Spoilers below for most of the first season of The Beauty for anyone who hasn’t yet watched on FX or via Hulu subscription.
Sometimes the best TV just holds a mirror up to society and dramatizes the loudest reflections, and sometimes reality is already so warped that an extra bit of zhuzh is necessary to take the story over the top. Ryan Murphy and Matthew Hodgson’s The Beauty is just such a show, bringing an already prescient and stellar comic book series (from creators Jeremy Haun and Jason A. Hurley) fully into the billionaire-spotted wasteland we call the present, centering on a perfection-encoded STD that people are perfectly willing to doom themselves to contract.
The Beauty is certainly unlike anything else hitting the 2026 TV schedule, but it also stands apart from a lot of the other projects that Murphy has created, co-created and produced over the last 27 years, despite sharing similar genres, themes and cast members. I’m admittedly not a completist when it comes to his TV oeuvre, and more readily flock to genres that show off his darker interest,, but I feel very nearly entirely confident in saying The Beauty is his best work yet.*
That qualifying asterisk will get explained lower, but I’d rather jump right into talking about why I think this weird and hilarious body horror mystery thriller is a Murphy-tethered creative team at the top of its game. I know the first season isn’t even over yet, and that this might sound like early bell-ringing, so let me talk out some of the reasons why I think The Beauty rises above.
The Beauty Is Telling A Gripping Story That Has A Clear Beginning, Middle And Endgame Scenario
Less an issue with streaming shows than network and cable projects, but Ryan Murphy creations can often start off extremely strong before going completely off the rails in every which way. (Which has its own inherent enjoyment factor, to be sure.) Many other cases will hook audiences for the majority of a season, only to poison the well with an ill-advised ending, a la The Watcher. (Or for just continuing the madness for too long in general, cough-Nip/Tuck-cough.)
The Beauty, however, even as it jumps around from the present to the past, has never once felt as if characters or story beats were spinning out in place without a clear next step in the narrative. Even as it jumps from romance to action to grossness, even as giant twists are introduced, and even as episodes get seemingly hijacked by unfamiliar characters, the forward momentum hasn't wavered.
The Beauty's Superb Cast And Their Characters All Feel Of The Same Universe
Similar to how plotlines can veer into questionable territories when seasons go on a little too long, some of the cast members and characters that populate the dozens of Ryan Murphy creations can sometimes feel as if they're in a completely different production that does not run parallel to anyone else's arcs and performance energy. Issues like these tend to crop up in episodes where creators/showrunners aren't as heavily invested, with other writers and directors stepping in, with the shift in authority making it easier for tonal inequality.
That's somehow not the case within The Beauty, possibly because so many of the characters exist on heightened plains of self-obsession. Evan Paters' Cooper is the most "normal" person on this show, but even he feels like he stepped out of a pulpy, whiskey-soaked P.I. novel from the '40s. So even if his energy isn't ramped up to where Ashton Kutcher's is at any given point, they're still both highly performative, and thus don't feel at odds.
The Twists Aren't Too Twisty (The Clown), And The Drama Isn't Too Melodramatic
Many of the surprises embedded in The Beauty are smart and organic to the story, such as having Jordan get infected with the Beauty so early on due to a lapse in judgment, or Jeremy's arc of trying to be a better person than his life as an incel. Elsewhere, twists come from learning new information in flashbacks that changes what we know about things in the present. It's not exactly rocket science, but the American Horror Story-verse is full of batshit, out-of-nowhere twists that aren't nearly as germane.
The ongoing theme here is obviously "moderation," and that also goes for the story beats that could have very easily fallen into maudlin and melodramatic territory, such as everything involving the daughter of John Carroll Lynch's Meyer Williams and his wife Juliana, portrayed by Kelli O'Hara. I was fully ready for that story to take some horrendous turn involving their progeria-afflicted daughter Joey (Kaylee Halko). That dark turn could still come, certainly, but the fact that there was a "happy" ending to begin with is almost unheard of for a Ryan Murphy horror.
Asterisk Explained: The Reason I'm Not Fully 100% Behind The Beauty Being The Best
Okay, there are technically two reasons, but they're both minute enough to get smashed together and count as one.
First, the last two episodes of the season still haven't aired, and for all that I'm hyper-confident that they'll be just as great as the preceding nine episodes, there is absolutely the possibility that any and all of the aforementioned graces will be shat upon and returned to sender as the story spins wildly out of control. I don't think the chances are very high, but I know they exist.
Second, there's a part of me that will never be able to love another Ryan Murphy show as much as I love American Horror Story as a whole, despite not feeling as strongly about certain seasons as others. Some of my first large-scale writing for CinemaBlend was covering AHS: Murder House, and the years I wrote up those seasons will always be cherished. Of course, even that first season spread across the entire spectrum from "really good" to "dog fart soup." But that was 15 years ago, and we're all smarter and better now. And The Beauty is undeniable proof.
The Beauty final two Season 1 episodes are set to hit FX and Hulu on Wednesday, March 4, at 9:00 p.m. ET. (Episodes also stream via Disney+ subscription.)
