Adult Swim’s Common Side Effects is a reflection of our grim reality

In Adult Swim’s Common Side Effects from Joe Bennett (Scavengers Reign) and Steve Hely (American Dad!), the discovery of a strange mushroom that can heal any sickness or injury is either a miracle or a doomsday scenario, depending on who you ask. The plant is a godsend to people suffering from debilitating illnesses, but its curative properties make it an existential threat to powerful pharmaceutical companies. And while all Marshall Cuso (Dave King), the show’s hero, wants to do with his fungus is help people in need, that’s enough to make the American Drug Enforcement Administration label him as a menace to society.

Imminent danger is always right around the corner as Marshall goes on the run in hopes of finding a way to spread his mushrooms far and wide. Often, he feels like the show’s only character who has a conscience and wants to do good in the world. But when I recently spoke with Bennett and Hely, they explained that even though the people around Marshall might seem terrible, the show’s true villain is the (American) healthcare system they have all been forced to live within.

Marshall knows that he can’t really relax or trust anyone (aside from his pet tortoise) as he sets out looking for a place where he can cultivate his mushrooms in peace. Whenever he slows down to rest, it’s never long before mysterious men with itchy trigger fingers show up ready to shoot him in cold blood. And after he makes a scene at a conference being held by Reutical Pharmaceuticals, he becomes a high-profile target DEA agents Copano (Joseph Lee Anderson) and Harrington (Martha Kelly) suspect of being connected to multiple murders.

Though Common Side Effects leads with Marshall’s altruism, Bennett and Hely also wanted to infuse him with the kind of fringe-y, antiestablishment energy that makes it easy for people like him to be seen as “a little unhinged and a bit feral.”

For the core of Marshall’s character, the pair drew inspiration from controversial figures like real-world mycologist Paul Stamets and ethnobotanists Terence McKenna, Wade Davis, and Richard Evans Schultes. But like all of Common Side Effects’ characters, Marshall is also meant to feel like a regular person, which is why it was important for his guilelessness to shine through.

“Anything that feels is part of a greedy agenda or selfish endeavor, Marshall is just like, ‘fuck you; I don’t want to be a part of it,’” Bennett said. “But his naivete is really a definitive part of who he is. He’s very smart and confident, but he doesn’t always quite understand what he’s getting himself into.”

The same can’t be said of Marshall’s old high school lab partner Frances Applewhite (Emily Pendergast), who unexpectedly reconnects with him for the first time in years early into the series. As the overworked assistant to Reutical’s CEO Rick Kruger (Mike Judge), Frances can immediately see both the unbelievable potential of Marshall’s discovery and the danger her friend has put himself into daring to speak up about it.

With Reutical facing so many lawsuits for its other drugs, Rick doesn’t exactly have the time or desire to pay attention to what’s going on in the lives of the people who have made him a wealthy man. But despite Rick’s position of power, Bennett and Hely didn’t want to frame him as an outright villain.

“Even though [Rick] works for the big company that’s trying to make a profit, he’s sort of trapped by the system the same way everybody else is,” Hely explained. “Some of the incentives driving him are also boxing him in, and they’re the same kind of things that everyone has to deal with. In his case, it’s all just on a much wilder scale.”

Few of Common Side Effects’ characters have as much privilege (or as large of paychecks) as the head of a pharmaceutical company, but they all see themselves as people who are truly trying to make the world a better place. Bennett and Hely spoke with retired DEA agents about their work to get a better sense of how they could depict the war on drugs from within. To viewers, agents like Copano and Harrington might just seem like narcs looking to shake their fellow citizens down with impunity.

“But from their perspective, the dealers selling drugs like fentanyl are the most evil people in the world,” Hely recounted. “They see themselves as patriots who are fighting what they think is the good fight — all while being under-resourced, understaffed, and endangered.”

Bennett and Hely were loath to frame any singular character chasing Marshall as a villain because, in their minds, Common Side Effects is a series about how they’re all locked inside of a capitalist system that is violent and dehumanizing by design.

“When you have a company that’s motivated by making money and increasing shareholder profit, of course it’s going to lead to these cruel, twisted effects that ultimately hurt people,” Hely said. “All of it is dark, strange, and paradoxical. I don’t think it is any one person’s fault that we live in a system like this, but it is our reality, and we wanted the show to reflect that.”

Common Side Effects takes an interesting turn as news about Marshall starts to spread and he becomes something of a mythic folk hero. That arc was always part of Bennett and Hely’s vision for the series. But the story’s parallels to the way the world became fixated on Luigi Mangione after UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was shot and killed late last year gave Adult Swim some literal pause.

News about the shooting broke the very same day a press release about the series was meant to hit the internet. Adult Swim planned to hold it a week, but that ended up being the same day Mangione was apprehended by authorities.

When I asked Bennett and Hely about the conversations they had regarding how Common Side Effects would play in the wake of recent events, they stressed that they wanted to be sensitive to the reality of how shocking someone getting shot on the street is. But they also felt that the coincidence is a testament to their series tapping into something that a lot of people are going to understand.

“I think the event speaks to some of the ideas we’re unpacking in the series about how healthcare has become a business, what happens when there’s a profit motive that drives wellness,” Hely said. “Those are themes of the show, and I think that the timing of it all really speaks to the fact that we’re touching on a rail of American life that’s speaking to a lot of people.”

Common Side Effects premieres on Adult Swim on February 2nd.