You're Telling Me It's Possible to Be More Beautiful Than Rebecca Hall?

"The basic conceit of the Grand Guignol thriller that is Ryan Murphy's The Beauty consists of a thematically underbaked but ultimately pretty fun blend of The Substance and sexually transmitted disease. A crazed scientist (Ashton Kutcher, mostly yelling) has come up with a concoction that makes people molt into their most beautiful selves, but a version of it leaked before it could be fully refined and, in addition to turning people hot (figuratively), the virus turns them hot (literally) until, finally, they explode."

"But before the artificially hot people of The Beauty explode, there's a period of time when they are simply carriers for the hotness virus, and during that time, they can spread it by exchanging liquids with other less hot people - mostly through sex, though one case develops after blood hits a character's eye. Those people become hot in turn, and they continue to spread the infection because now everyone wants to sleep with them."

"There's a perverse streak of what is either Hollywood metacommentary or simple cruelty in the fact that The Beauty has cast actors whom the industry might consider unappealing, then recast them with other, hotter actors once the Beauty takes hold. In the show's first episode, Jaquel Spivey, who starred in the Broadway production of A Strange Loop, a musical about the experience of being a self-hating fat gay Black man, is introduced as a loathsome incel."

The Beauty centers on a leaked experimental concoction that makes people molt into their most beautiful selves, produced by a crazed scientist played by Ashton Kutcher. The virus both increases attractiveness and raises body temperature, ultimately causing infected people to explode. There is a contagious phase during which carriers spread the 'hotness' through exchanged bodily fluids, mostly sexual contact, though transmission can also occur through blood-to-eye exposure. The show stages deliberate casting that replaces less conventionally attractive actors with hotter versions as characters become infected. The series mixes grotesque body-horror with satirical commentary on desire, exploitation, and Hollywood beauty standards.

Read at Vulture