The animated pharma thriller/stoner dramedy “Common Side Effects,” available on Max, is as rare and precious as the miraculous mushroom its hero, Marshall (Dave King), discovers in the jungle. Smarts, humor, style and perspective rarely align so harmoniously. Not a lot of shows have as much to say, and fewer still say it with such panache.

“Common” follows the open-shirted, tiny-mouthed environmentalist Marshall, who wants to protect the fragile habitat of the blue angel mushroom, a fungus that can heal seemingly everything. Everyone should be able to access its powers, Marshall says, and no one should be denied a lifesaving cure because of poverty.

But he’s up against a lot, including the D.E.A., the F.B.I., big pharma, fellow mycologists, backwoods hooligans, jailhouse power players and sometimes just his own naiveté. He reunites with his high school lab partner, Frances (Emily Pendergast), after he is booted from one of her boss’s speeches. Frances doesn’t admit to him that she works for Reutical, a pharmaceutical company that does every single bad thing Marshall abhors. They trust each other, even though they haven’t seen each other in years, and when Marshall is in peril, he calls her.

“Just two things to mention,” he says, panic rising in his voice. “Some people are following me, and I brought my tortoise.”

Frances is just as desperate as Marshall. Her mother has Alzheimer’s and is in a memory care facility that they can barely afford; her boyfriend is sort of a yutz; and she is always waist-deep in a crisis of conscience about working for Reutical. Should she try to help Marshall do things Marshall’s slapdash way, or might Reutical be in a better position to cultivate, test and distribute such a powerful drug?

Her boss, Rick (Mike Judge), takes her up to the company’s rooftop helipad to encourage her to stick with the corporate vision. “You’re with us now, the helicopter people,” he says. “We don’t worry about the down-there problems.” He doesn’t say it in an evil, cackling villain voice, though. He says it like an encouraging dad, like a mentor.

“Common” is about forced scarcity, but the show embodies Marshall’s commitment to abundance: There’s enough dialogue, specificity and especially visual wonder to go around. The character design here lives on the alluring line between darling and grotesque, and there are so many cool shots, such as an assassin’s wiggly reflection in the diamond-printed metal interior of a food truck.

So far nine episodes have aired, and the finale 10th episode airs on Sunday at 11:30 p.m., on Adult Swim. I’m not saying this will perfectly fill the “Severance”-shaped hole in your heart, but it might stop the bleeding.

SIDE QUESTS

• “Common Side Effects” was created by Joseph Bennett and Steve Hely. Bennett’s previous work includes “Scavenger’s Reign,” and the shows have a similar perspective. That’s on Max and Netflix.

• Judge is also an executive producer, and it’s never a bad time to watch “King of the Hill,” available Hulu, especially as the revival nears.

• One effect of ingesting the blue angel is a pretty heady trip, in which people encounter little gray baby alien-like creatures. Are they friends or foes? Unclear, but all I could see were miniature versions of Pit-Pat, the “spokesthing” character from “Mr. Show With Bob and David.” That’s on Max, and Pit-Pat makes its first appearance in Season 1, Episode 2.

• “Common” reminded me a lot of another oddball fave, the perfect “Lodge 49.” That’s on AMC+. Both shows have a sense of dreamy ambition and center on endearing dingbats who drive unusual vehicles. And both shows are cleareyed about the pernicious exploitation of the working class.

• Martha Kelly voices one of the detectives tracking Marshall, and she gets a lot of the show’s best lines, including “Does this haircut make me look like Timothy McVeigh?” She’s also the lead voice actor in “Carol & the End of the World,” on Netflix.