Review: Common Side Effects “Cliff’s Edge”

Overview

Two former high school lab partners stumble on a mushroom that can heal almost anything, apart from the corporate interests of the DEA, big pharma, and international businessmen.

Our Take

We’re nearing the end of our first season and this week’s episode has put a number of pieces into place for what will eventually be the season finale title, that being “Raid”. The feds, the pharmas, and everything in between are seemingly set for a showdown and Marshall may or may not be there to see it.

One of the continually fascinating attributes of Common Side Effects thus far is that as we’re now getting deeper into the show we are seeing the various side effects of this potentially world-saving psilocybin and now some of those side effects are both mental and physical. Whether it’s Hildy going nuts or one of Marshall’s first patients showing up with a number of things wrong with him, watching the show charge on all-the-while reminding everyone what the pathos of the show really is has been a fascinating experience. Moreover, characters like Jonas that could have been seen as the primary antagonist, is he? It’s seemingly people that we initially cared for like Frances and Harrington that seem to be the people with ulterior motives.

One of the things that I’ve been regretting that I plan to fix by the time we get to the season review is talking about the directors of this series because they have all been fabulous. Vincent Tsui dazzled us enough during his time with Scavengers Reign is continuing to do just that on Common Side Effects and this has been apparent on a few different occasions just in this season alone. Clearly the producers are starting to accentuate the breakdown of what is real and what is not real and are having a blast doing it and the season finale looks like it’s going to rock our worlds like rock’em sock’em robots.

I almost don’t even trust anything that Common Side Effects has given us at this juncture because I’ve been watching Joe Bennett shorts and TV series for years and whilst the budding producer has always been a little on the uneasy side, watching him go full blown red pill down whatever rabbit holes that he sets for himself has been a thrill and I can’t wait to see how this all goes down.