Mike Episodes 5 & 6 Recap and Ending Explained: Mike, streaming on Hulu, is presented more like chapters from Mike Tyson’s life. The titles for every episode summarize what best suits the essence of his personality during those certain incidents in his life. It creates a spectacle out of each such event and presents them in a highly dynamic manner. While navigating the greys of any character is admirable, making a larger-than-life personality out of an evil person does not sit well with me. It is hard to digest that the man, who sexually assaulted, abused, and tortured women, is getting the limelight. The issue is not the inclusion of these events in the script but the focus being disproportionately more on the larger-than-life persona of the person himself than those around him who made him a hero.
Mike Episodes 5 & 6 Recap:
The 5th episode, titled ‘Desiree’ begins with a non-Tyson-based introduction where we meet Desiree (Li Eubanks), a young and promising black woman backstage at a talent show. While all the contestants are asked to be prepared to get on the stage, the camera tracks to her face where she speaks about herself. While she had seen many white, blonde women winning beauty pageants since she was a kid, she wanted to be the one who breaks that image of beauty. Besides that, she had an impressive past – from making it to the National Honors Society, graduating from her high school to being a softball player & a national cheerleader. We follow the events that led to the day of the event of the pageant.
One day during a dance rehearsal, Mike (Trevante Rhodes) shows up and starts flirting with all the dancers. Being in awe of this heavyweight champion, she flirts back when he flirts with her. When your father and your brother are big fans of someone like him, you would not want to miss out on an opportunity to speak with the person. So, she did. And that led Tyson to be attracted to her to the point he asks her out after that. Sitting at her hostel, surrounded by her friends, she is motivated to go with him. They even build fantasies for her – how he would take her as his date at one of his fancy parties. As a result, she decides to go along with it.
Cut to and we see Desiree at a hospital along with her parents mentioning that she has been raped. The smile and joy on her face are all gone and what remains is a feeling of fear that we see on her face throughout the further medical procedure. When she is asked about it by the police, she requests to remain anonymous. For someone as young as her with a promising career still possible in the future, her request to not be remembered for the incident seems fair. However, she learns that Mike can be prosecuted only if she confesses in court while sharing minute details about the night. Even when her parents not wanting her to proceed with it, she decides to pursue the case.
Despite her being the victim, a group of African Americans supports Mike Tyson for the level of inspiration he brought to the lives of black people. His promoter, Don King (Russell Hornsby) finds every chance to build good public support for him. Nevertheless, Desiree gets to the court and shares her traumatic experience. While she considered it to be the night of her dreams, what unravels is a nightmare that she had not expected. Instead of taking her out, he brings her to his house. She expected it to be a detour so that he can pick up something from the house. But that night ends up being the one where he has sex with her without her consent, despite her constant requests to stop. He rapes her. The more she asks him to stop, the wilder he becomes. The horror of publicly testifying about it is conveyed effectively with a creative decision of her, breaking the fourth wall.
The support for Tyson continues in the outside world from gatherings and whatnot, diluting the concept of consent, to making Desiree look like a gold-digger by going after him. In court, when her mother testifies, she mentions how terrified she was after the incident, and how she started sleeping with her due to the constant nightmare about Mike. Yet, when he is asked to testify, he arrogantly mentions his intent the first time he saw her – ‘I wanted to fuck her.’ His vile intentions are met with the jury’s verdict of being guilty of the crime. While he is sentenced to a prison term, he is still showcased as an innocent black person, being convicted by a white man’s court.
The 6th episode, titled ‘Jailbird’ shows Tyson being brought to his prison, facing a life inside those walls yet again, just where his mother had thought he would end up being. As his Jail mate, he meets Ray Ray (Diesel Madkins) whom Mike mentions as the most patient man he came across. He always hoped Mike to do better, to start reading experiences of people from different walks of life, and for him to head on a better path. However, he wasn’t ready for a change right away. He stayed in denial of committing rape and had fights with other inmates due to the same reason. Outside the prison, he continued to get support from people who saw him as a person to respect.
Later, he received Alex Dershowitz as his attorney who had a reputation as the best lawyer in the world. But instead of his situation getting better, he ended up losing his appeal. After a point, he reached the stage of acceptance in prison and even started reading as Ray Ray suggested. In the time, of the ’90s, the war on drugs was on the rise. However, the prison time that black convicts used to get was significantly more than that of white ones. Mike understood this reality and how it impacts him inside the prison. While he started becoming friends with Ray Ray over the period, he was removed from Mike’s room leaving him alone for a while. Another inmate – Lloyd Franklin showed up after a while and kept guiding Mike on a better path. Mike became an entrepreneur inside the prison and started gaining respect.
Mike Episode 6 Ending, Explained:
After a while of starting the business, Mike got introduced to the religion of Islam. He started spending more and more time there and becomes inclined toward their discipline. However, that did not sit well with Don King who even went on to fire Captain Joe. That plan of his got backfired when he gets terminated from Mike’s service by Captain Joe and his supporters. Inside the prison, he gets the teachings from Imam Siddiq (Garland Whitt) to stay focused and change for the better. When he had only a few months of prison terms left, he gets to have a word with the revered author Maya Angelou. He quotes a line written by her and through the same, shares his wish to rise out of the pit of broken spirit he had fallen into.
After their conversation, they get a picture together – which Mike ends up selling for a piece of donut. He doesn’t seem to have understood the difference between momentary pleasures and a bigger goal. On the day he is supposed to get out of prison, he becomes conflicted with the thought of facing the people outside, leaving the feeling of safety he got used to inside the walls. He had his share of fears – what if he couldn’t fight anymore? How can a fighter return to the form he was in after three years? A rather scared Mike Tyson gets out of jail and faces the world.
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