Article first published as MIKE TYSON MYSTERIES Review on Seat42F.
MIKE
TYSON MYSTERIES premieres next week on Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim.
What is MIKE TYSON MYSTERIES, you may ask? Well, imagine you and your
buddies got high, watched a bunch of old episodes of Scooby Doo, and
wondered what the show would be like if retired boxer Mike Tyson starred
in it. Then, toss in an Oscar-winning screenwriter (who also appears in
a zany sitcom), a semi-washed-up comedian who doesn’t always get the
respect he deserves, and a bunch of jokes that only an on-drugs college
student, possibly an English major, could come up, and you have this
show.
Which is why MIKE TYSON MYSTERIES is awesome!
In
the animated series, Mike Tyson (who also acted in The Hangover films)
voices a version of himself taken to extremes. Mike lives with his
adopted, eighteen-year-old, Asian daughter, Yung Hee (Rachel Ramras,
Mad), a guy who was turned into a pigeon by his ex-wife and who now goes
by the name Pigeon (Norm MacDonald, Saturday Night Live), and a
closeted gay, gentleman ghost, Marquess of Queensbury (Jim Rash,
Community). They form a team that solves mysteries together, because,
why not?
The program is created by
Hugh Davidson, who is famous for writing and performing on Robot
Chicken. Obviously, Hugh gets some of the random gags from his
experience there, but puts together a more cohesive story for this
project. What he is doing works extremely well.
I’m
not sure exactly why I love MIKE TYSON MYSTERIES so much. It’s part
nostalgia, to be sure, as the style and tone references older works for
children that I grew up watching. It’s partially the inane sense of
humor, often dirty, which Adult Swim is known for. It’s somewhat due to
the intelligent references, proving the writer is educated. And it’s
just all cleverly woven together, bringing subplots back around full
circle and letting even the most insane one-liners actually mean
something to the larger picture.
Let
me give you an example of this. In the first episode, Mike receives a
letter from Pulitzer Prize-winner Cormac McCarthy (No Country for Old
Men) asking him to help find an ending to his latest book. Mike tosses
out a crazy theory as to what the mystery might be, which everyone else
scoffs at because it seemingly has no basis in reality. A series of
mishaps occur that takes the team to McCarthy’s place, even bringing a
second author into the story, and then it all wraps up as Mike
predicted, to certain extent. The script isn’t predictable; there aren’t
clues connecting point A to point B. But in the end, it all makes a
strange kind of sense.
Now, I don’t
know if McCarthy voices himself or not, and can’t seem to find
confirmation on the internet as of yet. But Mike Tyson, who has had a
mixed reputation based on past press coverage, must have a sense of
humor about himself to participate in this. The fact that McDonald and
Rash, both respectable people, signed up to join him should lend weight
to the show, too.
Now, I’m sure MIKE
TYSON MYSTERIES is not for everyone. It’s off-the-wall enough that it
probably will attract a wide variety of viewers, but not everyone likes
their comedy this goofy. It’s far from a traditional family sitcom or a
show one can watch with one’s kids. But to a thirty-year-old male critic
who watches far too much TV, it tickles the funny bone and strikes me
as nearly the most original thing to hit the adult animated scene in
years, even with its generous borrowing of other works.
MIKE TYSON MYSTERIES premieres Monday at 10:30 p.m. ET on Cartoon Network.
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