Common Side Effects
Entry updated 14 April 2025. Tagged: TV.
US animated tv series (2025). Green Street Pictures. Created by Joseph Bennett and Steve Hely. Directed by Camille Bozec, Sean Buckelew and Vincent Tsui. Writers include Steve Hely. Voice cast includes Joseph Lee Anderson, Danny Huston, Mike Judge, Martha Kelly, Dave King, Emily Pendergast and Sue Rose. Ten 23-minute episodes. Colour.
After protesting the environmental damage (see Ecology) in Peru caused by pharmaceutical company Reutical, Marshall Cuso (King) meets up with old school friend Frances Applewhite (Pendergast) – who discreetly avoids mentioning she is the PA to Reutical's CEO Rick Kruger (Judge). Frances mentions her mother has dementia, leading Marshall to reveal his discovery that the Peruvian Blue Angel mushroom cures all illness; he demonstrates this by killing and reviving a pigeon. The mushroom had resurrected him (see Regeneration) after a plane crash – an experience which involved him spending a few moments in another world (see Dimensions), which he calls "the portal", and which is inhabited by small, hairless humanoids. Since the mushroom would destroy the pharmaceutical industry (see Economics) Marshall is subject to assassination attempts by hirelings of the real power behind Reutical, Swiss financier Jonas Backstein (Huston). Backstein uses his leverage with US Government officials, who dispatch two federal agents, Copano (Anderson) and Harrington (Kelly), to arrest Marshall – though they wonder why so many resources are being used to find someone who seems to be small fry. Marshall also discovers his counter-culture friends, led by mycologist Hildy (Rose), might be prepared to kill him for the mushrooms too.
Ironically the Blue Angel mushroom's effects seem partially due to a mutation caused by the run-off from Reutical's waste; Marshall finds a Reutical toxic dump site in the US and attempts to replicate the conditions that would enable the mushrooms to be farmed (see Agriculture): Frances joins him when they cure her mother's dementia (though shortly afterwards an accident kills her). However, it turns out the dung of a Peruvian tortoise is required for the mushrooms to grow; fortunately Marshall's pet, named Socrates, is one such. But Marshall is arrested and jailed, whilst Frances goes to Rick, who agrees that Reutical will research the mushroom and try to make a synthetic version to market; Backstein promptly shuts this down, telling Rick not only would it mean financial disaster to the pharmaceutical industry, but those in the medical profession would lose their jobs, and dramatically suggests it would lead to societal collapse (see Disaster). Later Backstein is diagnosed with a terminal illness.
Marshall finds Prison life intolerable and considers Frances going to Reutical a betrayal, so in desperation poisons himself and is declared dead; the mushroom eventually revives him. Returning to his ramshackle laboratory by the toxic dump he discovers Hildy – along with her friends and an alliance she has formed with local rednecks – have taken it over: accepting this, he tells her about Socrates' faeces and they team up, offering help to the local people. Hildy wants to expand quickly but Marshall is concerned they don't know enough about possible side-effects – he has had occasional surreal visions since he began taking the mushroom – so Hildy mass-produces a Blue-Angel tincture behind his back; then, after a man he had treated earlier is maddened by hallucinations and Marshall insists they put operations on hold, she pushes him off a cliff. When Copano, now investigating alone, finds Marshall's corpse he uses a mushroom to resurrect him, during which Marshall briefly interacts with Frances, despite her being miles away: a clue is left – not by Marshall – to where she can find him.
The dying Backstein arrives at Hildy's base just as an FBI attack begins and during the chaos he breaks into a storeroom, devouring several mushrooms: this causes a coma in which – after a brief image of himself in Andrew Wyeth's painting "Christina's World" (1948) – he suffers nightmares of transformation (see Horror). At the end of the first season we see Hildy pouring the tincture in a city's water supply; whilst Rick's researchers discover a derivative compound of the mushroom makes a tasty food additive (attempts to reproduce the curative properties were not going well and are dropped); Frances and Marshall – whom the FBI are still pursuing – meet again and decide to carry on investigating the Blue Angel mushroom. A second season has been commissioned.
Though the mushroom's curative properties are associated with fungal Biology and stem cell repair (see Medicine), its Telepathy-like side-effects are unexplained, as are the nature of the portal and the intentions of the small humanoids there, who appear to be manipulating events. There are suggestions of a developing Hive Mind, or perhaps a collective unconscious, and Satire of the US medical industry. Overall, Common Side Effects recalls the work of Philip K Dick, whilst there are some thematic similarities to The Man in the White Suit (1951). This is a memorable, well written series with good characterization and – alongside Paranoia ideally suited to 2025 – some genuinely funny moments (see Humour). [SP]
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