Ryan Murphy’s The Beauty has been pretty (no pun intended) hit and miss in terms of what it’s saying about society’s tangled relationship with our looks. But this week’s episode on FX and Hulu, titled “Beautiful Patient Zero,” zones in on two sympathetic characters, and answers a fascinating question in a relatively (for this show) nuanced and gentle manner: what would it be like to be trans in a world where an out-of-control STD can transform your body into its ideal state?
Spoilers for The Beauty Episode 6 “Beautiful Patient Zero” past this point.
Continuing on from the flashback in last week’s episode “Beautiful Billionaires,” we catch up initially with Byron Forst (Ashton Kutcher) as he’s finding out more about his hot young body and the repercussions of sexual contact while infected with The Beauty. That’s all well and good, but it’s really not the main event of the episode, which shows us how, exactly, The Beauty got out in the world.
The answer is, as we’ve already been told, there was a leak at Forst’s lab. Here, we get to see where that leak came from: two lab techs, Mike and Clara, played for the majority of the episode by Eddie Kaye Thomas and Rev. Yolanda.
The duo are working on one, tiny part of Forst’s pharmaceutical version of The Beauty, everyone isolated in their own labs so that nobody gets the full picture of what’s being made. Mike is a bit of a lonely schlub, in love (or like) with another member of the staff, who later turns out to have a fiancé. Clara is in the middle of transitioning, and Mike is a supportive cheerleader ally.
To give Murphy credit, this has (mostly) been a throughline of his work, positive portrayals of the LGBTQ+ community, and support for trans issues. While the sequences between Mike and Clara are pretty blunt and broadly delivered, it’s still a very sweet relationship between the two, they seem to really like each other, and it’s more human and less of a cartoon than anything else we’ve seen on the show thus far.
“What you’re doing,” Mike tells Clara early in the episode, “I know it’s tough and people don’t understand, but I think this is really cool.”
It’s extremely important to see positive portrayals like this right now when trans rights are under attack not just in the US, but all over the world. The episode doesn’t shy away from how Clara, as a older trans woman, feels mocked by some of her co-workers (and people at Starbucks). She also is tired of the slow transition, literally and physically. And seeing atypical for TV trans stories told through the lens of goofy sci-fi is a great thing. Seeing characters who accept their trans sisters (and brothers) is a great thing.
Perhaps better — though full disclosure, I am not trans, so if any trans readers read this and disagree, let me know — is that once Mike realizes there’s a drug being created in the lab that can make you your best self, he steals two samples: one for him, one for Clara. As the duo consider taking the drug, Clara frets about what the drug could reveal about herself…
“What if it gets confused?” she asks. “What if it doesn’t turn me into what I’m supposed to be?”
And thankfully, the show makes the right decision, once she realizes, “If I’ve been given a chance for the outside to look like what I feel on the inside… I have to take it.” Clara goes through the transformation, emerges from her Gremlins pod, and she’s physically a woman. In essence, what the show is saying is that your best physical self is your truest self, the person you know you are inside. In the case of the trans experience, that might be different from the sex you were assigned at birth, but it’s who you truly are.
Don’t worry, the show gets back to the regular craziness as it loops back to the beginning, showing how Forst assassinated the Beauty’d Mike in the premiere. But for a brief moment in time, The Beauty said something deeper than skin level about how others see us, and how we see each other. Basically? The Beauty says “trans rights,” and you should, too.
The Beauty Premiere Dates And Episode Guide:
New episodes of The Beauty premiere Wednesdays at 9 pm ET on Hulu, and 9 pm ET/PT on FX. The season will premiere with three episodes on January 21, followed by a staggered release schedule until the Season 1 finale.
Here’s what we expect from the full list of episodes in The Beauty Season 1, with premiere dates.
Wednesday, January 21, 2026: The Beauty, Season 1, Episode 1, “Beautiful Pilot”
Wednesday, January 21, 2026: The Beauty, Season 1, Episode 2, “Beautiful Jordan”
Wednesday, January 21, 2026: The Beauty, Season 1, Episode 3, “Beautiful Christopher Cross”
Wednesday, January 28, 2026: The Beauty, Season 1, Episode 4, “Beautiful Chimp Face”
Wednesday, February 4, 2026: The Beauty, Season 1, Episode 5, “Beautiful Billionaires”
Wednesday, February 11, 2026: The Beauty, Season 1, Episode 6, “Beautiful Patient Zero”
Wednesday, February 18, 2026: The Beauty, Season 1, Episode 7, “Beautiful Living Rooms”
Wednesday, February 25, 2026: The Beauty, Season 1, Episode 8, “Beautiful Brothers”
Wednesday, February 25, 2026: The Beauty, Season 1, Episode 9, “Beautiful Evolution”
Wednesday, March 4, 2026: The Beauty, Season 1, Episode 10, “Beautiful Beauty Day”
Wednesday, March 4, 2026: The Beauty, Season 1, Episode 11, “Beautiful Betrayal” *Season Finale*
Where To Watch The Beauty
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