Summary
The Beauty gets back on track in “Beautiful Living Rooms”, twisting a few of its narrative strands together in a satisfying way while also providing more compelling reasons for why Forst’s product is such a compelling idea.
After arguably wasting an episode on backstory nobody needed, The Beauty had to bounce back in Episode 7. And it does. “Beautiful Living Rooms” initially manifests like a deeply personal side story, another cogent argument for what makes the concept of this miracle super-drug so compelling, but its back half also finally brings Jordan and Cooper into the crosshairs of The Assassin and Jeremy, leading to a bit of action and a cliffhanger climax. There’s little to really complain about.
And props for that. Props, too, to the expansion of the idea of what “beauty” is; what it can mean and to whom. For the most part, The Beauty had focused primarily on the superficial side of the equation, but here it introduces a new angle. Beauty can be freedom. It can be relief. It can be the chance at normality that circumstances cruelly denied. What Byron Forst’s product offers isn’t just good looks, though that’s part of it. It offers perfection, down to a genetic level. And perfection is pretty compelling.
We’ll get to this in a minute. In the meantime, we finally catch back up with Cooper and Jordan, who we haven’t seen since Episode 5. They’re staying in a fancy hotel suite, and Cooper keeps unsubtly marvelling at her – I still think she was more attractive before, but horses for courses – while Jordan sits around and eats room service. In a telling moment, Jordan tells Cooper she loves him. For someone so immune to real intimacy, it’s a big step. But is that just a consequence of the clock she can hear ticking inside her?
For a while, we cut to Julianna and Meyer Williams. The latter is Cooper and Jordan’s boss at the FBI, played by Ryan Murphy faithful John Carroll Lynch. The former is his wife, 15 years his junior but still old enough to have aged out of her beauty, at least from her perspective. She blames Meyer for this, considering her marriage to him to have been wasteful, but they’re both lashing out because they’re smarting over persistent disagreements about how to best care for their 15-year-old daughter, Joey. She has progeria, a rare condition causing rapid premature ageing. She seems to be approaching the end, and Meyer wants to put a DNR in place for the next time she experiences cardiac arrest. Julianna doesn’t.
This is where Byron Forst comes in. He arrives on the Williams’ doorstep with a compelling offer. If Meyer drops the investigation into the spate of Beauty-related deaths and hands over Cooper, Forst will gift him and his family the product. Joey will be cured. This is, I think, the most compelling dilemma that the show has presented, because the motivation to pursue the product isn’t rooted in self-interest. Who wouldn’t make a compromising decision to keep their kid alive?
This isn’t an altruistic gesture for Forst, though Kutcher sells the performance enough that it almost seems like one. But it makes you wonder what the altruistic upsides of the product might have been if it hadn’t landed in the lap of the selfish billionaire class. You can see not only why someone would buy it, but also why someone would want to make it.
The rest of The Beauty Episode 7 finds Antonio and Jeremy on the trail of Cooper and Jordan, though admittedly, they spend a lot of time lounging around. However, there’s quite a lot of unexpectedly strong characterisation here, including a full-on backstory for the Assassin – whose name is Antonio – and rare emotional vulnerability from Jeremy. You’re not supposed to like these two, obviously, but you are supposed to understand what was missing in their lives that made a catch-all solution to all their ills so compelling to them.
Jeremy had daddy issues. Antonio had a past of violence that led him to working personal protection for billionaires, a position that got him doused in activist acid meant for his employer. Forst poached him at his most vulnerable, offering him something similar to what he offered Meyer – a second chance. It inspired enough loyalty that he’s still doing Forst’s dirty work, and that dirty work includes capturing Cooper and Jordan.
Those scenes are fun, frantic, almost slapstick action sequences, which Cooper and Jordan end up on the wrong side of, rendering them prisoners. But the separate narrative tracts have finally come together, which probably bodes well for the remaining episodes. But with Meyer now on the dark side, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to see a way out of this for the good guys, one of whom is on borrowed time as it is. We’ll have to wait and see.
