Monk, Season 6 Notes

"Mr. Monk and His Biggest Fan" first aired July 13, 2007

Per the title, this episode serves as a setup to mix Monk with an obsessive fan played by Sarah Silverman - the best work she's ever done. Her Marcy character was introduced in "Mr. Monk and the TV Star" in the second season, obsessing over a cheesy actor starring as a TV detective. After Monk busted the guy as a murderer, at the end of the episode she transferred her loyalty to Monk. Now she has the Monk fan website (far more extensive and groovy, alas, than this modest tribute). She's building dioramas of various cases. She seems to remember more details of his old cases than he does, which is something considering that we're talking about a dude with photographic memory. The cutest obsessive fan thing is how she refers to his cases with formal titles, which puzzles him but which viewers (especially DVD viewers working with menus) will recognize as the official episode titles of the series.

The funniest part is watching Monk being drawn in despite 100% knowing better. He'd as much as had a restraining order against her at one point, but she buys a few hours of his attention at a bachelor auction and goes to work on him with a freaky problem she's having, namely that her dog provably killed the neighbor woman - several days after he was dead and buried. Monk so much knows better than this girl, but her absolute adoration is awfully flattering, particularly to someone as self-centered as Monk. Plus, she's monogramming his wipes and following in front of him, wiping things and so forth. Plus, she's offering to replace the hated rival (in her mind) Natalie for free.

Naturally enough, Natalie eventually gets disgusted with both of them and leaves them for the day. Just as naturally, it doesn't take more than a couple of hours before Marcy has them in mortal danger through just general flakiness. It was a really sharp point of writing how she can't distinguish between fantasy and reality, and how that comes out at just the wrong point in the lumberyard.

The underlying crime was just about in the sweet spot for a Monk episode. The basic crime was simple enough - a man murdered his wife, but the how was somewhat exotic. The way he used the dog was a lot of bother, but that's reasonable, and seems entirely plausible. In short, it's a fairly plausible but exotic scenario that gives them a minor example of the impossible crime scenario that Monk strives for.

Also, they give good use to Stottlemeyer and Disher. Notice that Stottlemeyer figures out the truth independently of Monk, sitting at dinner. Disher's little Chippendale dance at the bachelor auction was priceless. Better yet is how they tie his game playing back in to eventually taking down the perp.

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"Mr. Monk and the Rapper" first aired July 20, 2007

Snoop Dogg makes quite an impression here as the barely fictionalized rapper Murderous, accused and looking awfully guilty for blowing up his rap rival (a doppelganger for the Notorious B.I.G.) with a car bomb, per the specifics of his recent song "Car Bomb." The plotline plays close enough to scary and traumatic events of Snoop's life that he's obviously convincingly emotionally invested.

On top of which, Snoop is going the distance here with original musical contributions that top the episode off. He's got a hip hop version of the Randy Newman theme song. Even better, they create a situation where Snoop ends up rapping the "here's what happened" segment. I don't know that it's his best song ever, but it works quite effectively in the dramatic context.

There's a real interesting character moment for Monk and Murderous when Monk, whom Murderous has hired, tries to quit him. Snoop/Murderous talking about his words and promises rings true to real life - and makes the gang banger Snoop Dogg start looking superior to Adrian Monk. In fairness though, Monk wasn't trying to be a wussy here, but was convinced himself at that point that the guy was guilty.

This brings us to the part where Monk can't get his mind around an important simple point that Natalie makes and he simply brushes off. Despite other evidence seemingly to the contrary, Monk should have know that Murderous was in fact innocent from the beginning because he hired Adrian Monk to solve the case. He sought Monk out exactly because he has the reputation of being the sharpest detective around who always gets to the truth. You just wouldn't do that if you were in fact guilty. I take this point of Monk not getting it not as a flaw in the show, but as an interesting little blind spot in the Monk character.

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"Mr. Monk and the Naked Man" first aired July 27, 2007

The most interesting thing about this episode to me is contemplating how people would take and how the writers intended for us to take Monk's idiocy and just childishly hateful behavior. Basically, there was a murder on a nude beach, and Monk had to deal with a couple of nudists on their turf - mostly one perhaps slightly hippie dippy but very nice man. Monk immediately went on a hatey-hate binge, determined that this guy was the murderer for absolutely no other reason than because he wasn't wearing pants.

You can try to play it off as just one of Monk's silly little phobias, but he's really frankly being a wicked little shit here. He knew better. He knew in his mind that this reaction was not just, but he was willing to try to send this man to jail for life cause poor little Monk doesn't like seeing weenies. You might not be able to control your emotions 100%, but you can control your actions. This was truly a fairly substantial sin by Adrian Monk.

Stottlemeyer gave Monk a pretty good talking to. He really should have slapped Monk down, preferably in front of the naked man.

The actual crime was pretty good. It was kind of a bank shot of motivation, but a pretty reasonable shot. It was not obvious, but it was set up with the "clean bill of health." It's particularly believable emotionally, seeing how not that exactly evil a gal gets drawn into absolute murder.

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"Mr. Monk and the Bad Girlfriend" first aired August 3, 2007

Not to put too fine a point on it, but Stottlemeyer has had bad luck in love. His pretentious and self-centered ex-wife was really an unappetizing character. Then he spends a year gearing up with this hot real estate agent. Then poor Adrian Monk has to tell Stottlemeyer that she's the guy. Did I mention that this bitch has balls the size of cantalopes? Being an assassin did not make this woman less sexy. Still, bad girlfriend.

More than anything, this was a Stottlemeyer character episode. It was understandable if not right reaction of pretty seriously slamming Monk against that car. He was not going to hear. He was 100% behind her until Monk absolutely drove up in the irrefutable evidence. I note that he never at all apologized to Monk for the hateful and even threatening things he had said.

One thing here bugged me. Early on, Monk found a fairly damning clue - a tube of lipstick from the woman's purse which exactly matched the color and brand identified by the murder witness, who was a cosmetics saleswoman and thus expert. He pointed this out to Natalie, and it was never mentioned again. He apparently never brought this pretty damning bit of evidence to Stottlemeyer's attention. Why not?

And the lady's downfall? "You parked on a hill."

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"Mr. Monk and the Birds and the Bees" first aired August 10, 2007

So Natalie's young teenager Julie has a date with the most popular guy in high school, and Mom is just worried sick. For whatever logic, she's determined that Julie needs to have a man talk to her about the birds and bees, and that it has to be Adrian Monk. Now of course that sounds messed up. Adrian insists that he's got to be about the least qualified person around for such a thing. You can imagine the comedic awkwardness of their talk.

However, Monk turns out to be exactly the one to have such a talk. Darned if this doesn't turn out to be one of the couple of sweetest episodes in the series. Obviously Monk would not be the person to give instructions in sexual technique or such, but of course that's not at all what was needed or intended. He certainly does know something about true love. How did you know that Trudy was the one? After the discussion coming from that, you can see how he's given her higher ideas and lifted the bar. After that, little Julie wouldn't be likely to be giving it up for some half-assed Lothario.

It takes a couple of fairly improbable co-incidences, but they tied the Julie story very nicely back into the crime. She's accidentally a walking advertisement proving that the murderer knew his victim - and it's all about her real boyfriend. It was a perfect detail at the end how the boyfriend's particular noted (and disrespected) skill saves the case.

Special bonus: Natalie gets to do the "here's what happened" segment.

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"Mr. Monk and the Buried Treasure" first aired August 17, 2007

This episode revolves around Monk and his shrink. Dr. Kroger is about beside himself over is teenage son who's skipping school to skateboard and listen to death metal with idiots, and is of course alienated from Dad. You kind of get the high and the low of Monk motivation here. He makes a project of looking the boy up and trying to talk to him because 1)Dr. Kroger's a good friend who has helped him out, and 2)his hated rival patient Harold has given the doctor a nice gift and Monk has to outdo him.

There's a buried alive turn, as in "Mr. Monk and the Cobra." They played this a lot different. It was maybe not quite as bad as his earlier experience, in that he was in a car where he could move around rather than in a coffin, and because he had a partner. The shrink's boy naturally had a level head under pressure, and probably did as good a job with Monk as his father could have under those circumstances.

Monk ends up getting credit for helping out with the boy, but I'm not sure how much Monk helped him. If Monk hadn't drug the boy back to the gravel pit, he would have never been endangered. It was one of the more truly clever criminal tricks in the series how they planted $5K for the boys to find with their "treasure map" and they were satisfied. By rights, you'd have to say that Monk actually seriously endangered the boy. Of course, he also caught some murdering bank robbers doing it.

Also, I'm not sure how Monk that much actually helped the boy. Boy got himself in trouble messing with a treasure map for $2 million they found on a dead guy. It was that crisis of being shot at and being buried alive that caused the juvenile to reconsider his unnecessarily disgruntled attitudes, not any pep talk from Monk. I suppose you could say Monk "helped" him by getting him buried with him in the gravel pit, which was the moment of clarity for the boy.

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"Mr. Monk and the Daredevil" first aired August 24, 2007

For the only time in the series, Monk is on suicide watch. It's one of the funniest episodes of all. His hated psychological doppleganger and rival for Dr. Kroger's affection Harold Krenshaw has become a celebrity and hero. Of course, Monk can't stand it. The Krenshaw character and Monk were just beautiful together. If the actors have down time, they could resurrect these characters pecking at one another as a nightclub act. It would be marvelous.

Plus, it bugs Monk because he just knows in his heart even beyond his envy that really this cannot be true. Yes, bunches of witnesses saw Krenshaw in the Frisco Fly uniform on the side of the building and fall to the ground. But Krenshaw was more afraid of heights than even Monk. There is no way in hell that he's been the human fly climbing the San Francisco skyscrapers for years.

Poor Harold Krenshaw, when you hear his cousin waxing publicly nostalgic over the serious physical abuse they used to visit on young Harold. You can see some of how Harold got messed up. Then imagine his position when you see at the end exactly what had happened. What would you do if you were him, deny being the hero? It was a nice bit of vindication at the end when he ends up going off the building and parachuting into the open arms of his cheering fans. Good for him.

Monk just really far more even than usual felt like a total pussy when he thought that Harold was the fly guy. That was why Monk was so down. He could always say that at least he was better than Harold Krenshaw. But Monk frequently walks into physical danger and fights and shoots and shows great physical bravery as a policeman. Maybe he partly works out those real physical fears through his crazy phobic reactions to mostly harmless things, bugs and dirt and milk.

But Monk routinely works up close and personal with real serious murderers every day, and he's never shy about telling them that he's got their number. Just for manly stuff, that's considerably more sack than a human fly.

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"Mr. Monk and the Wrong Man" first aired September 7, 2007

The writers start with the premise of what if somebody Monk sent to prison is exonerated by DNA evidence. The victim had blood under her nails from fighting the attacker - and not this guy's. After 14 years, Monk goes to great lengths to make right with the guy, including tracking down his ex-wife who is about to re-marry. They get some excellent comedy out of three different variations of the same famous church and bride scene of Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate pounding on the door of the church. Monk's behavior in this episode had very minimal of his typical OCD stuff. He seemed to be displaying more like classic Jewish guilt. I'd call this a subtle and appreciated change-up in style.

The inmate was a beautiful character. He was so resentful and unforgiving, but mostly pretty restrained. The tattoes of Monk on his bicep and the knife on the forearm that stab him between the eyes every time he does a curl- that's classic. It's obviously an act of will that he's not just killing people left and right. He's got a tattoo of the prosecutor who put him away. But yet the guy is significantly humanized by his helpless devotion to this not really even especially attractive girl. The scene with him and Monk at the beauty parlor was very good. The physical look of the guy, the maze of tattooes, the little bits of vulnerability and just little ticks make for a fairly memorable character.

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"Mr. Monk Is Up All Night" first aired September 14, 2007

They only got around to actually having a crime about halfway through this episode. The whole episode is about why Monk is up not just all night, but for days. In the opening scene, an average looking middle aged Hispanic woman very barely bumps into him on the crowded street. She looks up and says excuse me and hurries on her way. Monk catches her casual glance - and stops stunned. When she gets a block away, he finally gathers his senses enough to chase futilely after her. From then on, he can't sleep until he finds her. Even Monk himself couldn't tell you why.

This was a good setup for the crime that he stumbles onto. He calls Stottlemeyer to see this big murder he just witnessed, and there's nothing there. Obviously Monk is delirious from three days with no sleep. The waitress confirmed that no one had been killed in her stockroom in the last half hour, no sir. Then Monk found the guy he'd seen shot four times walking perfectly well through the bus station. They had a pretty good left field but reasonably plausible explanation for the inexplicable.

The whole payoff of the episode comes right at the tail end as they're leading the perp off, and Monk finally meets Maria the mystery woman. This results in one of the most tender couple of scenes of the whole series. You could just cry. It's beautiful.

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"Mr. Monk and the Man Who Shot Santa Claus" first aired December 7, 2007

This episode doesn't have a lot of pathos or character development, but it has perhaps one of the better actual crime setups of the series. Why was this felonious Santa Claus throwing out toys from the rooftop and carrying a gun? It's only most of the way through the show before they come up with an actual murder involved.

The fun parts of the episode though involve Monk being throughout the show an object of public ridicule after the opening scene, which makes him thereafter known to the public as the man who shot Santa Claus. He also sort of accidentally told all the kiddies in TV land that there's no real Santa. Bunches of families with gangs of children run him from their happy holiday midst. He is eventually instantly re-cast as a great hero after having to absolutely personally beat evil knife-wielding Santa into submission, in full view of families and TV crew.

There was just the smallest passing moment of pathos, during his disastrous formal interview with the TV reporter. They worked in that critical unopened last Christmas gift from Trudy, 10 years ago this year. Because he was the villain of the week, the reporter basically mocked him on air for not opening that package. It kind of marks you as disturbed or something, doesn't it? Stay classy, honey.

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"Mr. Monk Joins a Cult" first aired January 11, 2008

Monk joins a cult under cover to sus out the "Father" played by Howie Mandel suspected of murder and identified by an eye witness. Then Monk goes native. It becomes necessary for Stottlemeyer, Disher and Natalie to absolutely kidnap and de-program him, with of course the help of the shrink.

Meantime, you can see the appeal of the cult to Monk. There's order and purpose and minimal thinking and analysis. We've got flowers to sell. There's family and acceptance and happiness. Even to the extent that the Father turns out to be a fraud, it's fairly benign. His worst real scandal is that he doesn't want to admit to having a bad back. That and he makes a lot of money, but it's not stolen. Not really that evil.

But he was doing definite positive good for his people. Monk really did benefit and flower in the compound with the group. He wasn't feeling the need for those damned wipes. He was more genuinely cheerful there for a minute than almost ever. Whatever exactly the psychic cost, Monk got more peace of mind for a couple of days with this guru than in 1000 counseling sessions.

Also while weighing the guru, consider the murdered girl. Where was she better off, with him or on her own? Leave aside the part of her getting murdered. If that hadn't happened, would she have been better off doing what she did or laying up with the guru? His little flower power cult was a pretty positive atmosphere all in all, even if the Father was making a killing and wouldn't admit to regular mortal illnesses.

Monk distinctly struck a sour note with me right at the end, when Father comes around to thank him for proving his innocence and offer to take him home, or not. He expresses gratitude to Monk - who then insists on ratting him out about the bad back in front of his people. That goes to the hall monitor aspect of the Monk character, which is absolutely not endearing.

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"Mr. Monk Goes to the Bank" first aired January 18, 2008

They made a nice move in the first scene, setting up the characters trapped in a bank vault, and then rewinding the episode to show how they got there. Thus we're knowing and anticipating the entrapment the whole episode, getting maximum feeling out of the few minutes of screen time they're actually locked up.

The first scene with the statue was about their best gotcha moment with me as a viewer in the series. I'm sitting there probably a solid minute thinking that Disher is the world's biggest moron talking to and trying to argue with this statue, when the statue steps forward and speaks. D'oh!

Speaking of Homer Simpson, note the quiet little non-critical cameo for Dan Castelenata as a pawn shop broker.

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"Mr. Monk and the Three Julies" first aired January 25, 2008

This episode right here of the whole series, I'm calling bullshit. This was just so unbelievably, ridiculously arbitrarily contrived to make me want to smack up Tom Scharpling, credited with writing this. He actually had a perfectly good premise for three Julies, but he just destroyed all form of credibility or anything with, actually, a fourth Julie Teager.

Two Julie Teagers get killed, and you might reasonably think that there's some serial killer set on that name for whatever reasons serial killers have. Thus the total panic over our Natalie's young daughter. But there was a plausible explanation for the two Julie Teagers being murdered, in which the same name was significant to the killing but sort of co-incidental. No one was after our little Julie.

But then they run up with this Norman Bates lite thing, and I basically end up feeling a little insulted as an audience member. They just throw in out of the blue a third and completely unrelated dead Julie Teager, the object of taxidermy from her troubled young son. Oh come on now. Monk finds the desiccated corpse in a rocking chair facing the window. Now this should have at least gotten some good Monk material. It's certainly a reasonable thing to be freaked out over, more so than most of his regular silly phobias. But they didn't really even get much out of that. Plus, these Teagers had absolutely nothing to do with either of the murders whatsoever.

In short, they blew way past any semblance of credibility, and really for no story reason other than as a red herring. Early on, Monk says something about the odds of two dead Julie Teagers on the same day being astronomical, approaching impossible - but those two Julie Teagers were connected. The third one though was just a really, really cheap trick. It's a big, glaring cheat for little useful reason, other than to ramp up the idea of little Julie being endangered.

All parties responsible for this abomination must be taken out and put to the lash post haste.

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"Mr. Monk Paints His Masterpiece" first aired February 1, 2008

This episode works well on several levels. It's one of the better crime stories, in terms of some plausibility and cleverness of the plan. It makes especially good comedy with the Russian collector explaining the deep meanings of these Monk paintings. There's lots of good comedy with people's reactions, and watching his art class sucking up to him. Then there's the pure joy of watching Monk the artiste, beret and all.

Then there are a couple of little what I might call character points. One of them was Monk's reaction to solving the crime. On the one hand, the crazy praise from this one rich freak should have been setting off Monk's spidey senses. But on the other hand, you can see why it would be difficult to dismiss such flattery. But when he realized why his customer was so much wanting his paintings, the scales dropped from his eyes. Of course these paintings are crap - and he burned them. Then there's Natalie's point of character in turning down several thousand dollars for a painting that she hated because it would hurt Monk's feelings.

They get extra points for the critical painting of Natalie, which they never show - the better to let us imagine how terrible it must be, considering that she first thought it was supposed to be Stottlemeyer. She's got it hanging behind a big plant. Then the real payoff for the painting comes right at the end. Monk having burned all the other canvases, that painting was inevitably going to become super famous all over the news as evidence.

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"Mr. Monk Is on the Run (Part 1) first aired February 15, 2008

"Mr. Monk is on the Run (Part 2) first aired February 22, 2008

This was an excellent season finale. Rather than an impossible crime, this is an impossible innocence. Monk's in a dark warehouse with the six-fingered man who made the bomb that killed his Trudy. We see Monk standing there with his gun on him, which he later openly testifies never left his possession. We see the six-fingered man take two slugs to the chest. They're absolutely verified as being from his gun. But he didn't do it. Yet they eventually come up with a perfectly reasonable explanation for that - eventually.

In the meantime, Monk's about to be sent away to prison for life. You couldn't have a much more open and shut case, after all. So Monk breaks out of the prison van and goes on the run. Monk famously can barely function in normal urbane circumstances, so Monk by himself manacled up in an orange jumpsuit running through the woods is not a promising prospect.

Fortunately, in that context, necessity somewhat mutes his OCD behavior - but only so much. It was a perfect helpless to his OCD Monk thing, about the best in the series shortly after his escape with the jumpsuit. He comes very close to getting busted or just killed by a couple of hunters whose campsite he's rummaging through because he just absolutely has to sew up the pocket on the jumpsuit that he just ripped running through the woods from the bloodhounds still on his trail. That was obviously a beautiful and uniquely Monk nail biter. More comically, he's trying to lay low in some little town in Nevada working at a carwash, and can't help but solve a random hit and run. Thus, the undocumented Latino "Leland Rodriguez" is making ink as the "Carwash Columbo."

The best part of this story was the middle part, the end of the first episode when Stottlemeyer gives Monk two slugs to the chest and sends him crashing to his death off the peer in the cold, dark waters in the night. That was an excellent cliffhanger, except that to us viewers it was obviously a setup, for starters considering that the words "to be continued" then appear on the screen. However, it looked pretty convincing to the sheriff that he was trying to fool - and to Natalie and Lt. Disher.

That was cool, but the payoff was the first part of the finale, with Stottlemeyer and Natalie and Disher. Stottlemeyer doesn't want to tell them that Monk's alive, mostly in order to protect them. This plays out comedically with Disher, who is playing Stottlemeyer the really awful "protest song" he's writing for Monk's memorial service - 14 verses and a bridge, so far. Natalie and Stottlemeyer provided much more dramatic fare. She's shuffling through photos of Monk, making the collage for his service - and struggling very hard to forgive or understand or know what to think about Monk's oldest friend whom she had just watched kill him. They got excellent dramatic material out of her grief and confusion.

This is all a test of Leland Stottlemeyer's determination to leave everyone else out of the loop, even with how much that made Natalie suffer and made her hate him. Lt. Disher got the truth out of him through torture by awful song. How bad would it be for Stottlemeyer to let Disher actually publicly perform this song at a memorial service, only to have Monk turn up alive? Could Stottlemeyer hear one more damned verse without shooting Disher for real? Natalie eventually figured it out herself. It took less than Monk-level genius to notice the newspaper story about Leland Rodriguez, the Carwash Columbo.

Then there's Monk's worst enemy, the arch villain Dale Biederbeck pulling the strings. It might be that partly you'd have to know the season one episode that explains the character and his history with the Monks to 100% appreciate some of this, though they manage to de facto recap the basic point. That ended with Monk putting the bedridden 800 pound billionaire "Dale the Whale" in prison. Here we see not just his desire to get out, for he hadn't been able to leave his bedroom at home for years. With all the amenities he's being allowed when Natalie shows up to meet him for the first time, getting out of prison would seem like more a matter of the principle of the thing rather than any great practical difference.

No, he's really more motivated by vengeance against Monk for putting him in prison (for having a federal judge murdered) - thus the frame-up of Monk. He wants to "trade places" with Monk, as he says repeatedly. We see not just how far he's willing to go, but how far his influence spreads, and how far he can go.

Biederbeck's downfall is both literally and figuratively gluttony. He couldn't be satisfied with getting himself out of prison, which he could likely have gotten away with. No, he had to get Monk while he was at it. He made the busting up of his plan a matter of absolute personal survival for Monk. Then he has to add the gluttony of that pre-victory lap of having Natalie record that taunting video, which gives Monk the tiny little clue he needed to thwart him. This evil genius of all people should have known better.

They close the season with a beautiful vision of a hell. Monk comes by Biederbeck's cell in the closing epilogue, only now all his privileges have been revoked. His only food is the same institutional food as the other prisoners. He's got his wheelchair and a standard steel bunk bed, sink and toilet. That's all he gets, and having conspired unsuccessfully to assassinate the governor, there's no amount of money could buy him one indulgence now. Without the stuff, or the visits from the curvy manicurist, suddenly the bastard's really in prison. We close with his articulate and powerful but helpless rage as Monk walks away.

Monk would likely consider him the #2 most evil person in the world, second only to whoever the man was who had Trudy killed - seemingly even a little worse than the 6 fingered man who actually planted the bomb. So Monk would have to take a lot of satisfaction with this closing helpless burst of rage from the now thoroughly defeated Biederbeck.

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MONK PHOTO GALLERIES

VACUUM CLEANER DANCE

MONK'S BIKE RIDE

DENOUEMENT This is the climax of the series. You shouldn't look at this page until you've seen it.

TRUDY MONK PHOTO GALLERIES

TRUDY MONK IMAGES 1 2 3 4

STELLINA RUSICH PLAYED TRUDY IN SEASON 1

TRUDY MONK'S FIRST HAUNTING - PILOT IMAGES 1 2 3 4

TRUDY MONK VS OTHER WOMAN IMAGES 1 2 3 4

LINDY NEWTON SPECIAL APPEARANCE AS YOUNG TRUDY MONK