Excess—particularly around sex and violence, but also as a sort of narrative device. This aesthetic defines much of Ryan Murphy’s work, and his tendency toward maximalism is on full display in his latest series, “The Beauty.” Created in partnership with longstanding collaborator Matthew Hodgson, it’s not a show meant to silence his critics.
It’s meant to delight Murphy’s fans. Adapting a graphic novel series of the same name, the FX series primarily follows FBI Agent Cooper Madsen, played by frequent Murphy muse Evan Peters. He’s investigating a mysterious new infection that transforms people into the best possible byproduct of their DNA—young, beautiful, fit. The only caveat is that they spontaneously combust about 2 years after transformation.
Naturally, an evil billionaire (mostly played by Ashton Kutcher) is bringing this disease to market, selling injections and boosters to stop the ka-baoom. He’s also trying to curtail its unauthorized spread—because yes, it can be sexually transmitted—via a hired gun, played by Anthony Ramos, who’s having a lot of fun with it.
The first few episodes in particular really lean into the features and bugs of Murphy’s brand of storytelling. They’re so much style and very little substance. Long action sequences are more about recreating cool visuals from the graphic novels than advancing the story. The same goes for many of the design choices—expect an array of Matrix-style sunglasses, corpses artfully displayed, and high-fashion fits for Isabella Rossellini, playing Kutcher’s wife.
To open the series, Bella Hadid gets a long opening sequence, which ends in combustion. We’re also treated to repeated close-ups of the full transformation process: minutes of breaking-bone noises, scary bridge poses, ooze, and a primordial sack that the newly beautiful must break through like sexy baby birds—on repeat.
Afterward, each of the reborn men flexes both their arms, and everyone touches their newly supple butts (there are lots of derrieres). Surely beauty must mean something different to some of these folks? Or are we all really this basic?
“The Beauty” doesn’t know. It’s a show with a lot of ideas around attractiveness, but not one that goes very deep into any of them. Take all those transformation scenes, which continue throughout the first season (if not quite at the clip of one complete rebirth per episode as in the opening installments). Ostensibly, they make the point that “beauty is pain,” as the saying goes. And they make the audience sit in the pain, stuck in the discomfort of those long, ugly sequences. But then what? What beyond the cliché is there to explore?
I think not much of that particular idea, but don’t come to “The Beauty” for ruminations on physical attractiveness and the currency that goes with it (I’d suggest “Materialists” for that). At one point, Kutcher’s billionaire says, “beautiful people think the rules don’t apply to them,” and that’s really the extent of the thinking here.
Still, “The Beauty” asks plenty of intriguing questions, even if inadvertently. For example, what even is beauty? In this eleven-episode season, “beauty” is youth, health, and fitness, along with the ability for Murphy’s camera to reverently pan a midriff. The show portrays beauty as biologically determined—the transformations are just a trick of mutated DNA. But obviously, we’re really looking at the choices of a modern-day casting process.
And because beauty standards change (all the butts here are round and plump, for example, but that hasn’t always been the fashion) and are often tied to racialized features (lips, hair texture, etc.)—these choices and their implications are thought-provoking, even if “The Beauty” doesn’t advance a coherent idea about them.
For example, things get tricky for characters like Rebecca Hall’s Jordan Bennett. She’s Agent Madsen’s love interest from the jump and clearly an attractive woman. So what does it mean for someone like her to get The Beauty virus? Well, they replace her with Jess Alexander, as though the second woman is undisputably more attractive than the first. I’m not sure that’s true, and while watching, I couldn’t stop questioning that choice. I don’t particularly love contemplating ranking these two women, but it is engaging to ponder the components of beauty—what we’ve, as a society, decided qualifies and what that says about us.
The show does address some of the thorny complications of its premise head-on. Murphy and Hodgson thoughtfully execute an episode with a trans character who takes the drug. More confounding is the show’s conversation around ability—namely, that disability is ugly, something this new disease can cure. The implications are troubling, playing into dangerous ideas around disabled people’s worth.
All in all, this show is best appreciated as a wild ride. Murphy excels at world-building, and his skills are on full display here. Yes, there are some annoying tics (like overusing the theme song), but the show, for all its faults, is still an immersive experience. A stylized reflection of our world that throws a million ideas at the wall. And even if none of them stick, there’s still plenty to take away, to mull over in a slower-paced, more nuanced way, away from the chaos and naked rear ends of “The Beauty.”
All episodes screened for review. Airs weekly on FX, streaming on Hulu and Disney+.
