just vamping on one note. You know, it's just this the whole time. And the stories they told weren't like rises and falls. It was just the story about a flower. And, you know, it is sort of a mirror, like you're saying, like it's almost this recursive feedback loop that we're stuck in where again the cycles too of of we were trying to chase change so then we the storytelling mirrors change and we have the status quo rise fall rise and then and then we get addicted to that and then and then suddenly it was just we see rise fall rise so then we do rise fall rise and then and i would love to get to a point where narratively it's so hard with like how streaming works now but i love to get to a point where narratively like you could just sort of vamp you know like that's kind of what like uh you know link ladder used to do uh in his early work he'd just be vamping there's no there's no structure to slacker yeah yeah i mean the best you know um but for some reason we're we're collectively not there yet but i mean maybe it does take someone doing that uh and trying to incite that change in culture but but then it's tough you know as a filmmaker i'm like oh i would love to make a slacker then you can't yeah but then marvel knocks on your door and says uh are you interested in x men and then you're 55 years old and you know you you're living this big life and you're like why would I risk this to go make my version of Slacker?

55:22Oh, totally. I mean, that's exactly what happened. I did uncredited work for Thunderbolts for my friend, Jake Schreier, who I work with a lot. And I remember telling my reps and all my friends, I'm like, just remind me that I'm not going to do blockbuster movies again. No knock on Marvel. And then next thing you know, they're like, hey, we have X-Men. I'm like, I'll do it. But Jake is involved in that. He is. He is the director. He is the director, yeah. I mean, I love working with Jake, but then also if Jake were doing another Avengers, I probably wouldn't do it, but it's X-Men. I grew up on X-Men.

56:01That's my favorite thing ever. My dad and I used to wake up Saturday mornings and watch the animated series together. So it's really hard to say no to that because then I think about my childhood me. Like, how am I going to go back in time and tell that kid that, yeah, we got offered X-Men. This is not true to my artistic, there's a hubris in being like, no, I'm not doing that because I need to make slacker. Yeah, exactly. You probably can't say very much about X-Men, but can you report on where you are in the cycle of this movie getting made? Yeah, I mean, we've been working on a draft. Joanna Callow and I, who's also a frequent collaborator.

56:46She co-show runs and co-directs The Bear. There's a lot of internet stuff about casting. And that is true. Marvel is casting right now. And Kevin, Jake, and Lou read a draft of ours. I think they're super excited. We're in the middle of rewriting that draft. And what I love about Kevin Feige, and I've just grown to admire him more and more. There's a reason he is running Marvel for as long as he is. He has incredible instincts and a true childlike joy in the work. It really is play when you get in a room with him. And so that's been really a surprisingly fun part of this. I was sort of dreading going back into the blockbuster world, But I didn't interact with Kevin as much on Thunderbolts, but on X-Men, it's like every single meeting he's a part of, every single writing session he's a part of.

57:50And his joy is so contagious that getting to do that and remember that what I get to do is play at the end of the day has been a nice perspective reshift for me. Well, it's an interesting moment for Marvel. Oh, yeah. We're having this kind of epic original IP moment right now, which is fantastic. You just can't even get a ticket to see the Odyssey and IMAX for like weeks. It's really exciting and fun and cool. And we're also seeing the maturation of these younger filmmakers, back rooms and obsession. Things are shifting in a good and super interesting way right now, but it changes the audience's relationship with legacy IP, what Marvel has been so good at.

58:43And now it's a little bit different. I think the stakes are pretty high. Very high. And maybe that's why Kevin Feige is showing up at all the meetings. Do you feel that pressure? They need a win. Kevin's very self-aware and he'll joke about it for sure. but I think that's why he's been so supportive of taking big swings with X-Men and not thinking plot first but character first which is kind of a no brainer like that's like writing 101 is of course character first but I think with success again like what we were talking about like every movement starts in earnest just like Marvel did and then it stagnates and then capitalism comes in and then it has to evolve.

59:32And I think Marvel is evolving. I got to see an early cut of Spider-Man, a brand new day, and it's fantastic. It's really, really good. Like Destin knocked it out of the park. And so I think there is a turning of the cycle happening over there. Well, it's a gigantic conglomerate corporation. And like any maturation of any company, at some point they're going to be disrupted unless they disrupt themselves. But you can kind of cave in under the weight of your largesse. Yeah. And that's like the life cycle of every big company. Yeah. I think they were very smart. They had scaled too much and too fast, in my opinion, with all the TV shows and things like that.

1:00:20And I think Kevin very smartly has like, all right, Like, let's, let's, let's like, you know, filter out some of the noise and get back to what we're very good at. I'm just kind of one small cog in that giant process. And I think Joanne and I are just trying to do right by these characters and inject some depth. There's a lot of Venn diagram, I think, with Beef Season 2 from a bird's eye view, you know. So I think hopefully audiences will feel that.

1:01:22for anyone to read at betterhelp.com slash reviews. Hundreds of people describing in their own words what working with their therapist has actually done for them. And the aggregate numbers behind those reviews are pretty impressive. An average rating of 4.9 out of five for a live session. And this is all based on over 1.7 million client session reviews. More than 6 million people have used BetterHelp globally. and at that scale, the feedback is very reliable. It speaks for itself. The service underneath it is straightforward. You answer a few questions, they match you with a therapist based on what you need.

1:02:01Every one of them with at least three years and a thousand hours of hands-on experience. And if the fit isn't right, you switch any time. See the reviews, see what stands out and see if BetterHelp is right for you. Visit betterhelp.com slash richroll. That's betterhelp.com slash richroll.

1:02:23One of the things I love about Rivian is the way they fill their vehicles with so much amazing high-performance technology, but always make sure it feels like second nature, that it keeps that human touch. And a great example would be the haptic halo wheels on the new R2. On either side of the steering wheel, there's a dial that you can roll, push, and pull to adjust things like the AC or skip to the next song. And they have this incredibly satisfying tactile feel because you're really clicking a button and rolling a mechanical wheel. I was recently able to drive an R2 with RJ Scringe, the founder and CEO, and he shared the thinking behind this cool and unique feature.

1:03:02So walk me through the thinking on that because as technology is sort of informing this screen-only experience, there is something in the human animal that craves that kind of tactile control. Yeah, and that was part of what the logic was here. And that was from the feedback we had in R1, is the desire for some more mechanical touch points and also the ability to not have to use the multi-touch screen for everything. And so being able to do HVAC through this side, your entertainment through that side, you also have drive modes in you as well. There are just so many features packed into this vehicle.

1:03:39You can learn all about them, watch the rest of our conversation, and even book a demo drive at stories.rivian.com slash richroll.

1:03:53I was thinking about Ashley and Austin and their relationship dynamic, because there's so much like relationship stuff going on. New love, matured love, old love. What do relationships mean? What is the definition of love for different people at different stages of their life? And on Reddit, there's like a lot of hand-wringing around the Ashley character. Oh, so much. It's really like a lightning rod for people. And I think that's also a lens into somebody's generational perspective. Like depending upon how old you are, you're gonna have a certain opinion of that character. Totally. And what's generating her bad behavior or what's creating sympathy for the way that she's behaving.

1:04:36Yeah, we talked a lot about that as we were writing and even in the edit, because most of the network and people, chiming in on notes on the show are, you know, elder, millennial, Gen X or older, and they have a very specific lens upon how they're viewing these characters. But then I, we'd often have to like remind everyone, like intentionally we are crafting the show so that, you know, Gen Z can have a different experience watching this show than millennials do and vice versa. But it has been surprising to me, like the degree to which Ashley is such a lady. Yes. But, you know, I think if we're all being honest, like, you know, at least for me, I don't want to speak for everybody, but there, there are so many aspects of Ashley that are, have been in my psyche, whether in the past or currently, you know?

1:05:33And I think maybe that's why it's so triggering is just like she is the most overtly like uh like a part of myself that i don't like um and then you see it and then you have to protect yourself as a viewer because you're like that's not me and i'm gonna just hate her then you know um but i think if we're being honest uh her behavior is triggering because there's some truth in there yeah there's something about yourself that you're unhappy with that's being reflected in this character like if you're upset about that, it's probably because you're compartmentalizing or in denial about some aspect of your own behavior that's being mirrored in that character.

1:06:14Like when I look at her, I see my mother, you know, like this is a person, to me, it's very clear. Like she has, like both of them have attachment issues. She is an avoidant, you know, or she's an, she hasn't, she's anxious attachment and he is an avoidant, you know, and of course they're together. Like, you know, it's like archetypal, right? And so, yeah, they're behaving this way. Like, this is my mother and my father. And it's upsetting to me because like, it's making me relive that dynamic, you know? Yeah. She is for sure anxious attachment. And I'd be curious, like, if there's, I wish Netflix had like data that was like, you know, this percentage of avoidant viewers found Ashley despicable.

1:07:01I am curious, if you have anxious attachment, are you more inclined to relate to Ashley or do you like her less? I think if you're an anxious attachment person, then you're going to sympathize with her. You're going to understand why she's behaving that way. Yeah, I hope so. They both suffer trauma that make them this way. Exactly. It's like you can sympathize with what caused them to behave in this way, whether you disagree with their behavior or not. Which is why we wrote her backstory the way it was. A lot of it was influenced by some of Kaylee Spaney's backstory. Not one-to-one, but the soup of discussions led to this backstory of someone who Ashley's mom wasn't around.

1:07:46Her mom and dad split when they were young. And then the dad started a new family and the mom just is not really around. And so then you have, I'm sure for Ashley as a child, her parents split, her dad's got a new family. So then there must be this need to like, okay, I want to still be a part of a family. Like, you know, I need a people please. I need to, do they still like me? Like, I imagine at a young age that started. And so, you know, we try to show not tell in our show of, you know, we have that backstory. There's that hallucinatory moment, nightmare in the hospital with the mom phone call as we try to leave some breadcrumbs to get the audience to hopefully have empathy for why she is the way she is.

1:08:37but there seems to be definitely a certain subset of the beef viewership that like rejects that backstory and it's like she has been rejected by the people who were meant to love and nurture her yeah and so she is going to do everything in her power to create stability and a feeling of connection and anything that threatens that is an existential threat to her life and so she's gonna respond violently to that yeah exactly and i think that's why she's hanging on so tightly to this relationship it's not even about austin at the end of the day she just can't he's just a vehicle for exactly yeah her i don't think she can emotionally process the grief of losing this crutch that replaced the original hurt and for austin who you know is avoidant I think when he's faced with the fact like, oh, I'm going to go chase Eunice, who is also being now being avoidant with me, that doesn't feel good for an avoidant because they actually secretly like this chase of an anxious person coming at them because they're avoidant, they get to be the avoider.

1:09:50Then suddenly avoidant is faced with an avoidant. And then I think in the finale, he has to reckon with, wait, I don't think this person actually loves me back. I don't love Ashley, but she is at least dependable in the sense that I can depend on her to be anxiously attached to me no matter what. So he does the safe, I guess, not courageous thing in some regards. Charles Melton, I think in embodying Austin, actually, I think he views the ending as courageous in some ways, as almost as he, that his character realized that he has to be an adult and in order to have a family and a career. And he's actually making a mature choice for once to buy into adulthood.

1:10:41That's one take on it. But I think for me in that moment in the cab, Austin is kind of going back to the familiar. It is a tragic choice because he's making it with a degree of self-awareness. He understands why he's making this decision and he's still making it. But that archetype will also rationalize it by saying, well, they're sacrificing themselves for this other person and there's something beautiful about that. And that's true. It was curious to me when Austin, Charles Melton's character, he just is so good at playing the kind of somewhat dim-witted but sweet guy. You want him to win. You're cheering for him.

1:11:26But he's just kind of like – he's not dealing with a full deck all the time. But then when it comes to diagnosing Ashley, he just nails it as if he was young himself. And I'm like, that feels sort of inconsistent with this character that you've established. But then I think, well, he's always going on Reddit and getting answers. Does he just memorize? Is that the idea there, that he just went there and found this thing and recited it? Yeah, we try to sort of breadcrumb, even from the first episode, someone who, like you're saying, goes on Reddit, reads all the smart things. and he references also like self-help and love advice all the time.

1:12:09So, you know, again, we're trying to write what we know and feel true to real life. Like I do that for sure. Like so many writers in the room do that where like we'd be like talking about something in the writer's room and someone would be like, oh, hey, I read that blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I'm like, did you read it or did you see an Instagram post? And they're like, I saw a post. And I'm like, and do you have anything else to add to that? Or is that like the end of your knowledge? And I think that's just all of us right now as we have a very like cursory, superficial relationship with the amount of self-help stuff coming at us.

1:12:49And so I think Austin's been doing that all season and he's probably been in conversations with his mom and conversations on Reddit, started to get a sense of how he feels about Ashley. But then being an avoidant, he hasn't expressed it. And then finally at the end, it just kind of all comes pouring out. I've definitely done that too, where I certainly am not a psychologist, but I will see an article, I'll be like, oh, that's this person, gonna mentally clock that. And then I just hold it and hold it in, in some fight and I just like drop the bomb. But I have no like actual like knowledge or like, I'm not in a position to be giving that diagnosis.

1:13:40So, you know, we were trying to kind of stay true to, you know, what a lot of us I think experience in real life. You also stayed true to the way that young people actually use their phones and the internet, Like a lot of sort of texting and that sort of thing in television shows and movies feels tacked on for exposition reasons. But here it's so germane to the characters and the advancement of the plot that it just becomes like it's a feature, not a bug, you know, in the way that you do it. So I thought it would be interesting to hear your thoughts on like what is the difference between, in your mind, like Gen Z and millennials?

1:14:22millennials? How do you define that divide or that delta? Oh, man, that's a great question. I find that, and I don't want to speak too generally because then I know I'm going to spend an evening reading the negative comments to what I'm about to say. You got to stop doing that. I do, yes. And I think millennials tend to use social media to be very presentational. It's more about like, how do I use this vehicle to then like create a certain image that can then funnel back into my ego? and I think Gen Z because they maybe they started doing that similarly at a younger age but then at this point I feel like Gen Z is more like using social media to like get what they want you know rather than like it's like millennials are like we're like outwardly seeking into the void of the internet to hopefully get something back whereas Gen Z is like no I want money so I'm going to create content to then get money.

1:15:37I don't like, sure. Like it's nice to get likes and blah, blah, blah. But at the end of the day, I want this. So I'm going to use this means to get it. Whereas I still see millennials, like I don't see as many millennials like content creating, but they certainly are producing just as much content, but to just feel good about themselves. For external validation reasons. Yeah. I think that's, again, my observation. I hope I don't like painting in broad strokes because the internet gets mad. But that tends to be what I see. Yeah. That's super interesting. I'm an elder Gen X. No Gen X in season two.

1:16:23You skipped over this. This is my thing. This is my beef with not just this season of beef, but like in general, like we get lumped in with boomers. It's like everything's okay, boomer. And I was like, dude, we're the coolest. Why did everyone forget this? Well, what? I fully agree. We got erased from the record. I'm 81. So I am elder millennial Gen X cusp. And I do think that Gen X is the greatest generation. But I fully agree. Gen X just kind of gets lost. And honestly, Oscar Isaac is Gen X. Like he is not, like in real life, he is not elder millennial. And there's a time when we were writing where we're like, oh, should we like stay true to real life and have like Carey Mulligan be elder millennial and Oscar Isaac be Gen X?

1:17:11But then just in theme, it felt cleaner to just be like, it's elder millennial versus Gen Z. So that's how Gen X got cut out of this one. But it is interesting. I do, like spiritually, I relate to Gen X the most because being cusp where the late 90s and early 2000s was very like the most influential for me. You know, like late 90s music is like what I live and breathe. And, you know, early Linklater, like Reality Bites, singles, like that was so formative. uh but um but yeah we i don't know if it's just because like gen x is uh like when you when you think about those movies and that music it's it spiritually it doesn't feel like an energy that like doth protest too much you know what i mean like it's like it's like literally like slackers you know it's just like but that's the whole sensibility of gen x you know what i mean just sort of like whatever.

1:18:15Yeah. So of course, as you get lost as a generation, it's just like, because we didn't raise our hands enough, I guess. But there is this great 90s nostalgia moment right now that is impacting Gen Z. Like Gen Z seems very affectionate in their kind of nostalgia for the 90s. I think the same thing is happening because the Gen X was a response to to Reagan era, very corporate buttoned up Christian ideology. And then of course the generation after was like, no, thank you. We're gonna break all those rules. And I think Gen Z feels that way. It's like the next cycle of it. They're looking at all the rules and sort of ideologies and the rigidness of what came before and being like, wait, I'm listening to Nirvana or Smashing Pumpkins and something's resonating in me because I'm going through that right now.

1:19:16And so it's really cool to see them rediscover and then also how Gen Z gravitates towards things that... The fact that Gen Z gravitates towards Deftones in a way that Gen X Deftones never got its proper due in the 90s, that's amazing. And it does give me great hope for the future. It actually truly is life-affirming to see things like this because the cycles, it's not just a circle. It feels like it's a spiral. And each time it's a little different and each time it grows and evolves and it's heading somewhere, which is nice. Yeah. I have a 19-year-old daughter and she has the most eclectic taste because she's not waiting for the new album to drop or what the radio station is gonna tell her that she should like.

1:20:09She has the entire canon of music available to her to like choose what speaks to her. Yeah. And, you know, she's like, it's like Sonic Youth and Elliott Smith. And then it's jazz. And then it's like some, you know, from the 40s. And then it's Boards of Canada, like all this cool new stuff too. And so she's like my muse for tasting culture, you know? That's so cool. Like I just think there's something really awesome about that. Yeah. Because I was just like, what's on the radio, you know, when I grew up? Totally. And so within this nostalgia for the 90s, because it was, you know, the last analog era, like I think what gets overlooked is, you know, the limitations of that.

1:20:52And that culture was sort of impressed upon us or dictated. We didn't necessarily get to define it until something like Nirvana comes along and it just becomes undeniable. Yeah, exactly. Doing season two, I did find myself becoming more aware of how I was turning into the older generation. and I think what naturally happens as millennials are hitting their 40s is it's easy to become the version of the generation that used to be above us where you're judging the next generation and you're like, oh, like these kids don't know and like back in my day, blah, blah, blah. But I love what you're saying because it's like, that's actually us as old heads talking.

1:21:40Like when you really put yourself in the shoes of the youth, like that is really cool that they can just get to pick eclectically in a way that we didn't. And I try to remind myself, I catch myself every day doing things where I'm like, oh, I sound like what a 47-year-old used to sound like to me. That's so important to try to keep your brain, your neuroplasticity from getting too rigid. And that's what I'm so excited about, raising my daughter already. Like her personality is shining through. She's walking and talking. And I can't wait to see what she likes. You know, that's so beautiful. It was a real wake-up call for me watching season two.

1:22:26I had this like realization that millennials are adults now. Like, cause I'm old enough. I'm like, oh, there's millennials are the young generation, you know? And I was like, wait, Oscar Isaac. Yeah. Okay. Maybe he's young ex, but he's portraying a character, like a mature grownup character who is a millennial. And I was like, wow, I'm old. Yeah. Because I remember when we were just lamenting the millennials as like lazy and not wanting to work. And now it's like Gen Z's like, hold my beer, like these tropes around like, you know, like no one wants to work hard and all that kind of stuff. Like we're just recycling these things.

1:23:01I'm sure, you know, the great generation and the boomers looked at Gen X as the ultimate slackers, you know, and now we're doing the same thing. The exact same thing. Yeah. And that's that final shot of the season. I feel like the best thing to do with these waves is to try to learn how to surf them and acknowledge the differences, but then not be so entrenched and triggered. The wave exists. And so instead of fighting it or being mad at it, it's there. It's beautiful. Let's surf the fact that this keeps happening and that each generation is repeating itself in their own way. But, you know, it's easier to say than do for sure.

1:23:55So you've been writing now for 20 years? Almost 20, yeah. Something like that? I think I moved out here 2008. Yeah, I don't understand time. Yeah. Wait till you get to be my age. It changes. your first job was in the NBC page program. Is that right? Like when was your first like break, break, you know, how long did it take before you're like, Oh, I actually think I might be able to have a career. I think it was two, two mini, one mini break. And then one big break. The mini break was getting into the NBC page program. You know, I was unemployed and just kind of temping in New York and a friend of mine, I lived in Greenpoint back then.

1:24:38And he was concerned for my mental health because I literally, Greenpoint back then was just not gentrified yet. It was fully Polish. Like you couldn't find a grocery store that was like ingredients in English, you know. And so I never left the home. I just stayed in my apartment and watched the OC over and over again. And he was starting to get very concerned about me. So he slipped my resume without me asking to his friend who was in the PAGE program. and surprisingly I got a call for an interview. I didn't take it seriously. I was 15 minutes late to the interview and somehow miraculously I got in and that was my first real exposure to the entertainment industry.

1:25:21And sure, I was like wearing a peacock tie and giving studio tours for$10 an hour, but I caught the bug. I was like, I can't believe there are jobs in this world. Out of that, I got a job at the Today Show. Truly hated it. lovely people but my hours were like 1 30 p.m to 4 30 a.m um which is the opposite of everyone so i used that weird schedule to then uh i had a writing partner back then we we just started teaching ourselves how to write we would watch shows read books and every weekend instead of going out we would sit down and you know try writing scenes together and eventually we wrote to pilot about the page program and sent it to friends.

1:26:03And one of our friends, Lynn Berry, who used to be at the Today Show, she was an assistant to Jeff Ingold, who at the time was the head of NBC Comedy. He runs Bill Lawrence's company now. And he was so gracious. He read it, called us, and was like, hey, I just bought a pilot about the page program and this script's better. Do you guys have agents? And we said no. And he's like, you know what? I'm going to call every major agency on your behalf. And suddenly we had like CAA, William Morris, Endeavor, just everyone calling us. And so we took a week off work, flew out to LA. I remember my then writing partner didn't want to do this, but I was hell bent on splurging like an extra couple of hundred dollars to rent a Mustang convertible.

1:26:50Cause I wanted to like ride around Beverly Hills with the top down and feel like you know i was in the industry and we went with the fanciest agent at the time who repped like all of the office and mindy kaling and all the scrubs writers and uh he told us to move out to la by up front which was may 15th i think and we did and then everything went to shit it was just like uh couldn't get meetings agent wouldn't return our calls and And next thing I know, I was unemployed and temping again in LA. And it wasn't until we got a new manager. Somehow, our scripts ended up on the table of Rob, Charlie, and Glenn at It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia.

1:27:37And they brought us in for a general meeting. It lasted 10 minutes. I was certain we didn't get it. And then we got the call. And that was like the true big break. So that was your first writer's room? First writer's room is my favorite show on television. I couldn't believe I was going to hang out with Rob Charlie and Glenn every day in the writer's room. They're like the nicest, best guys. Still to this day, Glenn Howerton is one of my closest friends. And that was a real 360 degree education because those guys do everything. They write, direct, act, produce. And that became like the foundation for what I do.

1:28:16I kind of joke with the beef writers room sometime that if Always Sunny and Beef are actually really similar, it's just Always Sunny is like the comedy broadness just cranked up to 12. But it's usually like something small and annoying happens. And then everyone acts out of ego on Always Sunny. And then it gets worse and worse and worse. And that's really like the formula for Beef. It's just we take the tone and just dial it down a little bit. When you're collaborating with so many people on a television show, tone is everything. And you're not, I mean, you did your first director gig in the finale of season one, right?

1:29:02And then you directed three or four episodes in season two? Four, yeah. But you're not directing every episode. You're the showrunner. You're the head writer. You're responsible for the tone. But there's hundreds of people working on this show. You have to be a general to make sure that everyone is making the same show and you can't control everything. How do you ensure that? Just so many hours of talking. And a lot of analogies I find are very helpful because it's so hard to get someone inside your brain. And so I'm just trying to always find words and analogies and formulas. Season one of The Writer's Room, I came up with a tone formula that I told the room, kind of as a joke, but then it started to get serious and we stuck to it, where I said that the beef tone should be 35 % early Paul Thomas Anderson slash Sopranos comedy where you're laughing at the broken psychology of someone, plus 35 % like Netflix bingeability, White Lotus water cooler moments like Fincher propulsion.

1:30:14plus 30 % Ingmar Bergman slash Hirokazu Koreeda warm melancholic pathos. And like the warm melancholy was key. And we had that up on our Zoom a lot. And anytime we looked at a scene, we'd kind of try to make sure like, okay, are we hitting the percentages? Like, does this scene, we just had a scene that was really propulsive. Like, should we make sure that this scene has sort of that Ingmar Bergman pathos to it? And doing season two, I just, you know, tone-wise gave that same formula to everybody. Yeah. And it feels like A24 is the only, like, home for this. There's something about A24. It's like, you know it when you see it.

1:31:01Yeah. You can't quite put your finger on it. Yeah. It is tone. It's sensibility. It's aesthetic. But it's real. It is real. I mean, there's been a lot of articles being written about how they're now just like, they're more merch than creative, et cetera, et cetera. Which, sure, I think that's just a testament to how good their marketing is. Their merch is great. But at the end of the day, the reason they have so much success is still the creative. And I think they have people, you know, Ravi Nandan, who's the head of A24 television. I actually knew him from when I worked at NBC. He was a producer on this like really broad, bad pilot that I wrote for NBC in 2009.

1:31:49And then we kind of like kept in touch over the years. And then as he got to A24, we just had sushi to get like reacquainted. and I was telling him about this road rage incident that I had gotten into. And I was like, I don't know, I think there's like a show here because like there's something so funny about being trapped in like a literal mechanical bubble and you're just like in your own subjectivity, no idea what the other person's going through. And right there, he was like, let's do that show. I was like, really? He's like, go off. Like, who do you want to have in it? I was like, well, I've always wanted to work with Steven Young.

1:32:23He's one of my good friends and we've been trying to find something together. He's like, that's brilliant. Let's attach Steven Yeun. And so there's this other places where you'd have to go through so much red tape and like, oh, that's interesting. Let's develop it. And you know, blah, blah, blah, blah. When they feel something, they move, you know? And they really trust the artist's instincts too. It's less about like them trying to prescriptively tell you what to do. It's more like, oh, you're passionate about that. Let's find ways to support it. You know, even now that there's this one idea, I mean, Ravi and I are such so close friends now, but I was on the phone with him.

1:33:01I was telling him about a project that I'm not doing with A24. And I was telling him about the world. And he was like, oh, my gosh, that's fascinating. Let me hook you up with my friend who actually runs the biggest company in that industry. And you should, like, you know, get close to him and do, like, a tour or something. like that's someone who is just acting from like a pure artistic place uh and you hear it time and time again with people who've worked with them like it's just like a it's different for sure it's definitely special uh i think people are concerned they just raised a bunch of money what does this mean you know is it going to stay the same is it going to be different you know the a24 bros uh you know they're a vocal bunch and it probably won't stay the same it'll follow the same thing we've been talking about where it'll start in earnest it'll grow it's stagnate and then they'll have to change but the fact that they like made back rooms you know like i came parsons it's like 27 year old a 64 million development deal 20 yeah like no other place would do that i think they are also evolving um and uh i i definitely like beef would not exist without about Ravi and A24, that's for sure.

1:34:19You've spoken publicly about your early experiences in writers' rooms and some of the challenges that you had and this sensibility that you were a DEI hire and kind of like, oh, well, I'm not really a writer. Walk me through that experience and then maturing out of that to kind of really inhabit your authentic voice. What did that take? What was that experience like and what did you have to do to like you know own your confidence and your voice in hindsight i i i think i get frustrated with my younger self because i you know i've relived some moments in writers rooms whether there's one show i wrote on where there was a very stereotypical asian character and a very cliche and the jokes just a hundred percent of the time came at his expense uh you know i remember there was one the showrunner of that show like there was one um joke about that asian character where it was about him eating a dog and you know half the room was appalled by it but then the other half room was cackling and the showrunner loves it and you know like he turns to me and to see how i feel and like in the moment i should have been like go fuck yourself you know like i should have like stood up for for for myself for for that character and then i just kind of like shrugged and i was like oh you know like it's funny like you know like I just kind of went along with it and there was just so many incidents like that where inside I was dying but outwardly you know you're afraid of losing your job you're afraid of and and yes like uh I I think should could I have been more uh courageous absolutely but uh I I acknowledge I wasn't in those moments.

1:36:26And, you know, I think I have to live with that. But, you know, I think a lot of writers of color, the stories that I share are just like tip of the iceberg. There's some horrible things that happen in these rooms if you're a person of color. And we kind of, the system was in a way where it was really hard to shake it up. I'm very grateful that in the last 10 years that so much progress has been made and so much change has been made and a show like Beef can exist and certainly behavior like that just will not be tolerated in today's writers rooms. But then you look out at 2026 at society at large and then it does get scary because you're like, a lot of progress has been made but then it also at times feels like we're kind of one step forward, two steps back.

1:37:22and you know speaking of generations I do admire that about Gen Z you know I think that that Instagram the social media thing is just I think a microcosm of for myself and my peers of my generation there was so much outward validation seeking you know like so you're sitting in that writer's room you hear this joke at your expense but you are outwardly seeking validation that you belong here and that, so you laugh. Versus Gen Z, what's so cool about what they're doing is they're not seeking. They're having none of it. Yeah. They're just like, no, like I'm here in this room to build my career and we're not doing that joke.

1:38:07And guys like me are like, have you earned that confidence? Like first you have to do the work and then maybe I will like, Like, you know, grant you that you should be here. Totally. But then, but that's the thing is, and like, I do find myself saying that as well. But then one of the younger writers that I have kind of like, I don't wanna say mentored, but Alex Russell, who's younger than me, I think he's Gen Z, millennial cusp. He's, the moment I met him, he has that energy where it's just like, says what he wants, knows what he wants, very, very secure in his tone. And it often ran against whatever room he was in, you know, but he didn't care.

1:38:50And I saw that and, you know, helped him get a manager. And for his debut film that he directed, Lurker, I executive produced it because I was like, that guy is going to like create something that is so uniquely him because you feel that energy of like, I don't care that you're older than me or that you're a more established producer. Like, this is what I know. and and so it's been cool to see like even though like my instinct was like okay like dude I had to like slum it in rooms for decades before I even had the opportunity but then like I process that put it aside know that there's talent there and try to like you know connect the right dots for him to you know he he eventually this amazing producer Alex Orlovsky came onto the movie and and took it to the finish line but generationally like how can we as millennials and Gen X not do the thing that the boomers did to us?

1:39:48Like, um, certainly it's normal to feel like they have to earn it, but then how, how can we change that? You know? Um, but again, easier said than done. Yeah. There's something awesome. Like I, I just marvel at a young person who's walking around just brimming with confidence, you know, it's just like, how is that possible? You know, like, I'm just like, I don't deserve like, I'm just my inner, you know, inner monologue is just like just berating me constantly well do you have your wow that's so like like how did that happen you know well have you heard the study that um there's some study that came out that your inner monologue is just one of your parents voice from a specific a year of childhood and i think that's yeah so i think we probably have similar inner monologues but probably like similar parents saying similar things.

1:40:37And I think Gen Z, a large portion of them have the opposite inner monologue because their parents were just like - Saying them they're just the best in the world. Like, yeah, I'm the best. Of course I'm supposed to be in this room. That's what I've heard my whole life. Yeah. And now as a parent, I'm like, I don't know what the right approach is. Perhaps it's the middle ground, but - Yeah, it's the pendulum. You know, it's swinging in its extremes and it has to find it, you know, its balance over time. So that's the spiral, you know, like trying to find its happy medium, I guess. Did you fall at all into the sort of gentle parenting as a response to what came before?

1:41:16Oh, 100%. Like I just, you know, it was just a free-for-all. Like I'm also like an avoidant. I don't want conflict. So like I'm not a taskmaster, you know. And I suffered at the hands of outrageous expectations that I could never meet and just this withholding of love and the idea that it's conditioned upon some degree of achievement in the world and all of that. And I wanted to alleviate that burden from my kids, but I probably have gone too far in the other direction. I don't know. But like, you also realize, because now like my kids are older, like, and you realize young when they're super young, like they are who they are.

1:42:05Like they come, like, especially when you have multiple kids and you realize how different they are, it has nothing to do with you. Yeah, yeah. Arrive like on some level fully baked and now seeing them as young adults, it's like you're still exactly the same as you were as a kid. And I think it's humbling because we have this idea as parents that it's so critical. And parenting is important. I think parenting is like to be a healthy, conscious parent is like really the most important thing you can do. Yeah. But at the same time, you also realize you're just kind of like throwing guardrails up here and there, and they're going to be who they're going to be.

1:42:43Yeah, yeah. And that sort of alleviates the anxiety of parenting a little bit. It certainly helps me a lot. Yeah. Because I feel like there was this myth of nature nurture and that it's sort of like 50-50, but it certainly sounds like it's more nature. Yeah. I mean, I go back and forth. I don't know. I think it's another Zen Cohen brain pretzel sort of thing that we're in a cycle of just trying to understand that forever. Yeah. But we don't have free will anyway, do we? So who cares? On that subject though, for a very long time, you were Sonny Lee. It's only more recently that You're putting your real birth name on your work.

1:43:36When did Sonny become your name? And when did you get to a point where you're like, no, it's Lee Sung Jin, and that's how it's going to be from now on out? I mean, I was born with the name Lee Sung Jin. And Lee is my surname. So many outlets think Jin is my surname. but I put Lee first because in Korean, the surname goes first. So that's why, you know, director Bong Joon-ho, Bong is his surname and director Bak Jung Park is his surname. So I was born with that name. And then sixth grade, when I moved from Korea to Minnesota, that's when, you know, the name became a daily issue because, you know, I had an accent and Minnesotan teachers had never seen those letters in that order before.

1:44:29And so every day in attendance, they would like add new consonants as they called out my name. You know, they'd be like, And people would laugh. I'd feel so embarrassed. And after like a couple of weeks of that, I remember I was sitting at my desk in class and there was like a paper, like an assignment and I was just staring at the name portion. And I don't know what came over me. I just wrote Sonny with an O for some reason. And it's certainly not like I had watched something with that name. I didn't just watch Godfather or something. I was just like, Sonny, that's what I'm going to go by. And I told my teacher, I told my friends, and everyone was like, that makes our lives easier.

1:45:08And I told my family. And somehow it stuck from sixth grade all the way to probably, I want to say, like 36, 37-ish. Um, and I was perfectly content going by Sonny in my career. And then I think it was 2018. I want to say that, uh, I was getting coffee at Dogtown Coffee in Santa Monica. And, um, I put in my order and they, they read your order off of your credit card name. And I'm just waiting. And I was back in sixth grade all of a sudden, cause they read it wrong. And then people around me laughed. and then I shrunk, grabbed my order and just kind of slunk out of there. And I didn't like the way that felt.

1:45:56I was like, I'm a grown man and I am reverting back to my sixth grade self because of my name. And that year, I think Parasite was coming out. I was thinking about director Bong Joon-ho and director Park Chan-wook. And when people say those three syllables, Like, one, no one's butchering their name. And two, it's just so cool sounding because they make cool stuff. And so I thought, well, if I start making cooler things and I go by my Korean name, maybe that'll help, like, offset the stigma of these, you know, Korean three-syllable names in Western culture. So I was writing on this show called Tuco and Birdie at the time.

1:46:39and I went to Lisa Hanelwald, the showrunner, and I asked her, like, hey, I know it's probably an ordeal because you already have the credits set, but, like, can I go by Lee Sung Jin? And she very graciously, like, heard me out, and I think they went through, like, a lot of trouble to change my credits in that show, and then it kind of just stuck from there. What is the advice that you have for the young, you know, Asian-American who's trying to put their own perimeter on the world and establish themselves in whatever career it is that you know who's dealing with that that kind of identity um situation from from my observation and again don't like broad strokes but just in my experience i've found with uh this next generation there there is that pendulum thing happening like uh here as well where in response to before a lot of asian american filmmakers are are leading with identity you know i get so many younger writers when like i go to like a you know panel or something being like you know i wrote my life story because i uh you know i want i want to like i'm proud of my identity um but like no one's into it like you know what can i do Like, is it the system?

1:47:59Is it this? Is it that? And I'm like, look, that's awesome that there's so much in your life that you want to tap into, but it can't just be identity. You have to also think about craft. You have to get really good at music theory before you are a studio musician. and I think right now like a lot of younger generation and not all but some are like well you know like okay I see that in the past we didn't get to express our identity so I want to just express my identity and go hard at that without thinking about okay how do I what vessel do I put that in like it still has to be entertaining you know there still has to be rises and falls in the shape and when you ask when you kind of pointedly ask like oh like do you know about like three-act structure do you know about like hero's journey and a lot of them don't it's like well okay like instead of worrying about you know where's the tide turning at the network side uh worry about what you can control which is your craft and so i think that that's it's the balance you know the middle middle ground of of having a strong sense of identity in your work, but also not forgetting that this is also a craft-based occupation.

1:49:20There's no end run around the work part of it. Yeah. Yeah. And the idea that just because something feels important to you, it doesn't mean that it's worthy of becoming broadly entertaining to other people. Yeah. I mean, that's why season one, it wasn't just a show about Asian Americans. It was within the vessel of road rage, something that universally everyone has done. So it's just, you do have to kind of find ways to hide the kale in the smoothie, so to speak. Is there going to be a season three? You know, every season, much like I did with Thunderbolts, I'm like, that's it, I'm done. I think that's just like me processing.

1:50:04But right now at the moment, I feel like I'm done. but you know if something if inspiration strikes like sure like I can I can dust off beef but you know in the moment like I am focused on X-Men it's like such an important project and there's a couple other ideas I'm you know developing under my overall deal but you know I never say never I don't know what what tomorrow will bring yeah in the meantime you've got the Emmys coming up. I hope you win all 16 or the show wins all 16. Should be 17. Kaylee Spaney. I know, crazy. Should have been nominated. Honestly, it should be 18. Phineas too. Phineas.

1:50:45Oh my gosh, the score. We didn't even talk about him and how much the score informs the character arcs and the narrative. He did an incredible job. I think he's - And it just meets the moment perfectly. He's such a brilliant composer. I only want to work with him going forward. and I think it is I was shocked that him and Kaylee did not get nominated but you know it is what it is and I think the work speaks for itself like both her and his score like it's something that I think will be timeless. It seemed like he really liked working with you. I love the podcast that you do with the show. There's a lot of television show companion podcasts.

1:51:26Most of them are terrible. Yours is really good like you're a natural at this It feels like, you know, everyone that comes on is like wanting to be there and the stories are fantastic. So, you know, for anyone who has enjoyed Beef, you have the opportunity to do that deep dive. If you haven't checked out Beef, you're probably not still listening because you won't even know what we were talking about, but you should go watch it as soon as possible. And this was a delight, man. Likewise. Thank you so much. I'm such a fan and I just think, you know, you're just operating at an entirely different level, like mad respect and I just enjoy it.

1:52:05And I can go back and watch it and find more things and the richness of it, you know, is really special. Oh, thank you so much. Thank you. So come back and talk to me again. And if you ever want to screen anything here. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. It would be really fun to do a Q &A or something like that with you. Oh, yeah. I would love that. Let's do it. All right, man. Thank you. Thank you. Peace. Thank you.