One of the only things BEEF Season 2’s rancorous couple Josh Martín (Oscar Isaac) and Lindsay Crane-Martín (Carey Mulligan) can agree on is how much they love their sweet dachshund, Burberry. He trots around their Ojai bungalow wearing colorful sweaters and playing fetch with his toy monkey, always at the heels of his millennial pet parents.
Even Josh’s vengeful underling at the country club, Ashley Miller (Cailee Spaeny), would never intentionally put Burberry in harm’s way. Yet that’s exactly what Ashley does when she breaks into the Crane-Martín household, inadvertently setting off a chain of disastrous events. In a shocking scene, Lindsay kills a coyote with her own bare hands, and poor Burberry doesn’t make it past Episode 5. Keep reading to learn how a simple mistake kills BEEF Season 2’s most beloved character.
No. Ashley breaks into Josh and Lindsay’s residence just to “mess with their house,” as she admits in Episode 7. When she hears Josh returning home, she rushes out the back door to avoid discovery, leaving the exit slightly ajar in the process. In her haste, Ashley doesn’t notice her mistake, and curious little Burberry slips out in pursuit, subjecting him to the wild world of Ojai.
The core Season 2 vendetta begins when Ashley and her fiancé, Austin Davis (Charles Melton), witness a heated row between their boss and his wife, and Ashley happens to film the entire alarming scene on her iPhone. When Ashley finds out she has an ovarian cyst, she leverages the incriminating video for a full-time role — with health insurance — at the country club, where Josh is the manager. Only, because this is America, gaining health insurance does not ensure access to affordable medical care. Ashley learns that truth the hard way during an unexpected trip to the emergency room after a self-inflicted fall out of a car. She expects her newfound coverage will save her — until a fatigued nurse explains what a deductible is.
Josh goes to the hospital to check on Ashley and offers to connect her with one of the club-going doctors for faster care — on one condition: she must delete all back-up videos of his fight with Lindsay. Ashley insists she doesn’t have any, which Josh doesn’t buy, and he leaves the hospital without helping her. Ashley is terrified about how her possibly torsed ovary could affect her chances of having a baby down the road. When surgeons have to remove her ovary entirely — and Ashley realizes that this loss might have been prevented had Josh stepped in — she’s incensed. After all, she was right, her ovary was torsed.
In her post-surgery haze, Ashley — still covered in face bandages — drives over to Josh and Lindsay’s house while they’re out. She keys his “Club of the Year” trophy, takes photos of his fraudulent “Misc.” invoices, and tells Burberry, “I’m going to bring your dad down. I’m going to tear your family apart, and then I’m going to adopt you and raise you as my own.” Set to La Roux’s ominous “In for the Kill,” she reaches into her underwear and stirs some of her own blood into a pitcher of orange juice, the refrigerator doors plastered with Burberry’s feeding schedule. Clearly, Ashley hasn’t begun to heal, physically or emotionally, from losing her ovary.
This havoc scratches Ashley’s itch for revenge, but her most egregious offense turns out to be a complete accident: the back door left ajar. In the next episode, as Josh considers his glass of OJ and Lindsay returns home sans pup, they look at the gaping screen door and realize with sheer panic that Burberry is missing.
Josh and Lindsay desperately band together to find Burberry, but the crisis ends up only widening their marital rifts. They each blame the other for leaving the door open, and rehash quarrels from many years ago, hitting topics as varied and irrelevant to their lost dog as the concept of New Year’s Eve, Top Gun: Maverick, and Josh’s late mother’s stroke. Eventually, Josh complains that Lindsay refused to buy an Amazon doorstop that could’ve prevented this latest catastrophe because it didn’t match her interior design vision. Lindsay hastily corrects her husband by pulling up a text proving she ordered an acceptable “aged brass” stopper all the way back in April 2022.
Josh escapes to the country club in a harried rush. And while he is blowing off steam with club member Troy (William Fichtner), Lindsay scours Ojai for Burberry and runs into a guilty-looking Ashley, who has joined the search. The two share a moment of rare bonding and vulnerability, but Burberry is still nowhere to be found.
As she wanders “the place where the sun last shone because Burberry hates the cold,” Lindsay hears whimpers. She finds Burberry in the maw of a coyote and races to his rescue. Though the coyote initially drops poor Burberry, it comes back for more. Lindsay picks up the coyote and flings it to the ground, where it goes silent.
Sadly, the coyote’s damage has been done, and despite a veterinarian’s best efforts, Burberry dies at the hospital.
Like the crows of Season 1, coyotes are woven throughout Season 2: Josh stares down a coyote during a run in Episode 2. Troy likens Josh to a “goddamn coyote” when they reminisce about Josh’s womanizing before he met Lindsay. The chairwoman’s chief counsel (Jason Her) warns her that their land purchase will force even more coyotes into the neighborhoods. The furry creatures are always lurking on the outskirts, threatening violence.
Just as Ashley and Lindsay start to see eye to eye, she overhears Austin reveal that he knows Ashley killed Burberry. Lindsay exacts her beverage-based revenge on Ashley in Episode 7, while they’re trapped together on a flight to Seoul.
When Ashley asks Lindsay to get her a Shirley Temple (“virgin, but only if it’s Sprite. If not, apple juice”), Lindsay plumbs the blue liquid depths of the airplane toilet and wipes it on Ashley’s glass. If you’re gagging just thinking about that, so is Lindsay. Only something this vile could rectify Ashley’s mistake.
Dog actor Jones plays Josh and Lindsay’s pup in BEEF Season 2. When the pint-sized pup showed up to the premiere with a gold chain circling his neck, he quickly stole the show. After her hammy performance on the red carpet — and the slew of headlines calling him the best in show — he’s solidified himself as the pooch to watch.
Burberry’s death is the nail in the coffin for Josh and Lindsay’s doomed marriage, and it’s in the vet waiting room that Lindsay asks for a divorce. Weeks later, as they’re divvying up their assets, Josh gains full custody of the new dachshund they adopted from the animal shelter. He’s named him Burberry, which Lindsay beseeches him to change.
After actor-musician Donald Glover (aka Childish Gambino) shares Lindsay’s Instagram plea, the Ojai Valley Animal Shelter reaches out to Lindsay about a brown dachshund that was just brought in. Josh and Lindsay ecstatically rush into the shelter, only to see that the dog is not their Burberry. The shelter manager, Eduardo (Stranger Things’ Eduardo Franco), guilts them into fostering the innocent animal, so they bring him home in their despair over Burberry’s disappearance. When Burberry dies, Josh transfers their beloved pet’s name to their new pup, who is alive and well.
Jones plays both Burberrys. If his swaggy appearance at the premiere didn’t already prove this, there’s nothing Jones can’t do. One pup plays both the original Burberry and Burberry 2.0, the rescue Josh and Lindsay foster from the Ojai Valley Animal Shelter.
Watch Jones charm the denizens of Ojai and Montecito now by streaming BEEF Season 2, only on Netflix. And dig into the series by watching BEEF: The Official Podcast, or listening on Spotify and Apple.
