You’d think the Substance-Beauty, Kutcher-Moore connection would be tough to get past. (Moore, who had a role in 2024’s Feud: Capote vs. the Swans, is also part of the Murphyverse.) As it turned out, I basically forgot about that bit of casting-as-metacommentary within the first few installments of the 11-episode season. That’s one benefit of Murphy’s maximalist approach to storytelling: rarely does a single element of his shows overwhelm the rest. Yet the result is too often, especially in the past decade, as his output has exploded, exhausting—a messily assembled collage of camp, glamor, genre tropes, celebrity stunt casting, and strident sociopolitical satire. The Beauty delivers all of the above as early as its opening sequence, which sends a model played by Bella Hadid on a violent rampage through Paris. But its mix of styles, performers, tones, and ideas is organized into a tighter, more dynamic narrative than we usually get from Murphy. Instead of tiring us out with one macabre set piece after another, he switches up the mood regularly enough to keep scripts nimble and (mostly) avoid repetition.