I SAW THE BEAUTY

I was wary of engaging FX/Hulu/Disney+'s The Beauty, based on Jason A. Hurley and Jeremy Haun's comic-book series, if only because its showrunner, Ryan Murphy, ruined American Horror Story for me by adding a bunch of socio-political horseshit into the later seasons. (Hell, some of that holier-than-though/PC nonsense even infiltrated Murphy's Feud, the Bette Davis/Joan Crawford/Baby Jane miniseries, which could have thrived just off the melodramatic facts.)

All the same, I found the fortitude to give The Beauty a shot, and by jingo, I dug it. I guess that's because it did no more than deliver a bloody, body-horror count, which in turn works as a companion piece to Coralie Fargeat's The Substance, which means it also links to most of David Cronenberg's freaky library, in addition to Phillipe Mora/Tom Holland/Edward Levy's The Beast Within, if only during its impetuous stretches and trust me, there are plenty. 

The idea of a high-end drug manufactured to make one young (after one forms within, and breaks from out, a slimy cocoon), only then to grow feverish, then thirsty ... then explode is, well, pretty powerful stuff from a visceral perspective, but as with any mad-scientist concoction on the loose, The Beauty's isn't meant to be taken beyond ugly-face value. Murphy's series is, therefore (like its comic-book inspiration, from at least what I've seen of it), just objectionable exploitation for the sake of it, and I, for one, say bravo. 

I particularly favored Ashton Kutcher's egomaniacal Byron Forst, aka "the Corporation," who pushes his Ponce de Leon drug ad nauseum, and my appreciation for the villain increased when Vincent D'Onofrio found his way into the bastard's background, thanks to a fascinating, flashback episode. I won't spoil the catch there, but it does strike a chilling chord, but then so do many passages and performers in The Beauty. 

Such includes Isabella Rosellini, Rebecca Hall, Jessica Alexander, Evan Peters, Anthony Ramos, Jeremy Pope, John Carroll Lynch, Rob Yang, Ari Graynor, Bella Hadid, et al. 

Peters is another stand-out as agile FBI Agent Cooper Madsen, who strives to seek the truth (rather like Peter Fonda's Chuck Browning in Futureworld, or so I fancied), but on the antithesis end, the dangerous duo of Ramos' "Assassin" and Pope's Jeremy layer a whole other tier to the sneaky succession, so that I'll never listen to Christopher Cross' "Ride Like the Wind" the same way again. 

No matter where or when one visits the series, each of its eleven episodes has something to show and tell. The season is also open-ended, so that means if we don't get a Season 2, we're left in a lurch. I do hope that's not the case, because there's lots more gory fun to be had, as long as The Beauty doesn't opt for the preachy propaganda of American Horror Story. I'd rather see this thing stained by eternal ambiguity than have that happen.