Life & Beth season 1 – who is Matt?

By Marc Miller
Published: March 18, 2022 (Last updated: March 3, 2023)
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Who is Matt in season 1 of Life & Beth - hulu series

This article, “who is Matt” contains spoilers regarding Hulu’s Life & Beth season 1. 

Read the review of Season 1.

Kevin Kane plays Matt in Hulu’s new comedy series Life & Beth. Matt is a supporting character in the show, prevalent in the show’s first three episodes (“Pilot”, “We are Grieving”, and “Out on the Island”). Matt represents the type of person the titular character, Beth, typically chooses as a partner and for all the wrong reasons. 

So, that begs the question…

Who is Matt in season 1 of Life & Beth?

Matt is a star salesman for a wine distributing company named Kerig (again, not the coffee company). He works with Beth there, who does not have his sales skills. He is also Beth’s long-time boyfriend, and they live together. Matt also has an unusually close relationship with Beth’s mother, Jane. (When Beth tells him she is going shopping with her, Matt says, “Tell her I love her”).

What does Matt do?

Matt is a fun-loving, hard-drinking, mother-loving, and cocaine-snorting good time. Of course, the honest Matt comes out when the money dries up. But first, Matt gets himself dumped. In a blaze of dumb boyfriend’s glory, he throws a flash mob with his coworkers for a makeshift wake after Beth’s mother’s funeral. A makeshift riff of a Bobby Brown song (I think, if I have it wrong, give me a break because the screeners do not have credits), singing about loving her and doing her. Appropriate? Not really. Why? Well, it is sweet. Matt proposed to her and wanted her to remember this day as good, not bad.

Of course, Beth realizes this whole thing was just for himself. He combines the wake into a dual engagement party (I love this guy). When he makes a speech about the wake, not the engagement, he tells a story of how Jane would always call to thank him for being with Beth. He even repeats it. Beth then dumps him.

In the third episode, Matt makes a play for her, but it’s too late. However, later in the season, Beth finds out that Matt leads the company in sales because he is buying back his product with his own money to stay on top. He hasn’t paid the rent on their apartment in ten months, and it is in her name. He then pisses his pants in front of her.

Matt does his pathetic best to push Beth to be her very best because he is an example of the type of man her mother would cycle through, leading to depression. She digs herself out of the financial hole Matt puts her in. Beth then chooses to find her “thing” and quits a job she does not love. She ultimately ends up with John because her choices lead all roads to him, where she finally finds happiness. 

You can watch this series with a subscription to Hulu.

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