James Poniewozik

And, you know, to me, at least it did not lose that in the second season.

It was a show called Common Side Effects.

This was an animated series on Adult Swim that came in part from one of the makers of an animated drama that I loved a couple of years ago called Scavenger's Reign.

But this one is about a mushroom, right?

There's a mushroom.

Say more.

There's a mushroom.

I don't have you hooked on mushroom.

You have my attention.

There's a mushroom in the rainforest that is discovered by this kind of kooky, amateur scientist, holistic healer.

Yes, an amateur my color.

That's 10 points for Gryffindor.

The dream, the goal.

It's amazing.

Thank you.

And it can cure anything, which sounds fantastic, except, and here the conspiracy element comes in, except for pharmaceutical companies who see a tremendous threat to their business and decide to shut this down.

That's the animating plot of the thriller.

What gets me into it is it is simultaneously

realistic and sort of hallucinatory.

It also has kind of a quirky, offbeat sense of humor, which, you know, I think series like this really sort of need to avoid getting too stuffed up in their self-seriousness.