I don’t find Mike Tyson’s return to fame as one of comedy’s valuable bench players all that charming. I feel that at very best, Tyson is a man-child whom we shouldn’t really be using for comedic purposes given his dark, sordid past. At worst, he’s a convicted criminal that we’ve welcomed back into pop culture as a comedic prop.
So I come into The Mike Tyson Mysteries — which premiered Monday night on Adult Swim — with those reservations in mind. I also happen to, separate of that, think the pilot (titled “The End,” tee hee) was pretty lazy. Even if you can separate Tyson from his past, this is such a bizarre misfire of a cartoon.
The plot of the show is something like this: Mike Tyson, his adopted, Asian-american daughter, a ghost (played by Community’s Jim Rash) and an alcoholic who’s been turned into a pigeon (played by, seriously, Norm MacDonald and is just named Pigeon) are a team of mystery-solvers. That’s literally the whole plot, let’s do stoner Scooby Doo riffs with Mike Tyson, the Dean from Community and good ol’ Norm.
Those riffs are where any good stoner comedy should garner its death. I’m all for this kind of humor, similar to American Dad (which also does the man trapped in the body of an animal gag better) but it has to bring some shading to the characters or be so insanely bizarre that is stops the show dead in its tracks. Everything The Mike Tyson Mysteries throws out feels like just that: like someone throwing out a bunch of weird, but not too weird stuff (the whole first episode is a bland riff on Cormac McCarthy and John Updike, but it never goes anywhere beyond just saying those two names and making McCarthy a centaur) and the characters commenting on it.
I mean, the show can be funny in this format — and MacDonald delivering meta-commentary on the premise is some of the series’ only saving grace — but even in the 11-minute run-time, this wears thin. Tyson is somewhat funny, but the show can’t seem to decide whether or not they want him to be in on the joke. You’ll see a bit where Tyson is clearly having goofy fun, but then they’ll have another character (usually the pigeon) make fun of Tyson behind the character’s back. It feels weirdly sinister at times.
That said… it’s Scooby Doo with Mike Tyson. If you watched this show, what did you really want? What was I supposed to get out of this? I guess the point is that some people are going to watch The Mike Tyson Mysteries — most likely teenagers who’ve never seen these gags done better before — and get the continuing idea that Mike Tyson is just a goofy weirdo. That’s kind of bothersome, even for something as trite and harmless as this show.
