I went into Ryan Murphy’s new show The Beauty with low expectations. When I saw the show’s trailer a few months back, I thought to myself, “So it’s Temu The Substance?” I had no belief that this show would be any good, innovative or poignant—or at least, not as good, innovative or poignant as Coralie Fargeat’s 2024 masterpiece. But that was then, before I watched the first three episodes of Ryan Murphy’s new show The Beauty.
And my initial apprehensions were right.
The Beauty, co-written by Murphy and Matt Hodgson, premiered with three installments on January 21 on FX, home to many of Murphy’s series including Pose, American Horror Story, and Feud. The series, a loose adaptation of a comic by Jeremy Haun and Jason A. Hurley, follows two FBI agents as they investigate a chain of interconnected, bizarre deaths across the globe caused by a mysterious disease known simply as “the beauty.” Its symptoms, at first, are actually pretty desirable: the infection transforms those affected into incredibly conventionally attractive people, beautiful enough to become runway supermodels. Then, it blows them up. Literally —literally. They explode into a million pieces, as if they’ve swallowed a grenade.
As the FBI tries to understand what this virus is, the forces who created it attempt to manage its spread by hunting down the infected. All the while, backdoor plastic surgeons deliberately give the illness to poor saps desperate for a taste of what it’s like to be desirable. Unfortunately, for everyone interested in controlling it, the illness spreads through sexual contact, and those carrying it are just too damn hot to resist.
As much to be expected from a Murphy television series, the cast of The Beauty is stacked. The cast includes RMCU (Ryan Murphy Cinematic Universe) regular Evan Peters, Broadway star Anthony Ramos and A-lister Ashton Kutcher. Bella Hadid even makes an appearance in the pilot episode, making her acting debut as the first person we lose to the beauty.
A lot happens in these initial installments. In the first episode alone, there are exploding models, an incel-led mass shooting, FBI agents having an affair, and people speaking French (scary). Like most Ryan Murphy shows, it’s an absolute fever dream of disjointed plot points, body horror, questionable dialogue that is a clear attempt to cater to a Gen-Z audience, and unexpected cameos that make viewers pause and go, “is that Meghan Trainor?”
At no point in watching The Beauty did I know what was going to happen next. One moment the FBI is investigating the deaths of beautiful people who used to be not-beautiful people, the next moment Ashton Kutcher is getting a blowjob on a yacht. The show creates a kaleidoscope of subplots that are hard to keep track of at first, but once you stop focusing too closely on the little details and look at the big picture… it’s still a lot to take in, to be honest. But it works. Somehow.
For horror fans, like myself, it’s hard not to watch The Beauty and compare it to other pieces of horror media. First there were the aforementioned The Substance comparisons. Then, learning that the disease was sexually transmitted made me think of cult favorite It Follows (2014). The bloody, exploding bodies brought me back to the ending of Ready Or Not (2019). I feel as if I can blindly recreate the vision board that the creators of The Beauty so clearly put together prior to the production of the show.
Through its myriad references to the horror canon, The Beauty has a point to make—or at least one it’s trying to. The show wants to criticize our society’s obsession with Eurocentric beauty standards while empathizing with those who are struggling with not fitting into them. At a time when everyone from Hollywood’s biggest stars to world-class professional athletes are taking weight-loss drugs and “Mar-a-Lago face” is a household phrase, it’s a conversation that needs to be had. The Beauty just might not be the right outlet for it.
A chat between the two FBI agents (who are sleeping together) investigating the disease Cooper Madsen (Peters) and Jordan Bennett (Rebecca Hall) in the pilot episode exhibit best where The Beauty falls short. The conversation begins with Bennett explaining how being bullied as a child for being a member of the “itty bitty titty committee” eventually led her to get breast augmentation surgery. When Madsen follows this confession with a story about how a date once told him he had grayish teeth, Bennett expresses awe that Madsen could be unaffected by such a direct critique of his physical appearance.
The conversation could’ve been a great moment for reflection on how beauty standards are weaponized against men and women differently, and how women feel a greater pressure to conform to them. Instead, it takes a weird, mansplainy approach as Madsen tells his coworker-slash-lover a story about how, during some time in Japan, he met a potter who practiced the art of kintsugi—a practice where broken ceramics are not thrown away but repaired using gold.
This scene is an attempt at sincerity from the writers that is just too pretentious to be taken seriously. It’s also too on the nose to have any weight. Get it? Broken things can be pretty too.
Ultimately, the show suffers from wanting to be critical of society but not wanting to piss society off too much—afterall, without society we wouldn’t have some of Murphy’s other stars like socialite Kim Kardashian or nepo baby Billie Lourd. At times, The Beauty sacrifices what could’ve been moments of provocative cultural commentary in favor of the most basic low-hanging fruit. Other times, it just straight-up eschews satire and replaces it with dick jokes. As a result, the series can feel like it’s trying to cater to both the Tumblr SJW and Reddit edgelord crowds.
There are brief moments, however, when The Beauty does get it right. Take the ending of the third episode, for example. In it, former-incel-turned-hottie Jeremy (Jeremy Pope) explains to an assassin (Ramos) how hard his former life was as a fat, dark-skinned Black man. He couldn’t get laid, he couldn’t make friends, and no one cared about him.
“I hated the way the world made me feel about myself,” Jeremy says in a moment of vulnerable honesty. “White dudes, lightskin men, they get more. More women, more dates, more attention.”
Now, after being infected by the beauty, he has women lining up at his door and a newfound confidence in himself. It’s a short yet powerful conversation on how fatphobia and colorism can affect the social lives and mental health of those affected by these systems. It also demonstrates the lengths people would go to just to fit in. It’s a conversation that, as I watched it the first time, made me sit back and think, “There it is. That’s the point of this show.”
And that’s the beauty (non-pun intended) of the show. Just when you think it’s a pointless mish-mosh of nude bodies, pretentious conversations on beauty standards, and gratuitous violence, it pulls you in with a moment of sincerity that’s surrounded by a context of pure ridiculousness.
Though The Beauty might not be as good, innovative, or poignant as The Substance, it is pretty damn fun. And for all its surprising cameos, nauseating body horror (complimentary) and unpredictable storylines, the show is just attractive enough to make you come back for more.