Comedy
Shrinking
Apple TV+ seems to have a knack for creating deeply heartfelt, wildly problematic comedies. Shrinking is one of them.
Beauty is pain.
Or so the saying goes. It’s why people go from one fad diet to the next, why they spend hundreds of hours at the gym and thousands of dollars at the plastic surgeon’s office. They inject themselves with weight-loss drugs and steroids. And then they paint their faces with makeup and don shoes that hurt to walk in.
And even after all of that, many still don’t feel beautiful. They believe, deep down, under the makeup and plastic surgery, they’re still who they were before. They know that some people—an infinitesimal percentage of the world’s population—don’t have to do any of that to be attractive. They’re simply born beautiful. And some are not.
But no more.
Because now there’s a drug that people can take—a one-time procedure—to become beautiful. No more starving yourself or exhausting yourself at the gym. No more daily injections or bone-breaking (sometimes literally) surgeries. You will have your long-sought-after beauty.
There’s just one catch: You might also spontaneously combust.
When international supermodels start inexplicably exploding, FBI agents Cooper Madsen and Jordan Bennett are sent to Europe to investigate. Besides their profession and similar manner of death, there’s seemingly no connection between the three people (two women and one man) who have died.
But then the partners discover a third link: Just two years ago, none of these victims were supermodels. In fact, they weren’t even considered attractive. They were just average folks going about their ordinary lives.
Cooper and Jordan learn that the models were infected with a virus. The virus makes people drop-dead gorgeous. Unfortunately, it also makes them drop dead.
As the agents try to contain the epidemic and track down its source, the creator of the virus tries to do the same.
The Corporation created the Beauty drug years ago to reverse the effects of aging. It was successful: The CEO regained his youth and beauty. And he began sharing it with a select clientele.
But the drug had some unstable side effects: While the lab samples taken by the CEO and his cohorts are stable, the Beauty can also be spread like a virus via bodily fluid (read: sex). And in that form, it’s incredibly volatile, causing the aforementioned spontaneous combustion within just two years.
Cooper and Jordan want the virus contained to save lives. The Corporation wants it contained so that it can be commodified. And the Corporation is perfectly willing to take even more lives, even hiring an assassin, to achieve that end.
So when Jordan gets infected with the Beauty after a one-night stand, it becomes a race to track down her sexual partner—and his sexual partner before her, and that person’s sexual partner before that—before the Assassin does. Because once the trail runs dry and the virus becomes contained, the Corporation wins. Nobody will be able to prove the Corporation was culpable in causing the epidemic or the gruesome deaths that followed.
Ryan Murphy may have once been the mind behind Fox’s Glee, a show about high school show choir, but he’s also the mind behind American Horror Story. And FX’s The Beauty is more in that latter ilk.
The Beauty is inherently violent and gory. The first sequence of scenes features a supermodel going absolutely feral at a fashion show, tearing herself apart and attacking bystanders before exploding in a shower of body parts and blood.
That spontaneous combustion is brought back again and again throughout the show. But there’s also the Assassin. He doesn’t just kill for the Corporation: He delights in killing. And when one of his targets displays the same murderous pleasures, rather than murdering the guy, he recruits him.
The Beauty virus is primarily spread through sex—and there’s certainly a tongue-in-cheek message there about sexually transmitted diseases. However, that doesn’t stop any of the show’s characters from hopping in bed together. Critical anatomy is often hidden by strategically placed limbs, but there isn’t really much left to the imagination.
Nudity shows up elsewhere, too, but often in gruesome, unseemly ways. After getting infected with the Beauty virus, people go through a literal metamorphosis. Their limbs contort. Their bones crack. They spit out teeth and cough up blood. Then they shed their skins and emerge from goopy cocoons, completely transformed.
Given all those content concerns, it’s probably no surprise that foul language is a common feature. There are references to and depictions of extramarital affairs, “incels” (involuntary celibates), masturbation, prostitution, disordered eating behaviors, plastic surgery, war and more. We also see a few LGBT characters.
And, considering it’s the whole theme of the show, we also hear a lot of chatter about the world’s obsession with beauty and sex—particularly the correlation between the two. As Ashton Kutcher’s Byron Forst, head of the Corporation, puts it: “Instant gratification at all costs.”
The Beauty will certainly make its viewers think—about beauty, about vanity—but with so much ghastliness, there won’t be much gratification at all.
(Editor’s Note: Plugged In is rarely able to watch every episode of a given series for review. As such, there’s always a chance that you might see a problem that we didn’t. If you notice content that you feel should be included in our review, send us an email at letters@pluggedin.com, or contact us via Facebook or Instagram, and be sure to let us know the episode number, title and season so that we can check it out.)
When a supermodel spontaneously combusts after going on a violent rampage at a fashion show, FBI agents Cooper and Jordan are sent to investigate.
The model in question sweats profusely and attacks people as she hunts for water. She beats a paparazzi photographer with his own camera before stealing his motorcycle. As she’s recklessly driving, she causes a few vehicles to get into fender benders. But she ultimately crashes after getting T-boned by a car. She flies across the pavement, tearing apart her leg and bleeding from multiple lacerations. Somehow, she manages to stand and limp into a nearby restaurant, where she continues seeking water. She hits several waiters and patrons, stabbing one guy in the hand with a fork. A police officer shoots her, so she tackles him, beating him to death with his own gun. Finally, she goes outside, where she’s surrounded by cops with guns. But she explodes in a shower of blood before they fire a single bullet. In the end, five people are dead and seven more are injured.
A coroner shows Cooper and Jordan the still-smoking remains of the model the next day. They watch videos of two other similar events. We see a man with a scar from a bullet wound.
Jeremy, a man who believes he’s ugly, has his face surgically reconstructed. Immediately following the procedure, three women flirt with him at a bar. However, they stick him with the bill. Furious that the surgery didn’t get him the romantic attention he craved, Jeremy returns to the plastic surgeon with a gun, shooting the receptionist and nurse. He threatens to kill the doctor, too, and he states that he plans to kill himself once the doctor is dead. But the surgeon pleads for his life, promising to fix the man’s problems.
The surgeon arranges for Jeremy to have sex with a woman who has been infected with the beauty virus. (She’s been selling her body and asked the surgeon to help her find new clients.) After the exchange, Jeremy goes through a violent transformation that throws him around his hotel room. His bones crack internally, and his limbs contort. He pulls out his teeth and pulls off sheets of skin. It’s a bloody affair, and when it’s over, he emerges from a literal cocoon, covered in goop. He has transformed into a completely different person, and he admires his new face and body in the mirror, posing for himself.
Several different couples have sex, with partial nudity (critical anatomy is covered by strategically placed limbs, lingerie or clever camera angles). A guy videochats with a camgirl as she performs, sending her money so that she’ll remove more clothing as he masturbates (off camera). We see pornographic magazines spread across someone’s floor. People dance intimately at a club. Two colleagues justify their casual sex relationship. Models wear lingerie-like leather garments at a fashion show. People dress immodestly at bars and nightclubs.
A woman thrusts her (clothed) chest forward, telling her partner she had her breasts enhanced through plastic surgery. When he asks why, she admits they had made her self-conscious before and that she had been mocked for her smaller bust when she was in school: “Now, I love myself completely,” she says.
Other people talk about their insecurities. A plastic surgeon calls one man an “involuntary celibate” or “incel.” He explains that if the man was better looking, he’d be able to copulate with the opposite sex with ease.
We see extreme and often painful lengths people go to in the name of beauty. One guy opens a device he ordered online to make his penis larger. Later, he cries while messaging someone for a refund, claiming it caused redness and blistering. A plastic surgeon, whose face has multiple scars from work he’s had done, jollily says, “Let’s break some bones,” before putting a patient under the knife. And later, the patient’s face is unrecognizable: There are no scars, but it appears that every bone in his face was rearranged to give him a smaller nose, higher cheekbones and more prominent jawline.
Cooper and Jordan wonder if the spread of the virus might be linked to sex trafficking. They also consider linkage to terrorism or chemical warfare.
People drink at a nightclub. Jordan wakes up hungover after a night of drinking. Another character vomits into a toilet after imbibing too much. Someone asks if people still take bath salts. A guy smokes a joint of marijuana. A woman smokes a cigarette.
We hear 16 uses of the f-word, along with uses of the s-word, “a–,” “b–ch,” “d–k,” “h—” and “t-ts.” We also see the word “c–k” in written form.
Emily studied film and writing when she was in college. And when she isn’t being way too competitive while playing board games, she enjoys food, sleep, and geeking out with her husband indulging in their “nerdoms,” which is the collective fan cultures of everything they love, such as Star Wars, Star Trek, Stargate and Lord of the Rings.
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