Plot: Mike Tyson teams up with his adopted Korean daughter, the ghost of a 19th Century Welsh sportsman, and a vulgar talking pigeon to solve the mystery of Cormac McCarthy’s unfinished book.
When Adult Swim premiered on Cartoon Network’s late night way back in 2001, there truly was nothing like it on television. Not only was it on a channel that was wholly dedicated to kid’s programming, the programming was extremely bizarre. It was as experimental as it could be and major shows wouldn’t be caught dead playing that late at night. Now, the Adult Swim block takes up nearly twelve hours of Cartoon Network’s schedule and opens up at 8 PM with popular shows like King of the Hill, American Dad, and Bob’s Burgers. The experimental stuff is still there, but it’s primarily kept to the very early AM hours. In many ways, the previously questionable and unique Adult Swim has become a true tour de force on the television landscape.
Tonight, Adult Swim can add something else to its impressive resume: the first ever cartoon to feature boxing legend Mike Tyson. Tyson, who’s currently riding a massive career resurgence, is now the star of Mike Tyson Mysteries, a combination of Scooby-Doo, The A-Team, Mister T, and a massive acid trip. As the name suggests, it’s about Tyson solving mysteries with his adopted Korean daughter Yung Hee (Rachel Ramras), the ghost of John Chambers the 9th Marquess of Queensbury (Jim Rash), and Pigeon (Norm MacDonald), a talking pigeon. Tyson gets his mystery requests through a carrier pigeon coop and isn’t adverse to using his trademark fists to get the job done. Yeah, can you see why this show airs on a network that profits off talking squids and stop motion action figures?
But just like all those other insane programs, Mike Tyson Mysteries is legitimately hilarious. It both fits perfectly within Adult Swim’s programming and completely justifies its existence as quick, silly fun. Perhaps the wisest decision that went into creating this show was making it a 15 minute long program, 11 without the end commercial. That means it doesn’t waste any time explaining the absurdity or even setting up a story. It just happens without a care in the world. We don’t need to know why Cormac McCarthy is actually a centaur. A chupacabra terrorizing McCarthy’s ranch and getting punched in the nuts by Tyson, only to be revealed as a transformed John Updike, doesn’t need a reason either. That’s the glory of this show.
It also freely lampoons any type of celebrity, which has huge potential. I already mentioned both Updike and McCarthy, so clearly no one is safe. Not even Tyson himself is free from a few jabs. On more than one occasion, the supporting characters openly make fun of the star. When he has difficulty saying the word “chupacabra,” Pigeon brings it up in conversation.Yung Hee regularly asks her adopted father to talk about college and yet he just doesn’t understand the point of it all. He even believes that Yung Hee gave him excellent life advice as an infant, something the Marquess refutes on the grounds that babies don’t talk. But Tyson doesn’t care. If the baby spoke to him, the baby spoke to him. And if he wants to drive a van and solve mysteries, something Pigeon also questions the validity of, he’ll do that.
Mike Tyson Mysteries is a wonderfully irreverent show. It shouldn’t be held up to the standard of any other program that shackles itself to basic storytelling tropes. It does what it wants and that puts it up to the same standard of other shows like Children’s Hospital and NTSF:SD:SUV::. If you’re in the mood for a quick show that’s completely ridiculous, you can’t go wrong with this one. It even airs at a perfectly respectable time of 10:30 PM. What else is there to say? You should watch this.
Rating: 8/10
Check out Luke Kalamar’s roundtable interview with Mike Tyson at New York Comic Con!
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Luke Kalamar is Pop-Break.com’s television and every Saturday afternoon you can read his retro video game column, Remembering the Classics. He covers Game of Thrones, Saturday Night Live and The Walking Dead (amongst others) every week. As for as his career and literary standing goes — take the best parts of Spider-man, Captain America and Luke Skywalker and you will fully understand his origin story.
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