IMDb, an Amazon company

Monk: Mr. Monk and the Three Julies (2008)

Season 6, Episode 13

8/10

James Cameron and Alfred Hitchcock called, and they'd like to have their movies back.

11 August 2024

Captain Stottlemeyer is showing off his new car when a call comes in that Julie Teeger has been murdered. Natalie rushes to the scene to find that the victim is a woman in her 30s, killed with a kitchen knife. While the police are still working that crime scene, yet another Julie Teeger is reported dead. She's a student who was killed by a hit and run while she was riding a bike. But the thing is, Monk determines whoever hit her backed over to finish the job. This is also murder.

So Natalie's daughter, also named Julie Teeger, is put in protective custody when it is learned she is the only Julie Teeger alive for a thousand miles. A suspect is located - a man with a history of mental illness and violence who has had a troubled relationship with his mother, also named Julie Teeger. Is this person "the guy"? Watch and find out.

I'm not sure I like Julie very much after this episode. She can be very sweet, kind, and understanding of Monk's weirdness. Here, however, she is terrible to her mom and thinks having to delay her driver's license test because a homicidal maniac could be hunting her just because of her name is an unendurable experience. Then, at the end, she makes the remark that she gets what she wants from her mom if she pushes hard enough, in this case a car. Maybe this is just to cast her as more of a typical rash and rebellious teen.

Good comic bits include Natalie driving off panicked in Stottlemeyer's new car every time she thinks her daughter is in danger, each time leaving it in a more wrecked condition. Also Randy impersonating the suspect's elderly mother is comedy gold.

0 out of 0 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink

Monk: Mr. Monk Goes to the Bank (2008)

Season 6, Episode 12

8/10

An oddly structured episode...

11 August 2024

... with the first scene consisting of a couple of cops ticketing a car late at night outside a bank and mentioning that this bank was just robbed yesterday. Inside the bank we see Stottlemeyer, Disher, Natalie, and Monk - in a guard's uniform - trapped inside the vault where the safe deposit boxes are.

Then the show backs up to the day of the robbery, with Stottlemeyer and Disher chipping in since the robbery detail is shorthanded. Monk shows up not because he is part of the investigation, but because Trudy's bracelet is in his safe deposit box here. Unfortunately, his was one of the boxes that was robbed and her bracelet is gone. Monk sees some clues that makes him think that "the Russian" - as the bank employees describe the robber - had a "man on the inside". So he takes a job as a security guard at the bank to figure out who that inside man might be. Complications ensue.

There are some great bits of comic business here, including Monk, as the security guard, evening out people's deposits with his own money so that people deposit and withdraw money in ten's of dollars. Also, Randy becomes obsessed with the human statue street performer operating outside of the bank to the point he tries to imitate him. It seems that Randy is Monk to the street performer's Harold Crenshaw in this case.

1 out of 1 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink

Monk: Mr. Monk and the Birds and the Bees (2007)

Season 6, Episode 5

7/10

Mr. Monk and the missing link...

11 August 2024

...not an evolutionary "missing link", but a link between to criminals.

An "intruder" enters a large home and talks with the occupant, sports agent Robert Sherman, about what the intruder thinks is a set up for an insurance scam. Instead Sherman shoots the "intruder" dead. The wife comes downstairs after hearing the gunfire and Sherman then shoots her dead. Sherman's intention all along was to have this look like a burglary in progress with the wife killed by the burglar and the burglar killed by Sherman. The police arrive and it looks like they are buying the burglary story. But Monk finds some inconsistencies in Sherman's stories enough that he thinks Sherman is "the guy" but not enough for an arrest for murder. For that he needs to find some connection between Sherman and the dead "burglar", who did have a criminal record. And that is where the complications ensue.

Separately, Natalie's 15 year-old daughter, Julie, has her first serious boyfriend. She even has a t-shirt with their picture on it, made from a photo taken at a local amusement park. But then, suddenly, the most popular boy in school takes an interest in her and she throws her current boyfriend over for this guy. I realize that age 15 is the time of extreme teenage angst, but this seems like a crummy move to pull.

Lacking a father figure in her life, Natalie goes to Monk and asks him to have a conversation with Julie about the birds and the bees, which Monk does very reluctantly. Monk doesn't like the topic and he doesn't like dealing with sobbing teenage girls. Yet in the end, he delivers an excellent talk about love and sex based on his own experience of meeting and falling in love with Trudy, and Julie genuinely appreciates it.

I'd say the mystery in this one is a 6/10 and the character development an 8/10, making the entire episode a 7/10.

0 out of 0 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink

Monk: Mr. Monk and the Man Who Shot Santa Claus (2007)

Season 6, Episode 10

7/10

Mr. Monk is accused of being "the guy" for a change

11 August 2024

It's Christmastime, and Monk is having a hard time with all of the seasonal cheer considering it's the tenth anniversary of Trudy's death. He's in a car with Natalie and her daughter when stuffed animals start pummeling the car. It turns out a Santa is on a nearby rooftop throwing toys down to the crowd. Monk is annoyed. He says the guy is creating a public nuisance and goes up to confront this Santa. Later, shots ring out. When Natalie reaches the rooftop, it appears that Monk has shot Santa!

In fact, Monk admits to shooting this Santa. His story is that a gun fell out of Santa's waistband, that Santa then attacked Monk with a metal pipe, and that Monk then grabbed the gun and fired in self-defense. Santa's story is that Monk shot him as a result of no provocation on his part. Meanwhile a tabloid style TV journalist is talking up the story and as a result all of San Francisco hates Monk.

Monk started doing Christmas episodes several seasons in, and even though this is a comedy show with a murder mystery there just to hold the story elements together, it is pretty hard to weave a Christmas theme into such a show with such a bleak yet comedic central character as Monk. Also, I doubt that in a big city like San Francisco people are going to recognize, point at, stare at, and shame Monk every time he appears in public as though this is Mayberry where there is some kind of small-town shared community standard.

The show isn't taking itself too seriously in this episode. Note that in the final big chase scene there is a truck with "Belham Brothers Quarry" emblazoned on the side, which was the same quarry involved in the buried treasure episode earlier in the season.

1 out of 1 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink

Monk: Mr. Monk and the Wrong Man (2007)

Season 6, Episode 8

8/10

Mr. Monk has a crisis of conscience and confidence

11 August 2024

The initial scene is a woman hearing screams from next door. She walks over to the house, goes inside, and finds a grisly murder scene and the wall safe blown open.

Fast forward 14 years to today and Monk and the woman we saw in the first scene are at a parole hearing for the man convicted of killing the couple, Max Barton. A parole hearing for a guy only fourteen years after being convicted of a double murder??? But I digress. Monk is speaking about the horror of the crime scene when in walks somebody with some news. Max Barton has been exonerated of the crimes - The DNA evidence at the scene has been analyzed and it does not belong to Max.

Monk is devastated. The one thing he had confidence in - his instincts concerning solving murders - has now been proven lacking, and worse he has cost an innocent man 14 years of his life. He tries to make it up to the guy - He finds his ex-wife who divorced him while he was in prison, he gets Max a job - but still his confidence is shot. And Max is, at the very least, not a very nice person. He loafs unapologetically on the job Monk got him and uses the fact that Monk feels guilty about the situation to manipulate him. Meanwhile the murder case where Max was originally convicted has been reopened. Will the real killer be caught? Watch and find out.

On the humorous side, there's not one but three homages to the interrupted wedding scene from The Graduate, and Disher is reveling in the fact that he had nothing to do with Max Barton's wrongful conviction - For once he wasn't the screw-up because the case was made years before he was even on the police force.

1 out of 1 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink

Monk: Mr. Monk and the Buried Treasure (2007)

Season 6, Episode 6

7/10

Mr. Monk meets teenage manipulation

10 August 2024

Monk notices a watch Dr. Kroger is wearing and finds out that Harold bought it. This makes Monk want to give Dr. Kroger a gift, which leaves the doctor uncomfortable.

So when Dr. Kroger's son, Troy, comes to Monk for a favor, Monk is all in. He's so all in, in fact, he doesn't think through the story he's being told. That story is that Troy - and his two ne'er do well friends - are going to fail English class unless they can complete an extracurricular activity - Find the treasure on a treasure map. What's really going on is that the kids found a body in a car earlier that day and in the backseat were some empty bank bags and the map they call a "treasure map". They've gone to Monk because they want to find the two million dollars from the robbery that they assumed is buried where the map specifies, except the labeling is obtuse and they figured Monk could help with putting the clues together.

Monk fails to ask the fundamental questions he would normally ask because his OCD has him focused on helping Troy so that he can please the doctor with a better gift that Harold's gift of a watch. And the kids just aren't mature enough to realize that the bad guys who stole this money and killed a bank guard to get it would kill to get rid of them too. Complications ensue.

On the purely comic side, Randy Disher finds an "all you can drink" coupon for his favorite diet soft drink and is annoying the captain by slurping on one all day. The captain takes an exacto knife to the problem. However, Randy's soft drink habit does help solve the case.

1 out of 1 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink

Licorice Pizza (2021)

7/10

A fascinating relationship between two very different people

10 August 2024

While it's true that Paul Thomas Anderson could direct "Phone Book: The Movie" and it would still end up on my year-end "best of" list, Licorice Pizza conjures up a fascinating relationship between a teenager seemingly wise beyond his years and a twenty-something who just can't seem to figure out how to navigate the real world.

A lot of debate has been stirred up in The Discourse about the appropriateness of the relationship between these two characters. But I feel as though the film is neither the grotesque endorsement of the age gap that its detractors view it as, nor the staunch rebuke of it that some defenders claim it to be. What Licorice Pizza does exceedingly well is give us an utterly compelling pair of characters and allow us to watch as they grow together, apart and together again in a world that expects women to grow up and allows men to stay children forever.

0 out of 0 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink

The Green Knight (2021)

6/10

Timely yet Arthurian

10 August 2024

The Green Knight is both unabashedly Arthurian and a very timely cautionary tale. In one of my favorite sequences in recent memory, Sir Gawain, who has spent the entire film in staunch defiance of death and nature is shown a vision of a world in which he does not keep his promise to the Green Knight and rides away unscathed. The world he is shown is one of dishonor, bloodshed and moral degradation.

It's a world that feels not unlike the one we live in. Lowery is somehow able to preserve the authenticity of a centuries-old myth, while simultaneously giving us a hyper-relevant story about the cost of our modern inability to humble ourselves before nature.

0 out of 0 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink

Red Rocket (2021)

7/10

the mind of a con man and serial abuser.

10 August 2024

Red Rocket continues Sean Baker's streak of deeply empathetic cinema, but instead of using his lens to capture the inner lives of the downtrodden and vulnerable, as he's done in his previous films, we are instead let into the mind of a con man and serial abuser.

Mikey Saber starts out like many a Sean Baker protagonist- likable and magnetic if a little rough around the edges. But where we would usually find over the course of the film that this magnetism is masking a deep sadness or complexity, we instead come to learn that Mikey Saber's charm masks something much more insidious. We, the audience, can only watch in horror as he drags a naive teenager into his schemes and leaves behind a slew of ruined lives in his wake. It's a challenging and often frustrating film, but like its wily protagonist, it was able to charm me and win me over, purely by the virtue of its chutzpah.

0 out of 0 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink

Monk: Mr. Monk and the Daredevil (2007)

Season 6, Episode 7

8/10

This episode has a murder plot right out of the Batman TV show!...

10 August 2024

...It really is that ridiculous, yet the episode is great fun.

The police are investigating a very strange vehicular death - maybe a homicide? A car is found that has been completely burned with the VIN removed and a body burned beyond recognition inside. Monk says that the vehicle crashed, maybe hit a deer during the day. However, at night somebody else came by and set the fire and destroyed the identification of the vehicle. Why?

At the same time, the daredevil "The Frisco Fly" is putting on a bright green body suit and scaling high rises in the San Francisco area, disappearing before the police can catch him. Then one day he's spotted scaling a building and he falls to the ground 24 floors below yet lives. He has some broken bones and a concussion, but nothing permanent. And the news is - The Fly is apparently Harold Krenshaw, Monk's nemesis and rival for the attention of Dr. Kroger, Monk's psychiatrist.

Monk doesn't believe that Harold is the Fly, yet when he investigates he can't explain away the crowd that saw Harold actually fall to the pavement or Harold's injuries. And he sees physical signs that Harold was on the roof of the building.

This sends Monk into an emotional tailspin and Dr. Kroger puts him on informal suicide watch with Natalie and Stottlemeyer taking turns being with him. Monk has lost all interest in squares, groups of ten, or even being sure his top button is always fastened. He can't get past the fact that he could always tell himself, at his lowest point - At least I'm not Harold! And now Harold has cured his fear of heights to the point of being a local hero and the toast of the town. Watch to find out how this works itself out.

I always loved the rivalry between Harold and Monk - they really had so much in common. This seemed a return to form for the series with the characters seeming more grounded. Some recent episodes tried to make Monk's illness too much of the comic relief. This episode shows just how serious his illness can get.

1 out of 1 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink

Monk: Mr. Monk and the Naked Man (2007)

Season 6, Episode 3

9/10

Mr. Monk confronts his bigotry

7 August 2024

One night a young woman, a file clutched in her hand, rings for entry to a large mansion, claiming it is a matter of life and death. A car pulls up and a figure with a knife chases the woman down to the beach below. The assailant catches he young woman and stabs her repeatedly until she dies, takes the file, and leaves.

The next day the police are on the beach looking at the victim and the scene. Monk is invited of course. But after Monk is already there Stottlemeyer and Natalie notice that this is a nude beach. Monk has a fear of nudity like he has a fear of so many other things. But this is different. It's not just a fear he has for nudity and nudists, it's an active dislike and even disgust - very un-Monk like. Monk seems to have it in for a guy who lives in a trailer on the beach. He's like the leader of the nudists, particularly in their attempt to keep the tech billionaire in the big house above from attempting to get the zoning commission to allow the sale of the beach to himself. Does this struggle have anything to do with murder? Watch and find out.

Stottlemeyer's little intervention with Monk over his hang-up with the nudists is good acting by Ted Levine, and it leads Monk to confronting a childhood trauma that turns out to not be what he's thought that it was all of these years. Highly recommended mainly for Monk's reaction to the various and unique situations presented in this episode.

1 out of 1 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink

Monk: Mr. Monk and His Biggest Fan (2007)

Season 6, Episode 1

7/10

Mr. Monk and the case of the "ghost dog"

7 August 2024

Monk has an avid fan, Marci Maven, that he has a restraining order against, she is that nuts about him. Separately, her neighbor is mauled by a dog and it's determined that Marci's dog was the culprit when the police match bite marks on the woman with the dog. The extenuating factor is that the dog was dead by the time the police arrive at Marci's home and they had to dig him up to do the test. The police postulate that she found out what her dog did and had him euthanized after the fact to produce an alibi. She says the dog died of natural causes three days before the neighbor's death.

Marci can't get near Monk because he simply won't answer the door to her because of her goofy obsession and clinginess. When the San Francisco police put on an auction of male officers to raise money for charity, Natalie encourages Monk to be part of it. He reluctantly agrees. However, Marci bids 800 dollars to get six hours with Monk because she's obsessed, but also because she wants him to find out how the neighbor actually died, since she swears her dog was dead at the time and could not have done this. Wouldn't it be obvious a dog has been dead three days rather than a few hours? But I digress.

I've never been a fan of Sarah Silverman, but this was a fun departure from the normal flow of things. It's fun to see Marci treating Natalie like some high school girl rival in regard to how close Natalie is to Monk as his assistant. Also, there is a great in-joke about the names Marci gives to Monk's past cases which are the same names that the writers of the show gave to the individual episodes, with Monk asking "Where do you get these names?"

1 out of 1 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink

Monk: Mr. Monk and the Bad Girlfriend (2007)

Season 6, Episode 4

10/10

Stottlemeyer becomes the new Andy Sipowicz...

7 August 2024

Warning: Spoilers

... though not so tragic a figure as that character in NYPD Blue.

Stottlemeyer is planning his first vacation in ten years with his girlfriend, high-power realtor Linda Fusco. One night when her long time realty partner is showing a house to a couple, a figure dressed in black like a ninja appears from the bathroom and shoots the partner dead with one blast of a shotgun to the chest. The couple there to see the house flees in terror. The assassin does not pursue them.

Monk is called in to help out on the investigation, and it appears to him the assailant had a key to the house and made it look like he broke in. One of the witnesses to the attack says she thinks the assailant was a woman because she recognized the brand of lipstick she was wearing - she's a buyer for a cosmetics company. Plus Monk notices a picture of Linda Fusco hunting with her grandfather. Then he finds out that the dead partner was going to start his own company and take more than half of their joint clients with him. And Linda Fusco uses the brand of lipstick described by the witness. Linda sure looks like she's "the guy".

But how did she do it? The night of the murder she was at home having an internet video date with the captain. Monk and Natalie saw it themselves. The date lasted until 7PM. The realty partner was killed twenty minutes later 30 miles away with heavy San Francisco traffic in between.

But the worst of his problems is the captain. When Monk tells him his suspicions, Stottlemeyer throws his anger management techniques out the window and almost gets violent with Monk. And from that point forward he is not so passive aggressive with him when working on this case.

The reason I have a spoiler warning on this is that Linda does turn out to be the murderer. Stottlemeyer does not need to wait for the big reveal to figure that out though. Linda Fusco has planned so carefully. She has been the great actress, seeming to mourn her partner so sincerely. But she makes a mistake. Feeling that Monk is closing in on her, she tells the captain that Monk came to her house, accused her of the murder, and tried to sleep with her. Stottlemeyer says nothing. But the look on his face says it all. This is Adrian Monk she's talking about. He is, true to his name, practically a monk. The only woman in his life is his dead wife, Trudy. He would never do this, so why would she lie unless she is trying to discredit him, trying to cover up something, and what else would that be but her murdering her business partner, as Monk is sure that she did. In the big reveal Monk shows how Linda committed the murder and covered the 30 mile distance, and it was not with jet packs as Disher proposed.

The end is sad, with Stottlemeyer going to Hawaii after all, but with Disher. Lounging on the beach, he wonders aloud if the relationship with Linda was ever real, or if it was a set-up from the beginning. He takes out an engagement ring and throws it in the ocean. The test of the good writing of this episode is that we don't know Linda's motivation for getting with Stottlemeyer. We don't know if she really loved him and the murder plan came later or if she thought from the beginning that having a cop for a boyfriend would deflect attention from her as far as being a suspect.

This is really good acting from all concerned, but especially Ted Levine as Stottlemeyer.

0 out of 0 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink

Monk: Mr. Monk and the Big Game (2006)

Season 5, Episode 3

7/10

Mr. Monk goes back to high school

4 August 2024

Natalie's daughter is playing varsity high school basketball, and the team is in practice for the championship game. After practice, when everybody else goes home, her coach is murdered by someone who sets things up to look like an accident. He puts a blow dryer on the floor of the locker room and starts a leak in one of the sinks so that water pools around a live wire. The coach is electrocuted when she comes out of the shower.

The girls on the team pay Monk 57 dollars to investigate her death as they don't believe it was an accident, they think it to be murder. Monk reluctantly agrees, mainly because one of the girls is crying and he would do anything to stop her excretion of bodily fluids into a tissue in his living room. Monk's initial investigation into the victim's life finds that this woman is a saint with a very boring life who would seem to have no enemies. How does this turn out? Watch and find out.

We learn a lot about high school age Monk in this episode. Apparently he really wanted to win a trophy in track, and never got one. Also, he was a big snitch too, going to the principal to inform on other kids. He saw that as "keeping study hall safe for the good kids".

1 out of 1 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink

Monk: Mr. Monk, Private Eye (2006)

Season 5, Episode 5

8/10

Natalie gets in touch with her Gilded Age roots

4 August 2024

Natalie, after years of criticizing her rich relatives for being so materialistic, starts to show some signs of being that way herself. That would normally be her business, but she drags Monk into it. She takes a bonus that Monk got for solving a particularly hard case and uses it to rent an office and buy office supplies, all without Monk's knowledge. And all of that is so that Monk can become a private investigator and make lots of money. That's her dream, not his, as Monk likes solving murder cases not spying on cheating spouses. He does what he does in a large part in the service of Trudy's memory. Natalie KNOWS all of this, and yet she did this anyways.

So Natalie drags Monk downtown to the office that she rented, and eventually one client does show up. She wants to catch the guy who scraped her car. So Monk actually does solve this case, but as luck would have it, he also stumbles into a couple of murders without iniitally knowing that.

I don't think I like the greedy side of Natalie, though I know it's all done in service to the comedy. I really like free spirit Natalie of the hundred odd jobs much better.

1 out of 1 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink

Monk: Mr. Monk and the Garbage Strike (2006)

Season 5, Episode 2

9/10

Mr. Monk faces a true test of the courage of his convictions

4 August 2024

This is a surreal episode of Monk, with San Francisco facing a possibly prolonged garbage collection strike over the contract of the sanitation workers. Naturally this greatly disturbs Monk, who wishes the president of the sanitation workers' union dead. The next day he gets his wish as the union head is found dead in his office, shot through the temple, a gun in his hand. It's ruled a suicide by the police and the sanitation workers refuse to continue contract negotiations, believing that their union president was murdered. The union leaders thus approach Monk and say that they don't think their president was the kind of guy who would ever kill himself. Thus they want to hire Monk to decide independently if it was suicide or murder, and if it's suicide they'll go back to the bargaining table. If it is murder, will Monk have the courage of his convictions and say something that will delay the removal of these mountains of garbage? Watch and find out.

This is one great episode with bags of garbage being dropped from the offices above Dr. Kroger's as Monk describes his fear of being buried alive by garbage along with plot points that include an architectural oddity called the "Whispering Spot", a possibly menacing mayor, and even a cameo by Alice Cooper.

1 out of 1 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink

Monk: Mr. Monk Is at Your Service (2007)

Season 5, Episode 12

8/10

Mr. Monk reaches a fork in the road

3 August 2024

Monk is depressed that the San Francisco police department has just enacted a four year hiring freeze, and in four years he would be too old to be rehired. Dr. Kroger tells Monk that this might be an opportunity to try something new.

At the same time, Natalie thinks that her parents' neighbors might have died as a result of a murder at the hands of their son. She bases this on the son being pushy about wanting to date her back in high school and the fact that somebody mugged and broke the legs of her prom date right before the prom. Monk, who is depressed to begin with, is just not interested in theories of murder, especially when they are based on Natalie's 20 year old impression of somebody. But she pushes him into the investigation. At the neighbor's home he stumbles into a job interview for being the new butler and, without trying very hard, gets the job due to his attention to detail and tidiness.

At this point, Monk becomes uninterested in investigating Natalie's case as he thinks he has truly found himself in being a butler or, as Monk prefers, "house manager" and he - as do the police - sees nothing that makes him believe that anybody was murdered.

Sean Astin makes a good creepy "master of the house" who still crushes on Natalie twenty years after the fact. Holland Taylor returns to the role of Natalie's mother, and she excels as a snob who is yet oddly likeable.

1 out of 1 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink

Monk: Mr. Monk and the Actor (2006)

Season 5, Episode 1

10/10

Mr. Monk and the method actor

28 July 2024

A man is getting sexually playful with somebody he just met after they go to her place when he realizes she is filming them. He realizes this is a setup - he's married. They fight for the camera and the woman is killed in the scuffle. He leaves. Later the police are investigating the scene and Stottlemeyer is asked if this is possibly a serial killer. He says no - that this was a crime of passion and the man will probably never cross the line again. Immediately we see the killer breaking into a pawn shop. He takes a watch, but the proprieter appears with a gun. There is a struggle, the gun goes off and the pawn shop proprietor is killed.

In parallel, a movie is being made about the killer astronaut case of last season and actor David Ruskin is playing Monk. But Ruskin is a method actor and wants to follow Monk around to really get inside his head. Natalie warns Monk about this guy as he played an alcoholic in a previous movie and had to go into rehab afterwards. The thing is, Ruskin doesn't drink! Complications ensue.

This was a great episode with lots of humor and pathos. On the humorous side, Randy is really excited to hear he is a character in the film too. He is not so happy to find out during rehearsals that Randy Discher is played by a beautiful woman who is having an affair with Stottlemeyer!

1 out of 1 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink

Monk: Mr. Monk Gets Jury Duty (2006)

Season 4, Episode 16

9/10

Eleven angry men, and the object of their anger - Monk

28 July 2024

A dangerous South American drug lord is captured by Stottlemeyer and Discher. But the feds drop by after the arrest and claim jurisdiction, setting the appointed date for the transfer to federal custody. The drug lord vows he will escape.

In a separate story, Monk gets called and selected for jury duty in a stabbing case. The judge just thinks all of his weird proclivities are an elaborate attempt to get out of jury service. The case seems straightforward and goes to the jury quickly. On the first ballot there are eleven guilty verdicts and one not-guilty vote - Monk's. He spends all of that day and part of the next convincing the jury of the man's innocence. At the same time, he just looks out the window and sees things that lead him to believe there is a body in the dumpster nearby. He's right.

Do all of these things join forces at any point - the drug dealer, the jury deliberations, and the body in the dumpster? Watch and find out.

It is ridiculous to think that Monk would end up on the jury of any criminal case given his profile as a great detective, but then this is a comedy show with the plot points just held together by a mystery, so just go with it. The real point is that Monk can work with a team - even a team of total strangers - if circumstances force him to do so. He is not a lone wolf by necessity.

2 out of 2 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink

Monk: Mr. Monk Goes to the Dentist (2006)

Season 4, Episode 15

7/10

A Discher centric episode

28 July 2024

There is an elaborate robbery of an armored truck that involves kidnapping the entire truck, drivers and all. Later, the truck, the bodies of the drivers, and even part of the money is recovered.

Separately, Randy goes to the dentist with a terrible toothache. The dentist says one of his molars will have to come out, and he puts him under. But while Randy is out, he thinks he sees a man come into the examining room, argue with the dentist and his assistant, and then get killed by them. Plus he notices he was out for two hours, not the thirty minutes that the dentist initially said that he would be out.

When Randy tells Stottlemeyer about this, he's just told that he was hallucinating because of being out. He gets teased by the other cops, loses his temper, and quits the force, saying he is tired of being considered a big joke. He is just now noticing this? Complications ensue, not the least of which is Monk wanting to help Randy, but being very handicapped by the fact that he is afraid of dentists.

This was largely a Discher-centric episode, so there was less Monk than usual. Discher has been the comic relief in this series from the beginning as he always has goofy theories of the crime. And one would wonder - Why would a couple of law-abiding dental professionals suddenly turn homicidal? But, after all, this is Monk where we have already had, in a past episode, a group of Hispanic maids involved in advanced financial crimes seemingly far past their educational level.

1 out of 1 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink

Monk: Mr. Monk Bumps His Head (2006)

Season 4, Episode 11

9/10

Mr. Monk in misery

28 July 2024

Monk meets a man who says he has information about Trudy's death. When Monk smells a scam, the man hits Monk on the head, takes the money anyway along with Monk's wallet, and throws Monk into the back of a truck which then departs, with the driver knowing nothing about what happened. Monk wakes up when the rig arrives in Wyoming. The driver just thinks Monk is some bum and gives him five dollars to buy a meal. Monk doesn't know he's Monk. He has amnesia, and without his wallet has no way to know who he is.

In this same Wyoming town, a middle-aged woman (Laurie Metcalf) is living Eleanor RIgby's life - nobody even noticed she was gone on a cruise for three months, and people try to have as short a conversation as possible with her. And then she spots Monk, hears about his amnesia, and sees his wedding ring. She convinces him that he is her husband and that they met on the cruise. Monk still remembers to be polite and kind, but he doesn't find her attractive, finds her house to be a mess, and is being forced to do chores such as roof repair that messes with his phobias. He may have amnesia, but those phobias are a part of him and are still there.

And then a waitress in the town disappears suddenly while leaving all her possessions behind, including a beloved pet, and Monk's detective instincts surface even though he doesn't remember being one. Back in San Francisco, Monk's friends and associates are working to find out what happened to him.

I felt sorry for Metcalf's character. She was overbearing, rude, and manipulative, but she was also alone in the world and thought she could grab a little happiness for herself as she was drowning in her loneliness.

1 out of 1 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink

Monk: Mr. Monk and Little Monk (2005)

Season 4, Episode 8

7/10

Two mysteries for the price of one

27 July 2024

A couple of men break into a house and vandalize a painting and take nothing with them. Because the housekeeper wakes up and catches them, they get into a scuffle and the housekeeper is accidentally killed.

The woman who owns the house wasn't home that night, but comes to Monk to solve the case. It turns out to be Sherry Judd, somebody Monk had a crush on in junior high. He somewhat returns to age 13 in her presence, which is amusing. Stottlemeyer thinks that maybe Sherry herself may have done it for the insurance money for the painting. Monk says no, because Sherry got a very large settlement when she divorced her husband which includes 20 thousand dollars a month in alimony. Monk is acting like he is still interested in this girl from his past but, alas, the painting restoration guy she takes the vandalized portrait to is also somebody she knew in junior high and they are hitting it off all over again. Meanwhile, in an amusing flashback, there is a mini mystery as Monk is shown as he was in junior high when he saved Sherry from being falsely accused of stealing some school funds.

1 out of 1 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink

Monk: Mr. Monk Goes to a Wedding (2005)

Season 4, Episode 7

7/10

A homecoming for Natalie

27 July 2024

There is a big wedding event going on at a posh resort. At one of the spa buildings of the resort, a man is blackmailing somebody who is at the wedding. But the joke is on him as he is murdered and dragged into one of the mudbaths in the spa building. Nobody should find the body for awhile.

Back in San Francisco Natalie is looking for somebody to accompany her to her brother's wedding - it was that wedding rehearsal event where the murder just occurred. She settles on Discher with the understanding that this is not a date, just a friend helping her out since she doesn't like facing her family alone. It turns out Natalie's family is very rich, and they also never accepted Mitch, her late husband, as part of the family. So there is tension between them.

Once at the resort, while Discher is out in the parking lot getting their bags, somebody intentionally runs down Discher with their car, breaking several bones. This brings Stottlemeyer and Monk up to the resort to try and figure why somebody would do this. Shortly thereafter the body is found in the spa, and so now this is a murder case.

This was not one of Monk's better mysteries, but it was interesting meeting Natalie's rich family. And there is nothing better than a wedding with Monk going around trying to make everything even and matching.

1 out of 1 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink

Monk: Mr. Monk and the Big Reward (2006)

Season 4, Episode 13

8/10

Mr. Monk and his own version of the lone gunmen

27 July 2024

It's been spare financial times for Monk and Natalie lately, and Natalie is starting to complain, saying that Monk solves too many murders for the police "on the house", without asking for compensation. She wants him to strike a more aggressive pose when it comes to getting paid. The sordid topic of coin makes Monk feel very uneasy, but Stottlemeyer says he will look into putting the pair on retainer, so they have some guaranteed income.

Meanwhile, a valuable diamond is stolen from a museum, and a reward of one million dollars is offered for its return. When Natalie sees the posting for this reward she is sure that Monk can do it, and that they will never need to worry about money again. She starts going around saying "ka-ching" which annoys Monk.

Separately, there are three other detectives trying to find the jewel. One is an older British fellow, one is a huge "moose" of a guy, a third is a rather nerdy fellow with lots of high tech devices. They decide to join forces and reminded me a bit of the X-Files' "lone gunmen". At first I was afraid they were going to be the spotlight of the episode and that this was some kind of pilot show for the three of them, but that didn't turn out to be true. They are just three quirky guests on this one episode.

Does Monk solve the case? Of course he does! Does he end up with the reward? Of course not, but I think you'll be OK with who does get it. Anyways, Monk couldn't end up a millionaire or else this show would turn into Season Nine of Roseanne. If you don't know what I mean by that, don't ask.

1 out of 1 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink

Monk: Mr. Monk and the Astronaut (2006)

Season 4, Episode 14

8/10

What is true bravery?

27 July 2024

An astronaut, Steve Wagner, is talking to his old lover about her upcoming tell-all book about celebrities with which she had affairs. She wants him to see the latest draft of the chapter that involves him because she doesn't want him surprised by the book and it's revelations. They are having a drink and talking when she falls over unconscious. He has drugged her beverage, and then says things that indicate he is going to kill her, because he can't let the truth come out.

Days later, the cleaning woman finds the woman hanging from a noose, apparently a suicide. However, Monk finds things that indicate it could be murder. Wagner becomes a suspect, but according to the coroner's estimate of time of death, he was in space at the time. If he is guilty, how did he do it?

This has got to be Monk's wildest murder case. The actual murder plot involves so many gambles that it's not a brave plan - It's a stupid one where everything just happened to go right! - almost. Disher's ludicrous theory that involves escape pods in the space shuttle actually sounds more credible.

There's a side plot involving a battle of wits between Monk and the astronaut. Wagner can tell Monk is a guy who is frightened of everything, and he uses that to try to make Monk lose focus and doubt his own courage.

1 out of 1 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink

AlsExGal

Reviews

Recently Viewed

AlsExGal

Reviews

Tell Your Friends

Recently Viewed