THE CAST IN SIX DEGREES OF: MIKE TYSON

Neil deGrasse Tyson was on Good Morning Today with Fred Willard, who was on D.C. Follies with Mike Tyson

THE PREMISE

Science is cool.

WHY YOU SHOULD WATCH

If you watch The Science Channel or Nat Geo, hungover on a Sunday, for hours on end then you know most of this already. If not, tune in.

WHY I’M NOT WATCHING IT

I have watched The Science Channel AND Nat Geo for hours at a stretch. I know this shit already.

Cosmos is as informative as it is ludicrous. Seth MacFarlane is a producer of this (which shocked the shit out of me). Why? Has he blown through all his Ted money? He must still be trying to live out his childhood Star Wars fantasies, because when Tyson first takes off in his “Ship of the Imagination,” I thought, “Boba Fett is gonna be pissed!” Then we get a different angle, and the ship is a chrome sliver of a thing that looks like the love child of Queen Amidala’s personal shuttle and a cyclops. The ship seems like a very expensive and unnecessary effect. And I don’t know whose imagination this ship sprang from, but they are about as imaginative as a piece of toast. The ship of my imagination would have warp capabilities, be heavily armed, and generally be badass like Admiral Janeway’s shuttle in the finale of Star Trek: Voyager. This ship just wills itself through space, into various atmospheres, and to all kinds of ocean depths with no change in configuration. Tyson is in a furniture-less room, alone, with a panoramic window. Speaking of Voyager, I still maintain that the first hour of Cosmos is just an in-depth look at Voyager’s opening credits. I know I am focusing too much on the “technology” in the show. Build a bridge. Don’t sci-fi me with some shit, then make it completely absurd. The cosmic radiation alone would have killed Tyson before he ever reached Mars. Guess they didn’t want to show a dead body touring the solar system… right, George Clooney?

THE GRADE: B-