New FX series. The first three episodes came out yesterday. It will now be a weekly series.
Ostensibly, the genre is body horror, but the show also has serious points to make about society’s obsession with beauty, and the greed of those who profit from that obsession. In other words, the premise is more or less parallel to The Substance.
A drug company develops a sort of super-Ozempic, in the form of a virus that not only makes users thin, but also strong, beautiful, and immune to aging. And it works almost instantly! Needless to say, the profit potential of such a treatment is immense, but there’s a bootleg variation going around and Evil Drug Corporation has to get the bootlegs out of circulation to protect their profit. In order to do that, they have hired an assassin to kill the bootleggers.
But there’s one more wrinkle – the bootleg version of the virus can be transmitted through sexual contact and other bodily fluid exchanges, ala AIDS. When this happens, it can produce the same beautifying effects as the controlled version, but only temporarily. It then becomes lethal in horrifying ways. (The sufferers have fits of rage accompanied by super strength, then basically explode after their body temperatures reach astronomical levels.)
Because of the STD nature of the bootleg, the assassin has to keep killing people who have had sex with the sufferers. Given that the sufferers are unnaturally beautiful, they have no shortage of sexual partners, so the assassin is a busy man.
This series seems to focus on rear nudity.
Rebecca Hall’s character in episode 1 (presumed to be body double Viola Marini)
Rebecca Hall’s character in episode 2 (no nudity, and probably includes a combination of Rebecca Hall and Viola Marini)
Jessica Alexander in episode 2
Emily Borromeo (??) in episode 3
One ridiculously inside joke for baby boomers: a plastic surgeon promises to transform a Jeremy into a Chad.
(A “Chad” is his shorthand for a handsome alpha male.)
In the musical duo, it was the other way around. Chad was the nerdy-looking one with the thick glasses. Jeremy Clyde, despite nerdy-sounding first and last names, was the one who made the girls swoon. I once had their album, “Yesterday’s Gone,” and I once performed “A Summer Song” with the woman who would later become my wife. Both of those songs always bring back memories. Damn, that was long, long ago.
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Rebecca Hall nudography
2006 – Wide Sargasso Sea
2009 – Red Riding: 1974
2011 – The Awakening
2012 – Parade’s End, part 2
2017 – Permission
2017 – Professor Marston and the Wonder Woman
From the comments:
We were talking about mother-daughter nudity a while back. Rebecca Hall’s mom, the late opera singer Maria Ewing, famously did full frontal nudity onstage in Salome. It was directed by Rebecca’s father, Peter Hall. Here is the full Dance of the Seven Veils on YouTube. Although she presents as Caucasian, Rebecca Hall is actually part Black on her mother’s side.
You won me with “This series seems to focus on rear nudity.”
I think it only focuses on rear nudity because this airs on basic cable.
I think that’s correct.
“F/X! We’ll give you butts.”
I do love Rebecca Hall and she looks great naked but you will never get me to watch anything by Ryan Murphy and with Ashton Kutcher in that show. Fuck that.
Murphy does have some good if brief ass on his shows – Chloe Sevigny & Lady Gaga on AHS – but never seen entire episodes, seem tragically hip & garish
The Balconettes can now be streamed uncut & free – if you have a library card & your library carries the Kanopy library movie streamer
We were talking about mother-daughter nudity a while back. Rebecca Hall’s mom, the late opera singer Maria Ewing, famously did full frontal nudity onstage in Salome. It was directed by Rebecca’s father, Peter Hall. Here is the full Dance of the Seven Veils on YouTube. Although she presents as Caucasian, Rebecca Hall is actually part Black on her mother’s side.
I guess you can call her “Becky with the Good Hair”
As much as it saddens me to say, Rebecca Hall’s nudity was almost certainly a body double, Viola Marini, her stunt double for episode 1 per imdb. Viola’s instagram
I was suspicious of it.
1) There is no head/body shot, and there is no smooth pan to a segment where her face is apparent.
2) It seems unlikely that she would show her butt at 43, after not showing it when she was young.
3) The body at the window looks too good to be hers.
Now that you mention it, that must be mostly Viola in the transition scene in episode 2. When I watched that scene, I thought, “Who knew Rebecca was so athletic? She really threw herself into this role!” It makes sense if we are really looking at a professional gymnast and stuntwoman.
It also makes sense in the context of (I presume from the premise of the show) “here’s a drug for a perfect body”. Hall is gorgeous and looks great still, but probably isn’t that next-level “perfect” that the concept is selling. You’d want to get a body double who represents a certain degree of peak athleticism.
That’s not quite right in this case.
The character is played by two women, one before and one after beautification. Rebecca is the “before,” the average-looking 40ish woman who gets transformed into hot, young Jessica Alexander.
I don’t know what comes next, but Rebecca’s character prattled on and on about how she was finally happy with the way she looks. They made such a big deal of that point that I assume the character won’t be thrilled with the transformation, even though it makes her look like a 25-year-old supermodel.
A Rebecca Hall interview explains a little bit more.
Someone on Reddit is claiming the actress in the last clip is named Emily Borromeo, not Chanel Stewart.
I don’t know.
IMDb says Chanel is in three episodes, while Emily is in one. This character is obviously a one-timer, so he must be right about it being Emily.
After watching the episode again, I’ve concluded that this is the only possible character that could be Emily. There are no other characters that resemble her at all. She has dark skin and an Asian look. I’m assuming her family comes from the Philippines. Nobody in the cast looks like that, yet she is in the credits, so it kinda has to be her in the sex scene.
I came to the conclusion that IMDb is the problem. It lists Chanel in episode 3, but she’s not actually in it, but she is in the generic cast-roll included in every episode. After re-watching episode 1, I’m pretty sure that she is actually the plague-woman in episode 1. The doctor called on her because she is a carrier of the virus, but is apparently immune to the malicious effects, so the doc could use sex with her to infect The Incel. There was no nudity in that sex scene.
I assume she will be back in two more episodes, performing similar services.
On the other hand:
Here’s the character:
Here’s Emily
That doesn’t look at all like Emily, does it?
Hmm, I think you’re right. Good detective work.