In the brand new Ryan Murphy horror thriller “The Beauty,” a virus turns its hosts into excellent bodily specimens in a single day. Men get up with rippling biceps, Hawaiian-roll abs, and the type of jawline even different males discover. Women emerge youthful and skinny (in fact), with Disney-princess eyes and movie-star lips. A biotech C.E.O. named Byron Forst (Ashton Kutcher) packages the pathogen as The Beauty, which he calls an “injectable Instagram filter”—although it doesn’t improve one’s options a lot as rework them solely, rendering the contaminated unrecognizable to their pals and household. Another aspect impact: these supermodel selves can solely survive for about two years, earlier than a literal hotness causes them to spontaneously combust.
The sequence, on FX, is loosely primarily based on a 2016 graphic novel of the identical identify by Jeremy Haun and Jason A. Hurley, about an appearance-optimizing S.T.D. that individuals truly need to catch. “The Beauty” is as implausible as it’s acquainted in kind—its protagonists are a pair of jet-setting F.B.I. brokers tasked with investigating the mysterious deaths of fashions in Paris and Venice—however Murphy, along with his co-creator Matt Hodgson, has retooled the premise for the Ozempic age, cannily distilling recent societal anxieties round GLP-1 medicine. Among different issues, the present performs with the notion that these therapies represent a type of shortcut: because the tagline has it, “One shot makes you hot.” The timeliness lends the primary few episodes an uncommon power. Ozempic and its chief competitor, Mounjaro, are name-checked in a number of episodes; so are incels and Chads.
As that mélange suggests, the present arrives throughout a very complicated time for magnificence discourse. Thanks partially to Ozempic, skinny is again in, with once-plus-size celebrities sporting svelter physiques, and some already-slim stars now verging on gaunt. The drug itself has turn out to be a metonym for the rising malleability of our appearances, which could be altered through operations, injections, or digital filters—all extra normalized than ever earlier than. (Murphy, who made his identify within the early two-thousands with “Nip/Tuck,” a black comedy set at a plastic-surgery middle, was maybe forward of the curve.) The regressive swing away from physique positivity has been a lot mentioned, however there’s no consensus on how to debate it. Hollywood, which can be ceding its capability to set magnificence requirements to social media, has responded to the morass with lazy morality tales, just like the 2024 film “The Substance.” That similar yr, the cult basic “Death Becomes Her”—one other story of everlasting youth secured at a price—was tailored for Broadway. Both movies are winked at in “The Beauty,” which, like so lots of Murphy’s exhibits, is pastiche held collectively by proud vulgarity and a sadistic streak.
Though GLP-1s have reportedly been tried by an eighth of the U.S. inhabitants, celebrities stay the face of the phenomenon. In the early days of the medicine’ rollout, a excessive price ticket and a nationwide scarcity made off-label A-list customers a goal of self-righteous mockery. “The Beauty” trades on this resentment. Meghan Trainor—a pop star who was greatest recognized for celebrating her curves, then obtained widespread backlash for trimming down—performs a personality who’s thrown out of the window of a skyscraper. Virus-induced transformations are but extra grotesque, as bones crunch and skeletons contort for maximal discomfort. The present is constructed across the spectacle of punishing the excessively useless.
But “The Beauty” isn’t simply an train in chastisement. It additionally explores one other demographic serious about aggressive aesthetic interventions—younger, alienated males. Their plight is embodied by an emotionally stunted incel named Jeremy (performed first by Jaquel Spivey, then, as soon as Beautified, by Jeremy Pope), who’s determined for human connection. The pilot mines humor from his gullibility and cluelessness: to a plastic surgeon who sees him as a straightforward mark, Jeremy confesses, “I’m lost. I want to have a purpose. Do you think I should do standup?” The manosphere tends to not be thought of in the identical breath as Ozempic tradition, however Jeremy bridges the hole whereas making an enchanting distinction to the Beauty’s different victims. Even as he’s pulled into the intrigue, he stays a poignantly impressionable determine, satisfied that his newfound Chadness will give him a way of that means.
As the season progresses, demand for the Beauty grows past what its official supplier can provide—one thing that’s already occurred to Ozempic and Mounjaro, whose makers now compete with cheaper gray-market formulation. “The Beauty” is most partaking when it dramatizes the distinction, displaying the expertise of an prosperous shopper who has entry to the sanctioned model versus what somebody with fewer assets has to accept. Kutcher progressively emerges because the season’s M.V.P., not least due to the plausible blitheness with which Forst schemes to maximise his personal revenue—and brags about partying in Capri with “Jeff and Lauren.”
None of this fairly hangs collectively, however it could not need to. “The Beauty” arrives on the heels of the Kim Kardashian car “All’s Fair,” a couple of legislation agency led by flamboyant feminine divorce attorneys, which earned Ryan Murphy among the worst evaluations of his profession. It proved enormously standard anyway, incomes document viewership for Hulu, and has been renewed for a second season. (A hate-watch continues to be a watch.) The two exhibits share a latter-day Murphy impulse: to craft sequence with clipability in thoughts. That Meghan Trainor scene, which occurs to happen within the Condé Nast cafeteria? I couldn’t wait to ship a ten-second model to my media-industry pals as quickly because the episode débuted.
Television has at all times relied on huge, gasp-inducing moments, however Murphy crams them in even on the expense of narrative cohesion. “The Beauty” ’s eleven episodes function dozens of named characters, and some, like Trainor’s, seem to exist solely to attempt to make a scene go viral. So it goes with Murphy’s knack for stunt casting, which largely pays off right here, with Bella Hadid stomping down a runway as a mannequin gone berserk and Isabella Rossellini swanning about as Forst’s scornful, gracefully ageing spouse—a timeless Etruscan vase subsequent to a can of Monster Energy. But, in contrast to the references to trendy magnificence and food plan tradition, which really feel organically woven into the story, the guest-star appearances really feel pressured, as if TV, too, has to rework into one thing else to remain related.
That sense of diminishment is sort of constructed into “The Beauty,” which is additional compromised by the necessity to recast characters after they endure the process. Evan Peters and Rebecca Hall, who play the law-enforcement companions main the investigation, have a pure chemistry that’s promptly squandered when Hall’s character will get contaminated and turns right into a youthful, supposedly extra enticing model of herself. (Hall is way missed for the remainder of the season.) The sample repeats itself with worse outcomes all through, as seasoned actors are changed by newcomers with none of their predecessors’ gravitas. Murphy’s determined bid for consideration has lowered him to this: a present that places an expiration date on its personal enchantment.
