In the caller Ryan Murphy fearfulness thriller “The Beauty,” a microorganism turns its hosts into cleanable carnal specimens overnight. Men aftermath up with rippling biceps, Hawaiian-roll abs, and the benignant of jawline adjacent different men notice. Women look youthful and bladed (of course), with Disney-princess eyes and movie-star lips. A biotech C.E.O. named Byron Forst (Ashton Kutcher) packages the pathogen arsenic The Beauty, which helium calls an “injectable Instagram filter”—though it doesn’t heighten one’s features truthful overmuch arsenic alteration them entirely, rendering the infected unrecognizable to their friends and family. Another broadside effect: these supermodel selves tin lone past for astir 2 years, earlier a literal hotness causes them to spontaneously combust.
The series, connected FX, is loosely based connected a 2016 graphic caller of the aforesaid sanction by Jeremy Haun and Jason A. Hurley, astir an appearance-optimizing S.T.D. that radical really want to catch. “The Beauty” is arsenic implausible arsenic it is acquainted successful form—its protagonists are a brace of jet-setting F.B.I. agents tasked with investigating the mysterious deaths of models successful Paris and Venice—but Murphy, with his co-creator Matt Hodgson, has retooled the premise for the Ozempic age, cannily distilling caller societal anxieties astir GLP-1 drugs. Among different concerns, the amusement plays with the conception that these treatments represent a benignant of shortcut: arsenic the tagline has it, “One changeable makes you hot.” The timeliness lends the archetypal fewer episodes an antithetic energy. Ozempic and its main competitor, Mounjaro, are name-checked successful aggregate episodes; truthful are incels and Chads.
As that mélange suggests, the amusement arrives during a peculiarly confusing clip for quality discourse. Thanks successful portion to Ozempic, bladed is backmost in, with once-plus-size celebrities sporting svelter physiques, and immoderate already-slim stars present verging connected gaunt. The cause itself has go a metonym for the expanding malleability of our appearances, which tin beryllium altered via operations, injections, oregon integer filters—all much normalized than ever before. (Murphy, who made his sanction successful the aboriginal two-thousands with “Nip/Tuck,” a achromatic drama acceptable astatine a plastic-surgery center, was possibly up of the curve.) The regressive plaything distant from assemblage positivity has been overmuch discussed, but there’s nary statement connected how to sermon it. Hollywood, which whitethorn beryllium ceding its quality to acceptable quality standards to societal media, has responded to the morass with lazy morality tales, similar the 2024 movie “The Substance.” That aforesaid year, the cult classical “Death Becomes Her”—another communicative of eternal younker secured astatine a cost—was adapted for Broadway. Both films are winked astatine successful “The Beauty,” which, similar truthful galore of Murphy’s shows, is pastiche held unneurotic by arrogant vulgarity and a sadistic streak.
Though GLP-1s person reportedly been tried by an eighth of the U.S. population, celebrities stay the look of the phenomenon. In the aboriginal days of the drugs’ rollout, a precocious terms tag and a nationwide shortage made off-label A-list users a people of self-righteous mockery. “The Beauty” trades connected this resentment. Meghan Trainor—a popular prima who was champion known for celebrating her curves, past received wide backlash for trimming down—plays a quality who’s thrown retired of the model of a skyscraper. Virus-induced transformations are yet much gruesome, arsenic bones crunch and skeletons contort for maximal discomfort. The amusement is built astir the spectacle of punishing the excessively vain.
But “The Beauty” isn’t conscionable an workout successful chastisement. It besides explores different demographic funny successful assertive aesthetic interventions—young, alienated men. Their plight is embodied by an emotionally stunted incel named Jeremy (played archetypal by Jaquel Spivey, then, erstwhile Beautified, by Jeremy Pope), who’s hopeless for quality connection. The aviator mines wit from his gullibility and cluelessness: to a integrative surgeon who sees him arsenic an casual mark, Jeremy confesses, “I’m lost. I privation to person a purpose. Do you deliberation I should bash standup?” The manosphere tends not to beryllium considered successful the aforesaid enactment arsenic Ozempic culture, but Jeremy bridges the spread portion making a fascinating opposition to the Beauty’s different victims. Even arsenic he’s pulled into the intrigue, helium remains a poignantly impressionable figure, convinced that his newfound Chadness volition springiness him a consciousness of meaning.
As the play progresses, request for the Beauty grows beyond what its authoritative supplier tin offer—something that’s already happened to Ozempic and Mounjaro, whose makers present vie with cheaper gray-market formulas. “The Beauty” is astir engaging erstwhile it dramatizes the difference, showing the acquisition of an affluent lawsuit who has entree to the sanctioned mentation versus what idiosyncratic with less resources has to settee for. Kutcher gradually emerges arsenic the season’s M.V.P., not slightest due to the fact that of the believable blitheness with which Forst schemes to maximize his ain profit—and brags astir partying successful Capri with “Jeff and Lauren.”
None of this rather hangs together, but it whitethorn not person to. “The Beauty” arrives connected the heels of the Kim Kardashian conveyance “All’s Fair,” astir a instrumentality steadfast led by flamboyant pistillate divorcement attorneys, which earned Ryan Murphy immoderate of the worst reviews of his career. It proved enormously fashionable anyway, earning grounds viewership for Hulu, and has been renewed for a 2nd season. (A hate-watch is inactive a watch.) The 2 shows stock a latter-day Murphy impulse: to trade bid with clipability successful mind. That Meghan Trainor scene, which happens to instrumentality spot successful the Condé Nast cafeteria? I couldn’t hold to nonstop a ten-second mentation to my media-industry friends arsenic soon arsenic the occurrence débuted.
Television has ever relied connected big, gasp-inducing moments, but Murphy crams them successful adjacent astatine the disbursal of communicative cohesion. “The Beauty” ’s eleven episodes diagnostic dozens of named characters, and some, similar Trainor’s, look to beryllium solely to effort to marque a country spell viral. So it goes with Murphy’s knack for stunt casting, which mostly pays disconnected here, with Bella Hadid stomping down a runway arsenic a exemplary gone berserk and Isabella Rossellini swanning astir arsenic Forst’s scornful, gracefully ageing wife—a timeless Etruscan vase adjacent to a tin of Monster Energy. But, dissimilar the references to modern quality and fare culture, which consciousness organically woven into the story, the guest-star appearances consciousness forced, arsenic if TV, too, has to alteration into thing other to enactment relevant.
That consciousness of diminishment is astir built into “The Beauty,” which is further compromised by the request to recast characters aft they acquisition the procedure. Evan Peters and Rebecca Hall, who play the law-enforcement partners starring the investigation, person a earthy chemistry that’s promptly squandered erstwhile Hall’s quality gets infected and turns into a younger, supposedly much charismatic mentation of herself. (Hall is overmuch missed for the remainder of the season.) The signifier repeats itself with worse outcomes throughout, arsenic seasoned actors are replaced by newcomers with nary of their predecessors’ gravitas. Murphy’s hopeless bid for attraction has reduced him to this: a amusement that puts an expiration day connected its ain appeal. ♦
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