Review: Mike Tyson Mysteries: “A Mine Is a Terrible Thing to Waste”

Is this show taking it…in the shaft?…okay, that probably wasn’t my best comedic work, but it is just SO DANG HOT OUT where I live.

Spoilers Below

At an opening for local mining museum in Arizona, a mayor and his colleague attempts to cut the ribbon to properly open it up for tourists, but find that their novelty scissors are unable to sever the colored cloth! This, of course, requires the intervention of the Mike Tyson Mystery Team, and contacting them apparently takes THREE GODDAMN DAYS. Meanwhile, over with them, Deezy drops his aspiring model niece Viennetta (voiced by MAD TV’s Daniele Gaither) by to act as the team’s intern for the day, but only ends up falling into a hole in the museum. Luckily she doesn’t die (though Tom, the guy who isn’t Mayor, DOES die in a pretty gruesome fashion), and Mike falls in accidentally to find her perfectly fine, vowing to follow her dreams, and eventually making it to a successful interview that lands her on the cover of a magazine.

Alrighty, time once again to ring out as much as I can despite the very clear lack of substance to discuss. Viennetta’s use in the episode seems to be a riff bringing in a hopefully post-grad character onto a procedural show only to have them end the episode finding major character growth they lacked before. In this case, it’s more “well I almost died might as well go for it”, but you know this show by now, so they handle it as shakily and randomly as they always do. How the heck did out of the hole? Why did the mayor not bring actual scissors with him? Is famed comic book writer Alan Moore really the infamous Russian leader Rasputin who survived the assassination placed on him? These are all things we will never truly know. Except for that last team which is a definite yes. I’ve done the research.

The other thing worth talking about is yet more Mike being callous and turning his emotions on a dime to the worry of everyone around him. He threatens Deezy when there’s even the slightest hint of him resigning, openly insults his team despite them being only a few feet away, delays meeting with clients just to eat, and even trying to incur a credit roll just to make the situation go away when it looks like Viennetta might be dead. At this point, it’s pretty clear that it’s just part of his character, but I have to wonder if this is leading somewhere by the time we get to the end of the season. We can hope, at least.

Mike Tyson Mysteries. Neat. Weird. Short. Need I say more?

I mean, I’m going to have to say more for at least the next couple of weeks, but again, even with all the clear differences between them, this episode felt pretty quintessential MTM, so take that as you will. Guess we just sit back now and wait for the custom made weird to smack us right in the mine hole.