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Appointment Viewing: The shows you’ll always want to pencil in on your calendar and unpack in your group chat.
Scrolling through 12 streaming platforms but still can’t find something to watch? You’re not alone. Our television columnist Michel Ghanem, a.k.a. @tvscholar, watches over 160 seasons of television each year, and he is here for you. Perhaps you’re in the mood for a hidden gem sitting undiscovered on a streamer or a show with mysteries so tantalizing we can’t stop thinking about it. It’s all about carving out time for the shows that are actually worth your time or “appointment viewing.” Fire up that group chat, because we’ve got some unpacking to do.
So far this year, we’ve highlighted two overlooked comedies worth your time: Big Boys on Hulu and Clean Slate on Prime Video. This month, we turn to a discovery of life-saving mushrooms on Common Side Effects, a stunningly realized animated series airing on Adult Swim and streaming on Max.
Which show should I prioritize this month?
What would you do if you discovered a mushroom that could heal any ailment? The new animated comedic thriller Common Side Effects began airing shortly after the start of the saga of Luigi Mangione, whose manifesto called out pharmaceutical price gouging at the core of the health-care system in the United States. Common Side Effects takes these big ideas and distills them down to its protagonist’s philosophy — that everyone should have access to the care they need — while approaching them in such a daring, entertaining, and otherworldly way. If you’re averse to animated television, try not to shy away from this one; its structure and character development have more in common with a live-action prestige drama than an animated comedy like The Simpsons.
What’s it really about?
Common Side Effects follows Marshall (voiced by Dave King), an herbalism-obsessed hippie whose worldwide travels bring him to Peru, where he adopts a tortoise and discovers mysterious blue mushrooms growing in toxic wastelands. After a near-death experience, he consumes one of the mushrooms as a Hail Mary and finds that they can heal just about anything, bringing a person back from the brink of death in seconds. When he returns to the U.S., Marshall connects with a high-school friend, Frances (Emily Pendergast), who, unbeknownst to him, works at Reutical, a massive pharmaceutical company. While she tries to wrap her head around the earth-shattering possibilities that would emerge from distributing these mushrooms, Marshall is on the run from everyone from the DEA (a kooky agent duo voiced by Euphoria’s Martha Kelly and Joseph Lee Anderson) to big pharma. They’re all invested in stopping him before these mushrooms tank a $800 billion-dollar industry. The show really finds its footing in episode four: Sharp writing showcases how to tell a serialized story without giving up episodic arcs, a delicate balance that binge-model television often struggles to meet.
What gets under my skin — in a good way! — about Common Side Effects are the ethical dilemmas. As Frances learns more about the mushrooms, she begins to consider betraying Marshall’s trust to get them distributed through Reutical. In her mind, she thinks this will kill two birds with one stone: make her rich and help distribute life-saving medicine. But Marshall is reluctant to trust these companies at all, vehemently disagreeing that there is one ounce of good in the structures of for-profit health care. In one mid-season episode, he points out that Reutical even owns Eve’s Holistics, a line of “natural” wellness products, bringing to mind the ways in which wellness is co-opted by this industry (Don’t even get me started on Apple Cider Vinegar.)
Where can I watch it?
New episodes of Common Side Effects are currently airing on Sundays at 11:30 p.m. ET on Adult Swim, then appear on Max the next day.
How much time will I need to catch up?
The tenth and final episode of the season airs on March 30, but with each episode clocking in at 20 minutes, you could catch up fairly quickly. I’d recommend watching two episodes per sitting rather than a binge — it’s a nice show to reflect on between watches.
Watch if you like …
Common Side Effects and the meditative animated drama Scavengers Reign share a creator in Joseph Bennett (the show’s other creator, Steve Hely, worked on Veep and The Office). Both series produce some of the most unique and stunningly realized animation sequences in the history of the medium itself. When people consume the mushrooms of Common Side Effects, they briefly enter a Lynchian, dreamlike state: Little white creatures crawl up their faces, and heads explode into Candy Crush–like pops of color. The show doesn’t shed much light on the nature of these surreal trips in the early episodes, but the animation is eerily similar to the creatures and plants that were constantly trying to consume the survivors shipwrecked on the alien planet of Scavengers Reign. I like to imagine that both shows exist in the same extended universe.
I became an annoyingly broken record, encouraging those around me to watch Scavengers Reign, a transportive, beautiful series that stayed with me for months after I watched it. To my deep disappointment, it was axed by Max, and despite landing at Netflix, that streamer also chose not to green-light additional episodes — even after an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Animated Program alongside other powerhouses from last year, including Blue Eye Samurai and X-Men ’97. My wish for more Scavengers Reign aside, this crop of shows signals something of an animation renaissance in the West. Obviously, anime has been paving the way in animation innovation for decades, but Common Side Effects hits a new level. It tackles the medical-industrial complex with the seriousness of a show like Dopesick without totally giving up the sense of whimsy made possible only by its animated format.
