I keep thinking about that pigeon.
In the opening moments of “Common Side Effects,” Marshall Cuso, this wild-haired, perpetually shirtless mushroom enthusiast, kills a pigeon to prove a point to his old high school friend. Not out of cruelty, but to demonstrate something impossible: he brings it back to life with a sprinkle of blue powder from his miraculous mushroom. The bird shakes itself off and flies away, probably wondering what the hell just happened.
Watching that scene, I felt something I wasn’t expecting. Not wonder at the magic, but a deep, uncomfortable longing. God, I thought, what I wouldn’t give for that to be real.
When Fantasy Meets Our Broken Bodies
Joe Bennett and Steve Hely have created something that hurts in all the right ways. “Common Side Effects” asks the question we’ve all whispered to ourselves at 3 AM: What if there really was a cure for everything? But more importantly, it asks the follow-up question we’re too afraid to voice: What would they do to the person who found it?
Marshall discovers this Blue Angel mushroom in Peru, a glowing fungus that can heal anything from a gunshot wound to dementia to maybe even death itself. It sounds like bullshit fantasy until you remember that we live in a world where insulin costs more than rent, where cancer treatments bankrupt families, where people ration their medications and die from treatable diseases. Suddenly, Marshall’s paranoia doesn’t seem so crazy.
The show premiered in February 2025, and I’ve been thinking about it ever since. Not just because it’s good television (though it is, 100% on Rotten Tomatoes, which feels both impossible and deserved), but because it captures something specific about living right now. That feeling of being so close to solutions but watching them slip through our fingers because of systems that profit from our pain.
The Bureaucracy of Evil
Here’s what makes the show brilliant: the villains aren’t cackling megalomaniacs. They’re middle managers.
Rick Kruger, the pharmaceutical CEO voiced by Mike Judge himself, spends most of his screen time picking his nose and playing mobile games while casually ordering hits on Marshall. He’s not some Bond villain with a master plan; he’s just a guy protecting his quarterly earnings. The DEA agents hunting Marshall spend their stakeout time dancing to Harry Belafonte and having philosophical discussions about whether celery and carrots are related.
It would be funny if it weren’t so terrifyingly realistic. How many times have you been screwed over by someone who was “just doing their job”? How many times have you faced institutional cruelty delivered with a shrug and a “that’s policy”?
The show gets that most evil isn’t dramatic. It’s mundane. It’s the insurance adjuster who denies your claim. It’s the politician who votes against healthcare reform because they got a check from Big Pharma. It’s the DEA agents who don’t question why they’re hunting down a guy trying to give away free medicine.
My Mother and the Blue Angel
I lost my mom to cancer three years ago. Watching “Common Side Effects,” I kept thinking about those last months, the insurance battles, the experimental treatments we couldn’t afford, the way hope turned into a luxury item with a price tag we couldn’t meet. When Marshall pulls out his Blue Angel mushroom and casually heals a bullet wound like it’s nothing, I felt that familiar punch of grief mixed with rage.
What if it didn’t have to be this hard? What if healing could be as simple as sharing something that grows naturally in the ground? The show doesn’t shy away from how seductive this fantasy is, or how angry it makes you when you remember it’s fiction.
The creators, Joe Bennett (who made the incredible “Scavengers Reign”) and Steve Hely (a veteran of shows like “Veep” and “The Office”), said they were inspired by their own experiences with America’s healthcare system. They started asking themselves what would happen if someone actually found a cure-all, and the answer they came up with is both obvious and devastating: they’d try to kill him.
The Art of Feeling Real
What makes “Common Side Effects” special isn’t just its premise, it’s how it makes you believe in it. The animation style is deliberately unglamorous. Characters have big, awkward heads and imperfect bodies that look like they actually need healing. When Marshall demonstrates the mushroom’s effects, the injuries are drawn with unflinching detail, the kind of graphic honesty that makes the healing feel miraculous instead of cartoonish.
The show shares DNA with “Scavengers Reign,” Bennett’s previous series about survival on an alien planet. Both shows have this patient, naturalistic approach to animation that prioritizes real emotions over flashy spectacle. Characters pause, stumble over words, make the little gestures that actual humans make when they’re scared or excited or trying to convince someone of something impossible.
Martha Kelly and Joseph Lee Anderson voice the DEA agents hunting Marshall, and their relationship is one of the show’s secret weapons. They’re not incompetent comic relief, they’re just… people. People with a job to do who happen to genuinely like each other. When they’re sitting in their car listening to “Jump in the Line” by Harry Belafonte and unconsciously dancing together, it’s both funny and deeply human. These are the people who might end up killing Marshall, and the show makes sure you see their humanity even as you root against them.
The Mycelium Network of Care
There’s a scene where Marshall, in an old YouTube video, explains how mushrooms work. What looks like individual fungi are actually all connected underground through networks of mycelium. When one mushroom needs help, the network responds, transferring nutrients and resources to where they’re needed most.
It’s not subtle symbolism, but it doesn’t need to be. This is the show’s central metaphor: we’re all connected by the same vulnerable biology, the same need for care, but we’ve built systems that treat us like isolated consumers instead of part of a network.
Frances, Marshall’s old lab partner, starts the show working for the pharmaceutical company that wants Marshall dead. But her mother has dementia, and she’s watching someone she loves slowly disappear while the “system” offers expensive treatments that barely help. Her gradual shift from corporate loyalty to helping Marshall feels earned because it’s rooted in love, in the simple recognition that her mother’s life is worth more than her career.
The Weight of Good Intentions
The show gets more complex as it goes on. Marshall isn’t just a pure hero; his idealism has consequences. People start fighting over access to the mushrooms. Some use them recreationally. Others die because Marshall can’t produce enough to meet demand. The cure-all starts creating new problems, and Marshall is forced to confront the uncomfortable reality that even miracle drugs need systems, regulations, oversight.
It’s a sophisticated twist that doesn’t betray the show’s anti-corporate stance but deepens it. The problem isn’t that oversight is evil; it’s that our current systems prioritize profit over patients. Good intentions aren’t enough if you don’t have the infrastructure to deliver on them safely and equitably.
This complexity is what makes the show feel real instead of preachy. It acknowledges that the solutions to our healthcare crisis are harder than finding a magic mushroom, even as it maintains that the current system is still fundamentally broken.
Healing Through Story
I’ve been thinking about why I keep coming back to this show, why it’s stuck with me in a way that other TV hasn’t. I think it’s because “Common Side Effects” does something that feels both rare and necessary: it takes our pain seriously.
So much media either ignores the realities of living with illness and poverty, or it treats them as plot devices. “Common Side Effects” understands that these aren’t abstract problems. They’re daily realities for millions of people who are rationing insulin, avoiding doctors because they can’t afford the bills, watching family members suffer because the “best healthcare system in the world” has priced them out of access to care.
The show’s fantasy isn’t just about a mushroom that can heal anything. It’s about a world where healing is free, where care is abundant, where the network responds when help is needed. It’s about imagining systems that serve human flourishing instead of corporate profit.
The Impossible Made Necessary
Marshall’s Blue Angel mushroom is science fiction, but the hunger for it is real. Every viewer who’s ever been denied coverage, who’s ever rationed medication, who’s ever watched someone they love suffer because healing is treated as a commodity instead of a human right understands why Marshall is running for his life to protect this impossible thing.
The show was renewed for a second season, which feels like its own small miracle. In a media landscape dominated by cynicism and superhero spectacle, “Common Side Effects” offers something rarer: stories that acknowledge both the systems that make us sick and our capacity to build better ones.
The mushroom may be fictional, but the network is real. We see it in mutual aid groups, in community fridges, in neighbors checking on each other during emergencies. We see it every time someone chooses care over profit, connection over isolation, the long-term health of the community over short-term individual gain.
“Common Side Effects” reminds us that healing happens through relationship, through people deciding to share resources instead of hoarding them. The cure we’re looking for isn’t just medical. It’s social, political, spiritual. It’s the recognition that we’re all part of the same vulnerable network, and when one part needs help, the whole system should respond.
Marshall’s pigeon flies away healed, and we’re left with the ache of impossible longing. But maybe that ache is where the real work begins. Maybe the medicine we need isn’t a mushroom at all, but the decision to build a world where healing is possible for everyone, not just those who can afford it.
The network knows when help is needed. The question is whether we’re ready to answer.
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