Review: In ‘Common Side Effects,' It's Fungus vs. Them
'Common Side Effects,' a wryly funny animated conspiracy thriller beginning Sunday on Adult Swim, suggests that not everybody would be pleased.
Marshall Cuso (Dave King), an eccentric environmentalist and self-employed scientist, discovers a rare mushroom on an expedition to Peru. The fungus, a ghostly specimen called the Blue Angel, can cure almost any illness and heal seemingly fatal injuries — including the ones Marshall sustains when he is attacked by gunmen immediately after making his discovery.
Back in the States, pursued by the Drug Enforcement Administration and other, more mysterious figures, Marshall runs into Frances Applewhite (Emily Pendergast), his former school lab partner who is now unhappily working for a pharmaceutical giant. Together, they make a pact to bring the magic mushroom to the people and protect it from the forces who would like to erase all traces of its existence.
Who are those forces? Them. And who's them? 'Big Pharma, the insurance companies, the government,' Marshall explains. 'All the people who make tons of money just from keeping us sick.'
A figure like Marshall — nerdy, neckbearded, with a prominent belly hanging from his Hawaiian shirt and one big theory that explains it all — would usually be portrayed on TV as, at best, a well-meaning kook, a side character who exists for laughs and exposition. Even in the conspiracy-riddled world of 'The X-Files,' he would be more of a Lone Gunman than a Fox Mulder.
Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
5 hours ago
- Yahoo
'Aquaman' star Jason Momoa nearly drowned while surfing: 'My body stopped'
The actor says help from his ancestors and thoughts of his then 3-month-old daughter helped him win a battle for his life. Off screen, the sea has no master. Aquaman star Jason Momoa learned that lesson the hard way while attempting a miles-long paddle through ferocious Hawaiian waters and nearly not coming back up. "I was doing this paddle, we went in at Jaws," Momoa detailed on Monday's new episode of the Smartless podcast, referring to the nickname for Pe'ahi, Maui's biggest surf break. "We paddled like 13 miles down the coast. You're kind of almost a mile offshore, and then my leash snapped. We're about seven miles into it and my leash snapped, and it's so windy on Maui." Cohost Sean Hayes asked the former screen god of the sea, Baywatch lifeguard, and scion to a legendary Hawaiian surfing family if a "protocol of what to do in that moment" kicked in when he sensed he was in true danger. "I was trained pretty well, so I was fine," Momoa responded. "I took quite a few on the head. They're pretty big, like 10-foot Hawaiian waves. But I'm probably half a mile at that point offshore. And it's actually this place is called 'S--f---s' because there's all this water that pulls out and of a channel there, [and] you just get hit with these waves." Momoa recalled that he was fine, until he wasn't. "I was stuck in this crazy spot, which is probably the outer reef and unknown to me. I was really on the outer reef and they couldn't see me," he recounted. "I had my paddle and I was waving it and they couldn't see me, and the waves were so big. When his thoughts turned to his daughter Lola Iolani, then 3 months old, the actor said, "I just lost it, I was like, 'Oh s---.'" Things got worse before they got better. "I was out there for a while, and I just couldn't see anyone coming to get me. I couldn't move anymore, and my arms and my legs gave up after, you know, I was out there for a while... My body stopped. Like I couldn't move my arms anymore, and I bubbled down. Then my my toe hit the outer reef. I literally gave up, and I'm screaming inside." Finally, one of Momoa's surf buddies located him, but their shared fight for survival was only just beginning. "I get back on the board and we start paddling. He's like, 'You got to go out,' so we just keep paddling out." Currents prevented the men from making a beeline to the shore, and "brutal waves" cause them both to lose their boards. "I have seven more miles to paddle. My feet are covered in blood, and I'm just literally [with] my ancestors just paddling the rest of this way, head down, and we get out." Momoa eventually made it to shore, but the experience had a profound, lasting effect on him. "I used to smoke two, three packs a day. I couldn't stop for my kids, I couldn't stop for my ex, I couldn't stop smoking. And the moment I came out, I never smoked again. Like, I just died. I tried and tried, but I couldn't do it again because I just gave up. Like, I gave up my life."The Hawaii native won that battle with the sea, and recently tussled with another elemental force: fire. While filming Apple TV+'s new historical series Chief of War, Momoa had to brave the lava fields of Kalapana, and even an eruption of the famed volcano Kīlauea. "I just knew that the volcano was going to go off, and everybody laughed at me and didn't believe me,' Momoa he told Entertainment Weekly earlier this month. "You're obviously stirring up a lot of spirits and mana. It was unbelievable, but there was a really positive energy." You can listen to Momoa's full interview on the Smartless podcast above. Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly
Time Magazine
10 hours ago
- Time Magazine
It's Time to Put 'The Valley' Out of Its Misery
Television has gotten pretty dark. Tech dystopias, from Black Mirror to Severance, are our water-cooler shows. The true-crime factory pumps out more real-life nightmares every day. Millions of viewers are bingeing on post-apocalyptic misery, whether it takes the shape of The Last of Us' fungal wasteland or Silo's crumbling underground city or the sterile billionaires' stronghold in Paradise. Even realistic dramas increasingly rely on a murder-mystery element to build suspense. And yet, somehow, the most depressing show on TV—with the exception of any news broadcast, at least—is a reality soap about bougie couples in the suburbs of Los Angeles. I am, of course, talking about Bravo's The Valley, the Vanderpump Rules spinoff that follows some of the latter series' most notorious characters from the clubstaraunt to the cul-de-sac. Like the early seasons of Vanderpump, as well as the network's stalwart Real Housewives and Below Deck franchises, The Valley was introduced as light entertainment. In this case, the comedy inherent in the premise was that of hard-partying, adulthood-resisting millennial Angelenos adjusting to marriage, mortgage payments, and parenthood. (The original opening credits placed the couples in kitschy front-yard tableaux, hoisting trash bags or raking leaves.) Instead, viewers have spent two seasons looking on in horror as many of the cast members have torn their own lives and families apart, with public scrutiny only adding heat to the crucible. Far from entertaining, the show has become genuinely painful to watch. Now, as its second season ends in a trilogy of miserable reunion episodes, I wish Bravo would just pull the plug. The series premiere, which aired last March, suggests what producers initially envisioned as the tone of the show. Like the Housewives, this docusoap would center on the big personalities and minor melodramas of a so-called friend group—a term of art for a reality TV cast that may or may not actually socialize off-camera. Vanderpump alums Jax Taylor, a supposedly reformed womanizer, and his wife Brittany Cartwright, a Kentucky-bred sweetheart whose years of saintly self-sacrifice had apparently redeemed him, were positioned as what Jax might call the No. 1 couple in the group. Also back on Bravo, years after getting fired from Vanderpump for racist mischief, was perennial pot-stirrer Kristen Doute, now trying to get pregnant with her boyfriend, soft-spoken L.A. outsider Luke Broderick. A selection of their associates filled out the cast. Jesse Lally and Michelle Saniei were married real estate agents with a toddler. Actor Danny Booko and former Miss USA Nia Booko had their hands full with three kids under two years old (now they have four under four). Janet Caperna was extremely intense and extremely pregnant; her husband, Jason, kept relatively quiet. Finally, we met Jasmine Goode and Zack Wickham, who were both queer but whose personal lives didn't seem to be part of the friend-group saga. While Jax, surely at the urging of producers, tried to provoke Kristen by questioning her fertility choices, nothing major happened in the premiere. The couples bickered and complained about each other, as couples often do. The episode climaxed with Jax pantsing Danny, who turned out to not be wearing underwear, at a country-fair-themed birthday party for Janet. Earlier, Zack had made an observation whose accuracy was never in doubt but that would only seem more prescient as the show progressed: 'All these people move to the Valley, get a house, pop out a couple of kids, and then they think they're so grown-up. But these people don't grow up.' As tends to be the case in shows like this, tensions between and among couples escalated as the season wore on. But unless you'd been following the ever-expanding constellation of tabloids, podcasts, and social media gossip accounts that track reality stars' every move, it was still jarring to see a six-month time jump in the finale that checked in with two couples—Jesse and Michelle as well as Jax and Brittany—who'd separated since production wrapped. Alarming reports trickled out during The Valley's hiatus, mostly about Jax: his cocaine addiction; his stint in rehab, during which Brittany filed for divorce; his diagnosis, after years of Bravo fans' armchair psychoanalysis, of bipolar and PTSD; a second rehab stay. Much of the above was chronicled in this year's anhedonic second season, which opened with Brittany's account—and Jax's confirmation—of his violent, table-smashing response to his discovery of some racy text messages she'd exchanged with a friend of his, even though they were separated and free to date at the time. Viewers learned that he'd also been surveilling his estranged wife via home security cameras, and watched as he bombarded her with rage-texts from rehab. Repeating a pattern of behavior familiar to any Vanderpump completist, he sometimes lied, sometimes expressed remorse and promised to change, and sometimes played the victim, insisting it was Brittany who had destroyed their family by separating him from his son. (I mean, who could blame her?) Every episode seemed to bring a new, terrible revelation. Jax wasn't the only man in the group whose actions went beyond the pale—even for reality TV. Though he and Michelle both had new partners and were co-parenting… well, not peacefully, but at least more functionally than the Cartwright-Taylors, Jesse became obsessed with the idea that she'd been cheating on him with her current boyfriend before their separation. He called her a 'hooker' to her face and spread an unsubstantiated rumor that a billionaire was paying her for sex. The exes went back and forth over whether Michelle could take their daughter on a trip to visit her dying mother. Less predictably, it came out that nice-guy Danny had drunkenly groped Jasmine and her fiancée, Melissa Carelli, at a Halloween party between seasons. Although he apologized and they forgave him, the incident fueled a season-long arc that divided the cast over whether they believed he had a drinking problem that Nia was helping him hide. Whether or not you're inclined to invoke loaded and in some cases legal terms—domestic violence, emotional abuse, sexual assault, stalking, slander, slut-shaming, etc.—to describe these behaviors, only a sadist could enjoy watching real people inflict and endure such a litany of tortures. It's particularly disturbing to see them normalized within the conventions of a TV format designed to escalate petty slights and rivalries into social wars so stupid, they're funny. Real suffering is kryptonite to rich-people-problems entertainment (which is probably also why The Real Housewives of New York City imploded, this past January, in a season finale where one cast member accused another of insensitivity towards the former's traumatic experience as a rape survivor). This is not the stuff of juicy gossip, to be gleefully dissected with Andy Cohen on Watch What Happens Live. Yet there Cohen and The Valley cast members often were, on his post-game talk show, polling viewers about whose side they were on in the Jax-Brittany breakup or how they felt about Janet labeling Danny's blackout transgression sexual assault. As the RHONY meltdown illustrates, The Valley isn't the first Bravo docusoap to get darker than the genre is equipped to go. But the sheer number of horrible storylines and moments in its second season suggests something uniquely rotten at the show's core. I think it's the focus on the specific varieties of dysfunction that can arise within heterosexual marriages and families. While husbands and kids are part of all the Housewives menageries, they're never the main characters. Frequent girls' trips, among other contrivances, keep the focus on female friendship, which for all its discontents does not usually conceal sexual violence, abuse, or infidelity. Cheating has been a constant source of drama in Vanderpump (before Scandoval, Jax was the resident recidivist cad) and other coed 'friend group' shows like Summer House. The thing is, those casts tend to be younger, unmarried, and childless; the stakes of their drunken antics are lower, less likely to land them in court or rehab and their kids, who in the case of The Valley families are too little to be consensual participants in the Bravo universe, in therapy. Which is why, as unlikely as its cancellation seems at this point, I'm convinced there's no fixing The Valley. Sure, Taylor's recently announced departure from the show is a relief, especially for Cartwright and their son, whether or not he's capable of staying out of the spotlight or maintaining what he enumerated in a statement as 'my sobriety, my mental health and coparenting relationship.' No one's livelihood should be contingent on interacting, on camera or off, with a person who caused them pain. Yet Brittany isn't the only cast member in that boat. Even if she were, what would be left to salvage of a show whose central clique has no real chemistry, whose cast has no charming breakout star (much has been made of Vanderpump villain Doute's emergence as the most likable of the bunch), whose episodes are devoid of the silly hangout shenanigans found in the best seasons of Vanderpump and Housewives? (The slapstick comedy of Jax pantsing Danny was immediately followed by Nia bursting into tears over her husband's humiliation.) The producers of The Valley were right to presume that chaos would ensue when people who'd been partying for 20 years tried to settle into more tranquil, suburban existences. They just didn't anticipate what a tragic form that chaos would take.
Business Upturn
2 days ago
- Business Upturn
My Adventures with Superman Season 3: Latest updates on release date, cast and plot details
By Aman Shukla Published on August 11, 2025, 19:00 IST Last updated August 11, 2025, 12:04 IST If you're into vibrant, anime-style animation with stories that really tug at your heartstrings, My Adventures with Superman has probably got you hooked. After that crazy Season 2 finale, everyone's buzzing and can't wait for Season 3. So, here's the scoop on when it might land, who's coming back, and what kind of adventures we can expect. When's Season 3 Hitting Screens? No official premiere date yet for My Adventures with Superman Season 3, but there's enough chatter to make a solid guess. Season 1 landed in July 2023, and Season 2 came out in May 2024, pointing to a roughly yearly release cycle. With today being August 11, 2025, a spring 2026 premiere—maybe April or May—feels like a safe bet. Word from Jake Wyatt, one of the showrunners, says they're already knee-deep in post-production. The first episode's voice work is wrapped, and more are lined up. This tracks with a 2025 release, though some chatter on X floats the idea of early 2026 if things slow down. Either way, look for it on Adult Swim's Toonami block, with episodes streaming on Max the next day, just like before. Who's Back and Who's New? The voice cast is a big part of why this show pops, and the main crew's coming back strong. Here's the lineup: Jack Quaid as Clark Kent/Superman, rocking that sweet, heroic vibe with a dash of dorkiness. Alice Lee as Lois Lane, the gutsy reporter who's all heart and hustle. Ishmel Sahid as Jimmy Olsen, the goofy sidekick who always steals a laugh. Kiana Madeira as Kara Zor-El/Supergirl, ready to shine big after her Season 2 arc. Max Mittelman as Lex Luthor, now bald and bad, leaning hard into villain mode. Chris Parnell as Slade Wilson/Deathstroke, serving up serious danger. Debra Wilson as Amanda Waller, plotting her next big move. David Errigo Jr. as Mr. Mxyzptlk, the chaos-causing trickster. Catherine Taber as Siobhan McDougal/Silver Banshee, rounding out the bad guys. The big scoop? Superboy is joining the party! Dropped at San Diego Comic-Con 2024, this fan-fave (likely Conner Kent) is set to shake things up. No word yet on his voice actor or exact role, but his arrival's got everyone pumped. What's the Story Going to Be? Season 2's finale, My Adventures with Supergirl , left fans reeling, and Season 3's ready to dive into the fallout. The creators are playing things close to the chest, but here's what's floating around based on hints and fan buzz: Lex Luthor's Big Play Lex is stepping up as the main bad guy, complete with his shiny LexCorp and a shaky team-up with Deathstroke. Jake Wyatt called them 'two snakes in a pit,' each out for themselves. That's gonna make for some spicy showdowns with Superman as Lex flexes his evil genius. Superboy Steals the Spotlight Superboy's debut is a total game-changer. In the comics, he's often a clone tied to Lex or Project Cadmus, but this show loves a fresh spin—maybe he's from another universe or tied to Kryptonian secrets. His story's bound to dig into big questions about who he is, which'll hit home for Clark too. Supergirl's Time to Shine Kara broke free from Brainiac's grip in Season 2 and is now a full-on hero with Clark, Lois, and Jimmy. Season 3's gonna show her kicking butt as Earth's protector while maybe sparking some romance with Jimmy. It'll be a mix of epic fights and real, grounded moments. A Packed Villain Roster On top of Lex and Deathstroke, look out for Cyborg Superman, Amanda Waller, Mr. Mxyzptlk, and Silver Banshee. Cyborg Superman might link to Superboy's origins, given his Kryptonian tech ties. Some fans on X are even betting on nods to bigger DC names like Darkseid or Thanagar, based on Season 2's sneaky hints. Ahmedabad Plane Crash My Adventures with Superman Aman Shukla is a post-graduate in mass communication . A media enthusiast who has a strong hold on communication ,content writing and copy writing. Aman is currently working as journalist at
