The new Adult Swim series Common Side Effects asks one core question at the heart of its story: if a medicine truly existed that could cure any ailment, how would the world respond? Protagonist Marshall faces down the government, Big Pharma, survivalist mushroom hunters, and more in his quest to make the miraculous mushroom he has found available to everyone. Common Side Effects’ creators have penned a sweeping tale that thoroughly examines both common and corporate perspectives on sickness and health – perspectives that have both strengthened and shifted in the years following the COVID-19 pandemic.
In a conversation with Game Rant, Common Side Effects co-creators Steve Hely and Joseph Bennett revealed that they came up with the idea for the show before COVID hit, and were worried at times that the pandemic would make their story “irrelevant now.” But ultimately, Common Side Effects is the perfect story for a post-COVID world, viewed by an audience now much more accustomed to considering big questions about health and sickness and what they themselves would do to obtain a cure for what ailed them.
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How COVID-19 Changed Common Side Effects
“We actually started working on the show before COVID,” Hely revealed with a laugh, then added, “And also before the air here in Los Angeles was like, certified toxic.” He and Bennett had come up with the idea due to a personal fascination with the world of alternative medicine and mushrooms and the work of real-life anthropologists, mycologists and ethnobotanists, and Common Side Effects was well into its development cycle when the pandemic hit. Bennett reminisced about how they sincerely considered shelving the show during quarantine:
I do remember when that was all happening. Steve and I had these conversations where we would always be waffling back and forth. “The story’s over.” “It’s irrelevant now. It doesn’t matter.” And then it was just like “Maybe we’re still onto something here.”
They ultimately decided that Common Side Effects was still a story that could be told in the post-COVID world. As to how the pandemic changed the content of the show itself, the answer was ‘surprisingly little.’ Hely did feel that they made protagonist Marshall “a little unhinged” once they considered what someone searching for a cure-all mushroom would be like after he had lived through an event like COVID-19.
Common Side Effects Is The Perfect Story For A Post-COVID World
Although it may have been thought up prior to the pandemic, it is ultimately a great story for a post-COVID world. Viewers can relate to Marshall’s passionate belief that his mushroom should be available to everyone, and share his frustration when people refuse to believe the truth of his discovery or when “Big Pharma” constantly tries to stop his efforts. Like many other Adult Swim animated series, the show balances out there humor with tense drama and genuine pathos, and can be both relatable and cathartic to an audience who lived through quarantine, masking, fearmongering, and a paranoia-filled news cycle.
Bennett and Hely also feel that shows like Common Side Effects address the “amnesia” of the post-pandemic years. “We’ve collectively chosen just to like…not remember that time,” Hely said. He thought of how plagues are rarely focused on in history books, despite the fact that they’re “really significant to history,” and hoped that fictional stories based in truth, like Common Side Effects, could hope to fill that void. Common Side Effects may not be a story about COVID-19, but it’s certainly a story influenced by living through a deadly modern pandemic, and one that viewers only a few years removed from the virus’ outbreak will certainly find relatable.