Season Review: Mike Tyson Mysteries Season One

I was a bit worried about Mike Tyson Mysteries at the onset of the season. Mike Tyson AND Norm MacDonald in the same show? Sounded too good to be true. Fortunately, I was wrong, and instead Mike Tyson Mysteries turned out to be one of the better new series’ to happen in 2014.

The show is drawn to look as close to a Hanna-Barbara cartoon as you could possibly get and similar to those shows MTM doesn’t stay grounded in the least bit. Norm MacDonald is a ‘Pigeon’, and is probably the most important part of the show. As funny as Mike is, he doesn’t know how to deliver punchlines like Norm does. Furthermore, they could not have found a better actor to portray someone with gambling debts, drug issues, and whoring because Norm has certainly lived through those! I wasn’t all that interested in anything Yung Hee or Marquess had to say, as a matter of fact the latter made me want to throw a brick through my TV, but Mike and Norm did enough to keep me in the show, and in the vast majority of cases, MAKE the show.

As much as we thought Mike Tyson Mysteries was going to be about solving mysteries, really those became more happenstance. Instead, we got to see Mike deal with mites, his agent pitching ideas to make him more money, and his daughter dating werewolves. All of these ideas were hysterical, and for the most part, executed beautifully. Musical composition is a flaw for this series, and there were a number of mysteries I really wanted to see come to fruition only to be deviated, but overall this show provides enough jabs to keep you guessing, and then packs enough wallop to split your sides.