The Beauty, the latest series from mega-producer Ryan Murphy, is an ugly mess. Based on the excellent comic book series by Jeremy Haun and Jason A. Hurley, which is well worth seeking out, the 11-episode show coming to FX and Hulu plays to Murphy’s worst instincts, devolving into a convoluted jumble of goop and trite clichés that barely functions as a TV show, let alone telling a coherent story.
The concept, at least as eventually becomes clear-ish down the road – all 11 episodes were provided to critics for review – is that a new STD called The Beauty is being passed around which makes people their most beautiful selves. An unfortunate side effect? After about two and a half years, you might explode into bloody chunks. Mixed in there is a conspiracy plot involving Ashton Kutcher’s billionaire Byron Forst, who created The Beauty to sell to other billionaires, as well as two FBI investigators on the all-purpose international murder/infectious disease beat looking into the deaths, played by Evan Peters and Rebecca Hall, who happen to also be romantically involved. Oh, and Anthony Ramos plays a silver-eye-patched assassin who teams up with Jeremy Pope, a Beauty-afflictee who starts as an incel and then weaponizes his killer streak.
As usual with Murphy productions, that’s just the tip of the actorberg as basically everyone from main cast to guest stars are a parade of “oh hey, I know that guy.” That includes Ben Platt, Billy Eichner, Vincent D’Onofrio, Bella Hadid, John Carroll Lynch, Meghan Trainor, Peter Gallagher, and so, so many more. And on top of all that, Kutcher’s character’s wife is played by living legend Isabella Rossellini, who deserves much, much better than this.
It’s all too much. It is glut. And that’s typical for a Ryan Murphy show, but the issue here is that somewhere along the way Murphy has forgotten how to make TV. While the plot starts with the exploding supermodels, as it continues it completely pushes that aside for more sci-fi reveals, non-stop twists to the plot, and plenty of repetitive discussions about how we’re all obsessed with beauty. And while there is a point to be made there, Murphy and Matt Hodgson, who co-created the show, have no real interest in going further than skin deep. People say the word “beauty” a lot but nobody points out that the “ideal self” you become is far, far less interesting than the people they were before.
Not to keep hammering on this, but episodes digress into following characters we’ve never seen before, and will never see again. An episode abruptly becomes an extended flashback, which continues into the next episode. Characters wander in and out like they’re discarded ideas from American Horror Story that inexplicably show up here. There are full-on musical numbers, and the show has never met a song it can’t play all the way through despite elongating a sequence far past its natural end point, making it feel like random music videos stuck in the middle of a bland cop TV show.
Even what should be the highlight of the show, the goopy mess of The Beauty, is nowhere near as fun as it could be. Sure there’s a joy in seeing Bella Hadid explode all over the Paris cops, or Condé Nast staffers putting the “Nast” in “Nasty” by sitting for days in their own filth thanks to a Beauty infection. But the main draw, the transformation sequences, are inexpertly filmed, full of stagey, fake-looking cracking of bones, a spine pop, and then some sticky goop once they emerge from pods. The whole transformation plays like Murphy half watched The Substance while texting his group chat saying “hey we should do this,” and then they threw in a little Gremlins so it wouldn’t seem like a straight rip-off.
But where The Substance has some extremely pointed satire about aging and beauty, The Beauty has none of that. It’s a view of beautiful people that is filtered through the lens of a man who spends his whole life with beautiful people and doesn’t have much to say about it other than “actually maybe it’s pretty nice.”
There are highlights, mind you. It’s a pleasure to see Evan Peters play a normal person, versus the depraved weirdos he’s usually served in a Murphy project, even if he is saddled with some of the most leaden cop dialogue ever seen on screen. Rebecca Hall is eminently watchable in anything, though the objectively beautiful actress is bizarrely cast as a plain jane uggo and has a character arc of loving being a slut to maybe not loving to be a slut. Anthony Ramos and Jeremy Pope eventually make a good pair, and while their scenes are the sort of warmed over Tarantino that was old shortly after Pulp Fiction was released, occasionally the two actually get to act together in a real human way, even if their plotline completely falls apart in the final part of the season.
And an episode featuring Eddie Kaye Thomas and Rev Yolanda isn’t exactly subtle – none of this is, mind you – but it deals with what The Beauty might mean to a trans person, and is the only time in 11 episodes the show gets towards something deeper and more interesting than its cursory, surface level interest in looks. There’s a version of this show where the focus isn’t the overarching conspiracy plots Murphy seems to barely care about, and instead gives us snapshots of what it is like to live in a world with The Beauty. For example, late in the season, we see what it means to a high schooler obsessed with social media; and this too gets towards something real even though it can’t quite stick the punchline. Basically, The Beauty could have been an anthology, aka a format Murphy is eminently comfortable with, and one that was explored at times in the comic book source material.
But instead, we’ve got the conspiracy. And we’ve got Ashton Kutcher miscast as a maniacal businessman when it’s hard to believe he’s not still a vapid teenager getting wasted in a basement, or pulling pranks on MTV. Like how Murphy casts Peters against type here, and it works, he also casts Kutcher against type, and it does not. And unfortunately, Kutcher becomes more and more central to the action as it continues, with other actors pushed way to the side, if not disappearing or being replaced entirely. Most of Kutcher’s bizarre acting choices are explained later in the season, but even when you know why he’s acting so strangely, it doesn’t excuse the delivery or the role.
And nothing excuses the fact that this show gets further and further distracted from the main plot the longer it goes on, throwing more ideas into the mix until it ends in one of the most misguided finales of the year, including what is essentially a full-on parody of The Matrix.
Listen, there is a lot to say about our society’s obsession with beauty. And some movies and TV shows have said them excellently (see above re: The Substance). But based on these 11 episodes, it’s clear that Ryan Murphy isn’t the guy to say any of this. Instead, stick with the comics, which are coherent, interesting, and feature way less cameos.
The Beauty Premiere Dates And Episode Guide:
New episodes of The Beauty premiere Wednesdays at 9 pm ET on Hulu, and 9 pm ET/PT on FX. The season will premiere with three episodes on January 21, followed by a staggered release schedule until the Season 1 finale.
Here’s what we expect from the full list of episodes in The Beauty Season 1, with premiere dates.
- Wednesday, January 21, 2026: The Beauty, Season 1, Episode 1, “Beautiful Pilot”
- Wednesday, January 21, 2026: The Beauty, Season 1, Episode 2, “Beautiful Jordan”
- Wednesday, January 21, 2026: The Beauty, Season 1, Episode 3, “Beautiful Christopher Cross”
- Wednesday, January 28, 2026: The Beauty, Season 1, Episode 4, “Beautiful Chimp Face”
- Wednesday, February 4, 2026: The Beauty, Season 1, Episode 5, “Beautiful Billionaires”
- Wednesday, February 11, 2026: The Beauty, Season 1, Episode 6, “Beautiful Patient Zero”
- Wednesday, February 18, 2026: The Beauty, Season 1, Episode 7, “Beautiful Living Rooms”
- Wednesday, February 25, 2026: The Beauty, Season 1, Episode 8, “Beautiful Brothers”
- Wednesday, February 25, 2026: The Beauty, Season 1, Episode 9, “Beautiful Evolution”
- Wednesday, March 4, 2026: The Beauty, Season 1, Episode 10, “Beautiful Beauty Day”
- Wednesday, March 4, 2026: The Beauty, Season 1, Episode 11, “Beautiful Betrayal” *Season Finale*
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