Psychologists are quick to say, “Hurt people hurt people,” when answering why people inflict traumas on one another, and then continue to do so in perpetuity. But what does that really look like in action? Lee Sung Jin, the creator and writer of Netflix’s new series Beef, is all about exploring that ugliness in action and does so in a truly spectacular fashion in this wild series.

Using the spark of a mundane, suburban road-rage incident in a hardware store parking lot between strangers Danny Cho (Steven Yuen) and Amy Lau (Ali Wong), Beef follows the unraveling of these two lonely and angry souls who see in one another their perfect foils, reflections of self and, perhaps, even salvation. Both Yeun and Wong give mighty performances as dual protagonists who are both selfish and impulsive yet still sympathetic. Their stories weave together in a complex and cathartic ride through chaos that ends as a poignant, existential mediation about how these two broken people are destined to break each other down into their purest selves.

Set in contemporary Southern California, the opening minutes of the first episode, “The Birds Don’t Sing, They Screech in Pain,” provides the aforementioned conflagration point that fuels the whole series. Initially, we are left to assume Beef will take a cat-and-mouse approach with the two stalking one another, but Jin smartly knows that can only go so far. Instead, he digs into the minutia of their unhappy existences. Danny is the “good kid” shouldering his family’s financial problems while trying to motivate his “lazy,” 20-something himbo brother, Paul (Young Mazino). Amy wrestles similarly as an upper-middle-class wife, mother, and entrepreneur constantly overwhelmed by her suffocating responsibilities. What the series does so well is make it crystal clear that their parking lot incident was an endorphin rush for them both; a feral, forced therapy session they become addicted to and play out in a downward spiral of vengeful, terrible behavior that unfolds across 10 episodes. It’s such a fresh take on how rage manifests in the everyday, and eventually erupts no matter how you try to control it.

To support that, Jin and his team of writers and directors craft an absorbing spider’s web of interweaving storylines connecting the inner circles of Danny and Amy’s lives. We get to know their closest family members, their bizarre business partners, and even Danny’s Korean church community intimately, which invests us in their lives and amps up the stakes because everyone in their orbit is eventually sucked into the maelstrom of the duo’s vicious revenge scenarios. It becomes their deranged sport to externalize their pain at one another so they can continue to deflect from ever having to address their individual self-loathing.