Beautiful Until You Burn: Ryan Murphy’s Latest Fantasy of Perfection

I have been a longtime fan of Ryan Murphy’s work. His first bonafide hit, Nip/Tuck, was a show that was like a cold drink to the face in the relatively safe television landscape of the early 2000s. It stood out at a time when medical dramas were all the rage. Your mother watched boring ass ER and your sister was engrossed in the angsty, overly melodramatic bullshit that is Grey’s Anatomy, but if you were a teenage boy at the dawn of the new Millennium you were watching Nip/Tuck.

The show is mostly remembered for its (at the time) explicit sex scenes, glamorous locales, over the top storylines, and graphic depiction of surgery. Nowadays, some people would paint it as a shallow heterosexual male fantasy even though most men of all orientations feen for an alluring, nevertheless vacuous life of sex and money but that’s neither here nor there. If you look past all the decoration that the show had to lure you in you could see that this edgy, sleek drama about two Miami plastic surgeons had a theme which was about the pursuit of physical perfection and to what lengths some would go to obtain it.

Murphy’s latest show, The Beauty, touches upon that same theme. Adapted from a comic book series by James Haun and Jason A. Hurley, the show is about a sexually transmitted disease called the beauty that spreads rapidly through the population. It’s side effects? It grants the infected physical attractiveness. The downside? After an extended period, the infected party will suddenly self-combust. We follow several characters in the show that deal with their body insecurities. Jordan Bennett played by Rebecca Hall and Jessica Alexander is a detective who recently got a boob job as she felt that she was too flat chested and Mike McGuinn played by American Pie’s Eddie Kaye Thomas and Joey Pollari is a lab worker who is insecure about his looks. The most intriguing character that gets the most exploration is Jeremy played by Jaquel Spivey and Jeremy Pope who is an overweight incel who lives in his mom’s basement and jacks off to cam girls. Depressed and desperate to break out of the monotony, stagnation, and shame of his existence, he goes to extreme lengths to make himself physically appealing. Devoid of a dad, he finds a father figure in The Assassin, a character hired to kill all who are infected with the disease.

Evan Peters is Cooper Madsen who is Jordan’s partner and fuck buddy. Cooper is this “alleged” bad ass detective helping Jordan investigate all the sudden deaths caused by the beauty. Cooper is apparently multilingual, great in bed, and has the fighting skills of a James Bond-Jackie Chan hybrid. Evan Peters is clearly miscast in this role. He is a portrayer of introverts not men of a Jack Reacher-esc caliber who kick ass and have a stiff upper lip. Seeing him play this part is like watching a four-year-old dress up in their father’s clothes. You are not this character. You do not yet have what it takes to play this character. Stick to what you know. Go sit down! Plus, his character and Jordan have this whole romantic subplot where he catches feelings for her and she’s all “no-no-no” until she finally gets infected after a one-night stand with some random Italian dude and the next thing you know she’s confessing her love for him. It is the most cliched and sickening storyline on the show.

Another thing that I found a bit annoying was how they dealt with the character of Manny played by Ben Platt and Isaac Cole Powell. The show has an actor play a character before they get infected and then another after they are reborn as the more aesthetically pleasing version of themselves. Having Rebecca Hall and Jessica Alexander be the pre and post beauty versions of Jordan was great. Even more so with the Assassin who is played by Teddy Cañez and Anthony Ramos. They legitimately look like the older and younger versions of the same person. However, I cannot say the same for the character of Manny. Ben Platt is a legitimately cute guy but there is no plausible way even in an alternate universe that he could ever somehow morph into Isaac Cole Powell. That is pushing the bounds of fiction. They look totally different, but more than that their body language is diametrically unalike. With Platt, Manny starts off as this bitchy, gossipy stereotypical gay guy and the millisecond he becomes Powell all of that is just eradicated. Suddenly, the character is strutting around naked with seemingly superhuman strength who is beating Evan Peters’ ass. Personally, I think Ryan Murphy just threw Powell in this just for him to show off his naked body. It is evident that the actor is a favorite of the producer who will jump at any opportunity to have Powell naked or shirtless onscreen.