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    ‘Common Side Effects’ Is a Stylish and Trippy Animated Thriller

    Filled with smart dialogue, specificity and visual wonder, this Max series is a good choice to help fill the “Severance”-shaped hole in your heart.The animated pharma thriller/stoner dramedy “Common Side Effects,” available on Max, is as rare and precious as the miraculous mushroom its hero, Marshall (Dave King), discovers in the jungle. Smarts, humor, style and perspective rarely align so harmoniously. Not a lot of shows have as much to say, and fewer still say it with such panache.“Common” follows the open-shirted, tiny-mouthed environmentalist Marshall, who wants to protect the fragile habitat of the blue angel mushroom, a fungus that can heal seemingly everything. Everyone should be able to access its powers, Marshall says, and no one should be denied a lifesaving cure because of poverty.But he’s up against a lot, including the D.E.A., the F.B.I., big pharma, fellow mycologists, backwoods hooligans, jailhouse power players and sometimes just his own naiveté. He reunites with his high school lab partner, Frances (Emily Pendergast), after he is booted from one of her boss’s speeches. Frances doesn’t admit to him that she works for Reutical, a pharmaceutical company that does every single bad thing Marshall abhors. They trust each other, even though they haven’t seen each other in years, and when Marshall is in peril, he calls her.“Just two things to mention,” he says, panic rising in his voice. “Some people are following me, and I brought my tortoise.”Frances is just as desperate as Marshall. Her mother has Alzheimer’s and is in a memory care facility that they can barely afford; her boyfriend is sort of a yutz; and she is always waist-deep in a crisis of conscience about working for Reutical. Should she try to help Marshall do things Marshall’s slapdash way, or might Reutical be in a better position to cultivate, test and distribute such a powerful drug?Her boss, Rick (Mike Judge), takes her up to the company’s rooftop helipad to encourage her to stick with the corporate vision. “You’re with us now, the helicopter people,” he says. “We don’t worry about the down-there problems.” He doesn’t say it in an evil, cackling villain voice, though. He says it like an encouraging dad, like a mentor.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Review: In ‘Common Side Effects,’ It’s Fungus vs. Them

    A weird, deadpan animated thriller finds a new timeliness in ancient medicine.From “The Last of Us” to athlete’s foot commercials, fungus does not have the best of reputations on television. But what if it could save us all?“Common Side Effects,” a wryly funny animated conspiracy thriller beginning Sunday on Adult Swim, suggests that not everybody would be pleased.Marshall Cuso (Dave King), an eccentric environmentalist and self-employed scientist, discovers a rare mushroom on an expedition to Peru. The fungus, a ghostly specimen called the Blue Angel, can cure almost any illness and heal seemingly fatal injuries — including the ones Marshall sustains when he is attacked by gunmen immediately after making his discovery.Back in the States, pursued by the Drug Enforcement Administration and other, more mysterious figures, Marshall runs into Frances Applewhite (Emily Pendergast), his former school lab partner who is now unhappily working for a pharmaceutical giant. Together, they make a pact to bring the magic mushroom to the people and protect it from the forces who would like to erase all traces of its existence.Who are those forces? Them. And who’s them? “Big Pharma, the insurance companies, the government,” Marshall explains. “All the people who make tons of money just from keeping us sick.”A figure like Marshall — nerdy, neckbearded, with a prominent belly hanging from his Hawaiian shirt and one big theory that explains it all — would usually be portrayed on TV as, at best, a well-meaning kook, a side character who exists for laughs and exposition. Even in the conspiracy-riddled world of “The X-Files,” he would be more of a Lone Gunman than a Fox Mulder.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More