{"id":276786,"date":"2026-02-10T11:13:09","date_gmt":"2026-02-10T11:13:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/276786\/"},"modified":"2026-02-10T11:13:09","modified_gmt":"2026-02-10T11:13:09","slug":"the-beauty-episode-5-recap-beautiful-billionaires","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/276786\/","title":{"rendered":"‘The Beauty’ Episode 5 Recap: “Beautiful Billionaires”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Like the lives of the infected themselves, this episode of The Beauty<\/a> has a clear dividing line between the before and the after. Half of the episode takes place in the present, as Cooper and Jordan reunite and Antonio and Jeremy execute more unauthorized beneficiaries of the rejuvenating drug-virus\u2019s powers. The other half takes place three years earlier, as we meet the man our corporate head honcho used to be before he became Ashton Kutcher.<\/p>\n

To my surprise and delight, he used to be Vincent D\u2019Onofrio. The great character actor shows up as Byron Forst, which turns out to be the real name of Kutcher\u2019s character. He\u2019s a fast-talking sixtysomething slimeball who fucks his assistants, verbally spars with his unhappy wife (Isabella Rossellini, tricked out like a member of the Exploited wearing a high-fashion duvet), and goes to Burning Man.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"THE<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re used to D\u2019Onofrio playing rich and powerful men the way he plays Wilson Fisk on Disney+\u2019s Daredevil: Born Again and related shows, this performance is an absolute scream. Byron couldn\u2019t be further away from Fisk, who moves glacially, stands regally, and speaks with a throat full of hot gravel. Byron slouches, slinks, even capers at one point. His obnoxious behavior is much closer to the childlike antics of immature Nazi billionaire Elon Musk than he is to the Kingpin, which is the right choice for the show.<\/p>\n

So is what happens immediately after he and his fellow billionaires, including Peter Gallagher with a cane and Billy Eichner in a ten-gallon hat, are injected while wearing David Cronenberg hospital gowns in a white chamber reminiscent of the control room from Alien. Rather than allow any of the other oligarchs to benefit from this new technology, Byron guns them down, then has his security team murder the help, then murders his security team.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The only survivor is Ray (Rob Yang), the Nobel Prize\u2013winning genius (back when winning a Nobel Prize meant something) who designed the drug. Byron takes the man into his direct employ\/control, and the rest is history.<\/p>\n

\"THE<\/p>\n

In the present, the newly Beauty-fied Jordan convinces Cooper she is who she says she is by repeating her nickname for his dick: Provigil, an anti-narcolepsy drug, that \u201cbrings me back to life.\u201d (I mean this sincerely: Stay classless, The Beauty.) At dinner, she explains how after fleeing the hotel in a panic after transforming, she initially enjoyed the attention her youthful new body and face received, until increasingly unpleasant interactions with men made her feel objectified and stupid. Cooper assures her she was beautiful long before the drug got in her system.<\/p>\n

I\u2019d like to see that explored a bit more, to be honest. Rebecca Hall, the actor who plays original-version Jordan, is in fact stunning, and the character is not even 40 yet. Ashton Kutcher, the transformed version of Byron, is 47 years old. He can absolutely play younger, but so can Hall, so what gives?<\/p>\n

At the risk of shooting the show bail, I think the double standard is deliberate. Men made this drug, mostly for a male userbase, entirely for a patriarchal world. For these guys, and for a lot of people in fact, it\u2019s okay to be a handsome 47-year-old man in a way it\u2019s not okay to be a beautiful 40-year-old woman. Men online will speak of \u201cthe wall,\u201d some completely mythical barrier women hit as they age after which their looks evaporate, as if it\u2019s an incontrovertible fact of life. Would a scientist willing to take these bastards\u2019 money be any different?<\/p>\n

Anyway, Jordan is ready to fall in love with Cooper all over again, but he calls off her attempt to kiss him until they know exactly what it is they\u2019re dealing with. That\u2019s a good call: Antonio and Jeremy are out there murdering anyone infected who\u2019ve swapped fluids, putting the clientele of an entire New York sex club on their hit list. They wind up finding patient zero for that outbreak and staging his artsily mutilated corpse in Cooper\u2019s bed, presumably to frame him for all of Antonio\u2019s elaborate killings. They also listen to Christopher Cross\u2019s \u201cRide Like the Wind,\u201d which feels worth noting simply because it\u2019s a very good song.<\/p>\n

\"THE<\/p>\n

I remain impressed by The Beauty\u2019s ability to find different notes to harmonize with its batshit melody. Evan Peters humanized Jeffrey Dahmer, so he has little trouble making Cooper empathetic despite, or because of, his sex-first view of humanity. His care for Jordan is obvious, so much so that he still connects with her on a deep level even in her improbable new body. As the new Jordan, Jessica Alexander does fine work blending her performance with Hall\u2019s, making it feel like it\u2019s the same person in there somewhere.<\/p>\n

The Beauty\u2019s villains are all comedic characters, and they\u2019re all very funny. Anthony Ramos\u2019s casual, \u201cjust because I\u2019m killing you doesn\u2019t mean we can\u2019t be friends\u201d vibe as Antonio the assassin; D\u2019Onofrio and Kutcher\u2019s antisocial glee as Byron; and especially Rossellini\u2019s DGAF attitude as Byron\u2019s wife and nemesis, Franny. She sneers at his achievements: \u201cSelf-driving software that can\u2019t tell the difference between a person and a mailbox, or an algorithm that drives teen girls to eating disorders.\u201d Sounds like some guys we know, all of them major donors to Donald Trump\u2019s Jeffrey Epstein Memorial Ballroom.<\/p>\n

But more poignant and pointed than that are her comments about her own life. Once, she says, she chased illusory standards of beauty with all the dieting and surgery money could buy, in hopes of attracting a mate wo could help her achieve her dreams. Now those dreams have become \u201cmy golden prison.\u201d Lighting Caravaggio\u2019s painting Judith Beheading Holofernes on fire, she proclaims \u201cOnce I learned that beauty is the answer to nothing, I became the happiest I\u2019ve ever been.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"THE<\/p>\n

Bryon\u2019s insults bounce right off her, because she no longer concedes the premise that looks are something to insult someone about. Now we know why she\u2019s still a normal person while Byron runs around as Byron 2.0: She\u2019s miserable, she\u2019s full of hatred, she\u2019s not a nice person, but she isn\u2019t vain or shallow or grasping, not anymore. Whatever her problems, Franny can sense that Byron\u2019s self-loathing and his loathing of everyone else on the planet go hand in hand.<\/p>\n

Sean T. Collins (@seantcollins.com<\/a>\u00a0on Bluesky and\u00a0theseantcollins<\/a>\u00a0on Patreon) has written about television for The New York Times, Vulture, Rolling Stone, and\u00a0elsewhere<\/a>. He is the author of\u00a0Pain Don\u2019t Hurt: Meditations on Road House. He lives with his family on Long Island.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Like the lives of the infected themselves, this episode of The Beauty has a clear dividing line between…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":276787,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[141942,137073,155781,155782,49106,156,3124,155783,155784,28803,111,139,69,155785,113693,1679,155786,24761,437,153651],"class_list":["post-276786","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-anthony-ramos","tag-ashton-kutcher","tag-billy-eichner","tag-body-horror","tag-david-cronenberg","tag-entertainment","tag-evan-peters","tag-isabella-rossellini","tag-matt-hodgson","tag-needle-drops","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-peter-gallagher","tag-rebecca-hall","tag-recaps","tag-rob-yang","tag-ryan-murphy","tag-tv","tag-vincent-donofrio"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276786","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=276786"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276786\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/276787"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=276786"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=276786"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=276786"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}