The Decisive Moment
Common Side Effects. Credit: Adult Swim
A recent TV show I have loved is the Adult Swim animation Common Side Effects (currently also available in the UK via Channel 4's website). Created by Joe Bennett and Steve Hely, the series sees two former high school lab partners stumble on a mushroom that can heal almost anything. Exploring everything from big pharma, to memory, perception and the philosophy of medicine, it is an emotional, funny and highly dramatic show.
One thing it nails, is the way it makes each character, right down to bitparts, not only unique, but memorable. When introduced, they are each presented to us at their most characterful, in ways that not only stand out against others, but also condenses something of that character’s being or predicament.
French photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908-2004) called this the "decisive moment," in which a photo -taken at the exact right moment, and with perfect composition- is able to capture the essence of an event.
"To me, photography is the simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of a second, of the significance of an event as well as of a precise organization of forms which give that event its proper expression." Henri Cartier-Bresson, The Decisive Moment (1952)
In Common Side Effects, this is can be as small as a finger-twitch, or, as in the case of the show’s DEA agents Capano and Harrington, a love of musical “ear worms”. Their introduction is a case in point, giving us everything we need to know about the pair; the nature and the stakes of their involvement: they have a special friendship, and are not by-the-book jobsworths. These two elements play out in just one of many interweaving storylines.
Which character introductions do you love from shows you have seen? Or have you seen Common Side Effects? What’s your take on it?
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