Common Side Effects

A New Show from Adult Swim and a New Direction for my Substack

This is my first post in well over a year, so I feel a little preamble is in order. Around the time of my last post, my uncle and I started co-hosting a YouTube channel together, called Spoiler Alert! with Dom and Mike. One of the things we have bonded over is our absolute love of movies, so that is the focus of our channel. With that project under way, I decided to go all in and I have since self-published a book on Amazon called Spoiler Alert! the Book where I write about some of my favorite movies and television shows. And now, I am changing the direction of my Substack to align with this new direction. My apologies to anyone my subscribers who may be disappointed in this new focus, but since I haven’t been on Substack for some time, I hope the change isn’t too traumatic for anyone. And I hope that it’s valuable for anyone who loves television and movies like I do. So, without further ado, I’d like to review the brand-new show, Common Side Effects.

Adult animation is a tricky beast. On the audience’s side, most adult viewers won’t even give animated shows a chance, too used to cartoons being the stuff of children. On the network’s side, creating a quality animated show is more difficult than one might think. There is, obviously, the animation itself, but there’s the writers, the voice actors, the soundtrack; so many moving parts, so many things that can go wrong. For every Simpsons, there is a Cleveland Show, for every Rick & Morty, there’s a Velma, the list goes on. In fact, there may be more failed adult animation shows than those that have succeeded. This is why I’m very curious as to how the new Adult Swim cartoon, Common Side Effects will do.

If you haven’t heard yet, Common Side Effects, the latest offering from Adult Swim, was first seen at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival last year and is currently on the Adult Swim website. It centers around the existence of a mushroom with miraculous healing properties and the entities that would like to control it. The person at the heart of this is genius mycologist Marshall Cuso (voiced by Dave King), the man who discovered the mushroom. While crashing a press conference at a shady pharmaceutical company, Reutical Pharmaceutical, Inc., Marshall runs into his high school friend, Frances Applewhite (voiced by Emily Pendergast), unaware that she works for the company. Unfortunately for them, if knowledge of this mushroom, and its effects, were to get out, it would be no bueno for both the pharmaceutical industry and the government, hence the wheels of a conspiracy are put into motion. This is when a pair of Drug Enforcement Administration agents are tasked with tracking Marshall down. Those agents are Copano (voiced by Joseph Lee Anderson) and Harrington (voiced by Martha Kelly).

They’ve only released three episodes as of yet, so it’s way too early to say, with any certainty, how good this show is going to be. With that being said, I found these episodes promising enough that I’ll be tuning back in whenever they release more. But I’m a weird guy and not everyone likes what I like, so why should you watch? The creative team behind Common Side Effects is Joseph Bennett and Steve Hely. Hely has written for the Late Show with David Letterman and has been an associate producer for such shows as American Dad!, 30 Rock and The Office. But wait, there’s more! He has also co-authored three books, one of which is titled The Ridiculous Race. Ridiculous, you say? How so? As I mentioned, Hely was a co-author on this, his partner in crime being Vali Chandrasekaran. The book is about a race around the world between the two authors with only one rule: no airplanes. Bennett isn’t quite as well known, but he does have one major feather in his cap. A little animated show called Scavenger’s Reign, so you know that Common Side Effects is going to be a little outside the norm. In fact, the creators have mentioned that Common Side Effects is so different from other animated shows that their pitches for the show just weren’t gaining traction. That is, until Bennett made a short animation so that studios could get a sense of what they were trying to do. They’ve talked about wanting to make the show funny, but with a hint of conspiracy thriller added for a little spice.

Mike Judge, of King of the Hill and Idiocracy fame, is involved, but I’m not sure it’s in much of a creative capacity. He is one of the voice actors, he plays Rick Kruger, the somewhat clueless CEO of Reutical Pharmaceuticals, and is an executive producer, but what even does an executive producer do? No, I’m serious, I have absolutely no idea what an executive producer does, so it’d be really nice for someone to let me know. The animation studio associated with Common Side Effects is Green Street Pictures, the same studio behind Scavenger’s Reign, but I can’t say I find the animation style very similar. Unless you count the vaguely trippy, “am I on mushrooms” feel to it. So, yeah, I’m into it.

I can see two more episodes planned, but whether that means it’s only got a five-episode run or if they’re still working on more, I don’t know. Whatever the case, I’ll be along for the ride. Let’s see, we’ve got the animator behind Scavenger’s Reign, the writer behind 30 Rock and a conspiracy about a magic healing mushroom. That kind of checks all the boxes for me. But don’t take my word for it. Like I said, the first three episodes are up on the Adult Swim website, so check it out for yourself. But don’t be surprised if you start to feel like you’re being watched. Or maybe that’s just the mushrooms talking.