Review: Mike Tyson Mysteries “Time to Fly; Make a Wish and Blow”

Pigeon needs to fix his diet for everyone’s sake.

Overview (Spoilers Below)

Season four premieres with a recap of what happened last season. That’s right, Mike Tyson Mysteries is trying its hand at continuity—but not really. The recap negated Deezy’s induction into the Mike Tyson super-secret government spy squad. Turns out, Mike, who’s helplessly non-confrontational, made the whole thing up as a way to fire Deezy as his agent. Once that amounts to nothing, the team is hired by a woman who claims her husband was abducted by aliens. Everyone is skeptical since their client is young and hot while the missing husband was old and decrepit. Yung and Marquess are particularly unprofessional and don’t believe their client. When the old timer’s wheelchair washes up at the bottom of a cliff alongside their manor, his wife is arrested. But of course the aliens were real—this is Mike Tyson Mysteries.

In the next episode, after Mike casually murders a delivery boy for forgetting his food, the team helps a seven-year-old girl whose wish didn’t come true. Since the poor child’s mother is a temporary trailer park prostitute, Marquess feels bad and tells the gang about a magical wishing well. He tries to drive everyone there but to breach the magical entrance he needs to drive the mystery van over 100mph. After a few nights, he finally succeeds but that idiot Marquess doesn’t slow down and kills a majestic fawn. They find the girl’s wish and like magic, her father returns from prison. However, he and the mother are almost immediately killed in a meth explosion. But lucky for the little girl, the magic deer couple that just lost their baby opts to raise her as their own.

Our Take

Four years strong and Mike Tyson Mysteries is just as ridiculous as the day it premiered. “Time to Fly” went back to the basics and actually had the team investigating a mystery, even though it didn’t amount to much more than Mike floating a few ideas about how to get into space to confront the “aliens.” The Deezy subplot was unnecessary—as Deezy plots often are—but it made for a great Rhys Darby cameo whose distinct New Zealand accent is always a welcomed treat. The case itself was predictable and wasn’t as intriguing as past outings. Once revealed, the aliens could’ve done something more interesting than aping Mike’s heat shield comments. It’s great that Mike got a catchphrase—the titular “time to fly”—hopefully, we never hear it again.

The next episode captured the show’s typical sardonic tone and was a much more enjoyable watch. Jokes like Mike mistaking any Tyson brand chicken nuggets as his property also landed better than the earlier simplistic catchphrase-based gags. The obvious parallel between the wishing well and a vagina was a little heavy-handed but at least they didn’t spend an exorbitant amount of time on it. It was a little odd that nobody called out Marquess for slaughtering that baby dear, especially Yang who you’d expect it from, but the surreal experience was entertaining enough that such hiccups didn’t really matter. Overall, this was a much stronger outing with a more satisfying ending. Good luck, little girl.