For anyone that doesn't have to personally experience it, the labyrinthine nightmare that is the American healthcare industry is difficult to describe. In part because of the aforementioned complexity, and in part because it just… really feels like nothing should exist in the way that it does. The new animated show Common Side Effects, created by Joe Bennett and Steve Hely, explores this dichotomy while also asking: what happens when one singular person attempts to change all of that?
Enter Marshall, an eccentric and (one might argue) genius that's discovered a mushroom that can heal basically everything. The problem is that everyone else – DEA agents, pharmaceutical companies, global conglomerates, and even rival scientists – seem to be invested in him not actually sharing that discovery with the world.
Common cause
"Like everybody in the world, or at least the United States, we've had encounters with the healthcare system and insurance," says Hely when asked by GamesRadar+ about the genesis of the series, "and it's like going up against a gigantic sci-fi tentacle monster that's hard to deal with and hard to get to the humanity of, but even that system is made up of people that are motivated by their little problems and struggles."
"Little problems" here might be relative given that Marshall and Frances, an old high school lab partner he runs into who ends up helping out, that just so happens to be the assistant to a big pharma CEO, also have to deal with a goodly amount of trained killers that aren't afraid to maim and murder. If you've seen Scavengers Reign, which Bennett also co-created, start at that level and tone it down just a couple of pegs and you'll have a good idea of the amount of body horror and gore to expect.
It's not all horrible and dark, mind. Common Side Effects can often be extremely funny, sometimes while also being horribly dark but not always. The DEA agents like to lip sync and dance, a pharma CEO referred to as "the devil's idiot butler" obsessed with an exploitative mobile game, Marshall is often paranoid for good reason but sometimes he can freak out over nothing to comedic effect, and there's a shot that lingers on a man playing a fishing game in VR that very much does not look like he's playing a fishing game in VR.
"Even the people that are like masters of the universe are often like goofballs," says Hely, "and they have to eat and shit the way everybody else does, and they often have strange little quirks and bizarre interests. From the President on down, you're seeing people who are just odd, weird, sometimes funny, sometimes a little scary, but human, and we try to put that into all of our characters."
But even beyond the creators' control, there's an inherent darkness to this all thanks to the simple fact that UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was murdered on December 4, 2024. Common Side Effects, which again deals with the healthcare industry and all of its inherent evils, started airing on February 2, 2025.
"They did move around the show a little bit," says Hely when asked if there was a possibility the whole thing got canned in the wake of Thompson's death, "and there was a press release that was going to come out on the day of the shooting [...] and so they actually pushed the press release, but that led it to go to a week later, when it was in the news again because they'd arrested the alleged shooter."
"It definitely seems like we're plugged into some themes, and we're hitting a nerve, and tying into an electrical streak in the culture," continues Hely. "But I think that just came out of us being interested in things that are bothering a lot of people, and questions that a lot of people have about how we have this weird healthcare system, why we spend so much money on it, and yet we seem to be sicker than ever. What the possibilities are to find a healthier way to live. All that is stuff a lot of people are thinking about."
"In addition to that, I would say that we've been working on this project for five to six years," adds Bennett, "and I would say that just making adult animation and trying to make a serialized story always feels like a risk, and so there's always concern that we're going to get canned for that reason alone."
"Credit to Adult Swim for taking a chance on something that's a little electric," Hely concludes.
Common Side Effects airs on Adult Swim every Sunday with episodes streaming on Max the following Monday. If you're already watching, there's probably another show you'd like in our ranking of the best shows to watch on Max right now.
