Jump to content

Monk (TV series)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by 74.129.130.112 (talk) at 01:12, 29 July 2006 (→Monk's phobias). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Monk
File:MONK Season4Cover.jpg
Season 4 DVD cover of Monk
Created byAndy Breckman
StarringTony Shalhoub
Traylor Howard
Ted Levine
Jason Gray-Stanford
Country of originUSA
No. of episodes63 (greenlit to 92)
Production
Running timeapprox. 45 minutes
Original release
NetworkUSA Network
ReleaseJuly 12, 2002 –
present

Monk is a popular television show about an obsessive-compulsive detective named Adrian Monk (played by actor Tony Shalhoub). The show, which has just entered its fifth season, debuted in 2002 and is produced by the USA Network. Created by Andy Breckman, writer of Rat Race, the critically acclaimed basic cable series has been a popular hit and won several major awards (see below). The show is also credited with significantly raising USA Network's profile. Monk airs Friday nights at 9 p.m. EST.

Series overview

Template:Spoiler

Adrian Monk, graduate of University of California, Berkeley, was originally a brilliant homicide detective of the San Francisco Police Department. Due to an unusual upbringing (the scope of which is being slowly revealed both in flashbacks and the present), Monk grew up with a variety of quirks and tics. After the murder of his wife, Trudy, and his inability to solve it (the only case in his career Monk has never been able to solve), Monk suffered a nervous breakdown, and his eccentricities manifested as an extreme case of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). Although he suffered from OCD his whole life, while Trudy was still living, his symptoms were largely under control.

After Trudy's death, Monk's life spun out of control and he ended up losing his badge. He refused to leave his house for three years. After these three years in seclusion, Monk began to perform consulting work for the police department, helping the police solve difficult cases. Police Captain Leland Stottlemeyer (Ted Levine) and Lieutenant Randall "Randy" Disher (Jason Gray-Stanford), call on and spar with Monk when they have a case they can't crack. Stottlemeyer is often infuriated with Monk's disorder, but respects Monk's amazing observational abilities, as does Disher, and Stottlemeyer (once Adrian's partner) has again become one of Monk's closest friends. Monk continues to search for information about his wife's death as he works on other cases with both Leland and Randy aiding him.

Monk's personal nurse, Sharona Fleming (Bitty Schram), helped get him back on his feet. Once, Sharona's son Benjy (Kane Ritchotte) helped Monk with a case, albeit unintentionally. Bitty Schram left the show during the third season due to a contract dispute. Traylor Howard plays Monk's new assistant, Natalie Teeger. Much like Sharona, Natalie is a single mother and has a daughter about the same age as Benjy named Julie (Emmy Clarke), and she has the patience to deal with Monk, and the confidence to keep him on a straight path.

Monk's truly obsessive attention to detail allows him to spot tiny discrepancies, find patterns, and make connections that everyone else in an investigation misses. He notices things such as the absence of a red pen (the color used to write a purported suicide note) in a victim's apartment, which tells him that someone else wrote the note. The pilot episode, "Mr. Monk and the Candidate", contains a prime example of Monk's photographic memory: He glances at a board with hundreds of colored pins, and after accidentally knocking them out, places them all back perfectly within five minutes. However, it is not necessary for him to see evidence to solve a murder. One such example of this is the time that he solved a murder in Paris that was reported in a newspaper article, in which the wife of a caretaker for a museum exhibit that contained some of the world's first handcuffs is found murdered with her hands cut off. Monk deduces that the caretaker had restrained her with the handcuffs, but because the keys for the handcuffs were missing, had to cut her hands off to return the handcuffs to the exhibit as not to raise suspicion.

While Monk does conduct talk therapy with his psychiatrist, the doctor is not much help with his OCD. For example, SSRI medication, which is commonly used by psychiatrists to treat OCD, is never prescribed. This is partially due to Monk's aversion to medication, covered in "Mr. Monk Takes His Medicine". Upon taking the drugs, Monk's personality begins to change so drastically that he eventually becomes an egotistical annoyance instead of a competent detective. After realizing what Trudy would have thought of him if she were still alive, he throws out the drugs and has not taken medication since.

Monk's mental and emotional problems extend beyond the boundaries of obsessive-compulsive disorder; he also suffers from a variety of crippling phobias, such as acrophobia (fear of heights), claustrophobia (fear of confined spaces), lactophobia (fear of milk), ophidiophobia (fear of snakes), mysophobia (fear of dirt), mycophobia (fear of mushrooms), and germophobia (fear of germs). One of his worst traits is that he has difficulty relating to other people. One view is that this is primarily because of eccentricities stemming from his upbringing, however some hold the view that he may have Asperger's syndrome or high functioning autism. [citation needed] But as the show progresses, Monk has learned to relate more to people like Leland and Natalie.

In "Mr. Monk and the Three Pies", the viewers are introduced to Monk's brother Ambrose (John Turturro), who is both as brilliant and as troubled as Adrian, but in different ways. His principal personality disorder is his need to be confined to his house for many years due to crippling agoraphobia. Rather than being a brilliant detective, Ambrose is fluent in many different languages and writes appliance instruction booklets for a living. This job is perfect for him as it does not require Ambrose to ever leave his house. The character is based on Mycroft Holmes, the older and smarter brother of Sherlock Holmes. He does, however, share Adrian's remarkable photographic memory. Ambrose also is waiting for his and Adrian's father to return, making their father dinner every night and saving every single bit of mail delivered to the house. When Ambrose is first introduced Adrian is still holding a grudge against him for not attending Trudy's funeral or even calling after Trudy died. Later it is revealed that Ambrose blames himself for Trudy's death.

Trudy was murdered with a car bomb in 1997 after leaving a drug store where she bought cough syrup for Ambrose. She was a journalist, who brought down a large company by exposing secrets. This may or may not have something to do with her murder. The viewer learns at the end of the second season that the bomb was built by a New York criminal named Warrick Tennyson. Dale "the Whale" Beiderbeck (Tim Curry,Adam Arkin), a 800-pound white-collar criminal whom Monk had previously incarcerated for his involvement in a murder plot, tells him about Tennyson in "Mr. Monk Goes to Jail" in exchange for Monk negotiating to get Dale a window in his prison cell. The episode was the final episode of the second season and resulted in the series' only cliffhanger thus far.

In the third season premiere, Monk finds Tennyson, who is dying in a hospital of kidney failure. Monk is permitted to interrogate Tennyson, who admitted at the end of "Mr. Monk Takes Manhattan" that he was paid $2000 to build the bomb by an unknown six-fingered man who he met once in a parking garage. After learning this, Monk, in a rare instance of showing emotions other than fear or anxiety, turns off Tennyson's morphine drip so that he will die in agony. After a few moments, Monk relents and turns it back on, not because he wants to, but because he knows that his actions, however justified they may have been, would have disappointed Trudy because they would have caused pain.

The show is widely acclaimed for its excellent guest stars, which in addition to Turturro have included Kevin Nealon, Malcolm McDowell, Joy Giovanni, Olek Krupa, Sarah Silverman, Tim Daly, Laurie Metcalf, Willie Nelson, Carmen Electra, Jason Alexander, KoЯn, James Brolin, Jon Favreau, Danny Bonaduce, Tim Curry, Bob Gunton, Nicole Sullivan, Brooke Burke, Andrew McCarthy, Fred Ewanuick, Janet Wright, Larry Miller (actor), Enrico Colantoni, Brett Cullen, Stanley Tucci, Alice Cooper, and Chi McBride.

Although set in San Francisco and its area, Monk is actually for the most part shot outside San Francisco, with the exceptions of occasional exteriors featuring city landmarks. The pilot episode was shot in Vancouver, British Columbia, and the subsequent 1st Season episodes have been shot in the Toronto, Ontario area. Most of the episodes in subsequent seasons have been filmed in the Los Angeles, California area.

Series history

The original two hour pilot was commissioned by ABC, originally as a vehicle for comic actor Michael Richards, who dropped out after reading the script for the pilot. Afterward, they weren't certain about the series and handed it off to USA Network. As part of the deal, ABC got the right to air repeats of the series after the episodes ran on USA. ABC used some episodes to fill in its summer schedule and got respectable ratings. Technically, the deal is still in place, but with USA Network being bought by NBC/Universal, the odds of episodes showing up on ABC again are very slim.

On January 12, 2006, USA Network announced that the show had been picked up through at least season six as one of the "highest-rated series in cable history."

Season 5 premiered Friday, July 7, 2006 at 9 p.m. Eastern time. This marked the first official time change for the program, having aired at 10 p.m. its first 4 seasons. The change is due to its popularity and to work as a lead-in to the new USA Network series Psych, another offbeat detective program.

The show has followed a consistent format of airing half of its 16 episodes in the summer, followed by the second half in the winter.

Characters

Template:Spoiler

Main characters

  • Adrian Monk (Tony Shalhoub): The protagonist of the series, a brilliant former San Francisco Police Department homicide detective whose obsessive compulsive disorder interfered with his job following the murder of his wife, resulting in a still-current suspension. He is still mourning the loss of his wife, Trudy, who was murdered in 1997. He has not yet fully solved the case of her death. He hopes to one day be reinstated on the department, but until then he works as a consultant to the departments Homicide Unit. He has often called his own skills as a detective both a gift and a curse. Although absolutely obsessive in his issues, his brilliance when working a homicide case are unquestionable, if not bizarre, and have led to his reputation and notoriety becoming legendary nationwide.
  • Sharona Fleming (Bitty Schram) (2002–2004): Adrian's former personal nurse and assistant. Hired by Stottlemeyer, she was spunky, opinionated, and street-wise, she helped Adrian get back on his feet, and out of his house, during his 3-1/2 year slump. Pretty, spunky, and brash in her direction to him, he sank into a slight depression when she resigned, due to her having remarried her ex-husband and moved back to New Jersey.
  • Natalie Teeger (Traylor Howard) (2004–present): Adrian's new assistant after Sharona left. Feisty, "pretty" and loyal, she shares the same compassion with Monk since she herself is a widow. Her husband was a US military pilot shot down in Kosovo in 1998. She and Monk met after she killed an intruder in her home, and Monk solved the case after figuring out why the man had broken in, which had nothing to do with her, but rather was due to something her daughter brought home from a school field-trip. While buried alive by a kidnapper, in a dream, Monk is advised by his dead wife Trudy that he should rehire Natalie and give her a raise, after Natalie had just quit her job because Monk didn't pay her business expenses ("Mr. Monk vs. The Cobra"). In that episode, he closed his dead wife's office, which he had been paying rent on since her death, and then used that money to raise Natalie's salary. She always refers to Adrian as "Mr. Monk", and is very defensive of him.
  • Captain Leland Stottlemeyer (Ted Levine): Police Captain and Adrian's former watch commander. Although he is a decorated and respected officer, he knows that he will never be as great as Adrian at solving difficult crimes. This has led to a certain degree of tension between the two, notwithstanding Stottlemeyer's exasperation with some of Monk's more extreme eccentricities. However, he considers Monk one of his closest friends, and greatly admires his talent. In season three he was shot and wounded, and Monk helped them capture the shooter. He also shot and killed, among others, the man who hired an actress to act like she was Monk's dead wife Trudy Monk in order to retrieve a key to a storage building, where Trudy had left many boxes of materials in a story she'd done, which would link the man as the insider snitch used to bring down a large company due to illegal activity. He and Monk lean on one another's experience while working cases, and although Stottlemeyer gets frustrated at times, he ultimately rarely questions Monk's assessment of a murder case. Stottlemeyer has often called Monk "The best detective he's ever known", and is extremely defensive of him.
  • Lieutenant Randy Disher (Jason Gray-Stanford): Stottlemeyer's loyal yet sometimes overconfident and less-than-brilliant assistant, the green "Randy" is a favorite character of many fans of the TV show. He is often thought to be obnoxious by Captain Stottlemeyer, Monk, and Natalie. His analysis of cases are usually less than accurate, and often completely off their mark, but he has a strong desire to perform well and loves his job. He idolizes Captain Stottlemeyer, and had a large crush on Monk's former assistant Sharona. He is very self-conscious that his friends never believe he actually has a girlfriend, and when he is dating someone he often goes out of his way to make certain they know it. Monk's present assistant, Natalie, often sarcastically and jokingly makes comments eluding to the fact that she doesn't believe he has a real girlfriend. On one episode, Captain Stottlemeyer commented that he and his wife had previously had a dinner-date planned with Randy and his elusive girlfriend at the time, but that it was cancelled last minute, and he still hadn't met the girlfriend. Randy replied that she wasn't feeling well that night, at which point Sharona commented that maybe he'd blown her up too much, insinuating she is actually a blow-up plastic girl rather than a real girl. That off-the-wall humor between the characters, and their constant badgering of Randy is one of the main reasons for the character's popularity.
  • Trudy Monk (Stellina Rusich seasons 1-2, Melora Hardin seasons 3-4): The late wife of Adrian. Often mentioned and sometimes portrayed, her death caused Adrian's disorder and fears to get out of control. Clues about her death are gradually given throughout the series. She was a journalist who brought down a large company by exposing many misdeeds, which may or may not have led to her murder. One lead is that a man with six fingers on his right hand hired an assassin to set the bomb, by the assassin's own deathbed confession to Monk in season three. In that episode, set in New York City, Monk, Sharona, Randy and Captain Stottlemeyer travel to New York in the hopes of interviewing the dying suspect. The suspect confesses the murder to them while hospitalized, is expected to live only hours longer, and is on a constant heavy morphine drip. Monk asks everyone to leave the room. The man asks his forgiveness, at which point Monk says "Forgive you? This is me, turning off your morphine". After turning off the morphine drip, he waits, and as the fear begins to set in on the face of the murderer, Monk says "And this is my wife Trudy, the woman you killed, turning it back on". With that, he switches the morphine back on, and walks out.
  • Dr. Charles Kroger (Stanley Kamel): Adrian's kind and sympathetic (and patient) psychiatrist. He tries to help Monk work through his issues so he can be reinstated to the police department.

Secondary characters

  • Benjy Fleming (Kane Ritchotte during pilot episode and second and third seasons, Max Morrow during first season): Sharona's son. Often uses Adrian and his skills as a "toy".
  • Ambrose Monk (John Turturro): Brother of Adrian. He's just as intelligent as Adrian, but suffers from agoraphobia. He has appeared in two episodes and has a romantic interest in Natalie. He blames himself for Trudy's death because she was buying him cough medicine when her car was blown up.
  • Karen Stottlemeyer (Glenne Headly): Environmentally-conscious wife of Leland and mother of their two children. A documentary filmmaker whose artistic pursuits frequently belittle and sometimes frustrate her husband, she has often played a crucial role in her four episodes regarding a case. In "Mr. Monk and the Captain's Marriage", a fed-up Karen files for divorce, much to the surprise and hurt of Leland.
  • Dale "the Whale" Beiderbeck (Adam Arkin, Tim Curry): The series' most significant criminal, after the Six-Fingered Man. He appears in two episodes, and gives Adrian the name of the man who built the bomb which killed Trudy. Dale had been engaged in a year-long legal battle with Trudy within three years of her death because she called him "The Genghis Khan of world finance." Dale is called "the Whale" because he is extremely heavy (around 800-900 lbs.) and cannot leave his bed. Strongly hated by Monk.
  • Six-Fingered Man (Frank): The mysterious man who hired Warrick Tennyson to kill Trudy. All that is known about him for sure is that he has six digits on his right hand, met Tennyson in a parking garage, and had a reason to kill Trudy. The Six-Fingered Man may be a reference to Count Rugen, a six-fingered man who killed Inigo Montoya's father in The Princess Bride.
  • Warrick Tennyson (Frank Collison): He was hired by the Six-Fingered Man to manufacture the car bomb which killed Trudy. Adrian goes to New York City to find him after receiving a tip from Dale the Whale. Tennyson was unable to identify the Six-Fingered Man, and died of heart disease and kidney failure shortly after being found by Adrian.
  • Harold J. Krenshaw (Tim Bagley): Another patient of Dr. Kroger's, Harold and Adrian Monk have an ongoing feud that begins the minute they see each other (This can be seen most clearly in the episode "Mr. Monk and the Election" where Krenshaw also defeats Natalie Teeger for a slot on the San Francisco 5th district school board). Both are similar though in phobias and mannerisms, their biggest differences being that Harold seems to prefer patterns, (such as a 1-2-3 pattern of magazines on a 3-tiered rack), while Monk requires them to be even, (a 2-2-2 pattern); and that Harold seems more able to function in everyday life, (he has no mention of an assistant/nurse, and even wins a school board election).

Monk's phobias

Monk has several phobias which have been revealed throughout the course of the show.

Monk has called his fear of dentists (Dentophobia) one of his fears that are so far above his other fears that they are in a class of their own, outside of his 'top ten' fears.

His 'top ten' fears over the seasons include:

His other fears include:

Oddly enough, he is not usually afraid of blood.

DVD releases

DVD Name
Release dates
Region 1
Region 2
Region 3
The Complete 1st Season June 15 2004 December 27 2004 January 20 2005
The Complete 2nd Season January 11 2005 July 18 2005 September 19 2005
The Complete 3rd Season July 5 2005 February 27 2006 March 7 2006
The Complete 4th Season June 27 2006 October 30 2006 N/A

Awards and nominations

Emmy Awards

  • 2003 award for outstanding lead actor in a comedy series (Tony Shalhoub)
  • 2003 award for outstanding main title theme music (Jeff Beal) (WHOAW)
  • 2004 nomination for outstanding lead actor in a comedy series (Tony Shalhoub)
  • 2004 award for outstanding guest actor in a comedy series (John Turturro)
  • 2004 award for outstanding main title theme music ("It's a Jungle Out There" by Randy Newman)
  • 2004 nomination for outstanding casting for a comedy series
  • 2005 nomination for outstanding directing for a comedy series
  • 2005 award for outstanding lead actor in a comedy series (Tony Shalhoub)
  • 2006 nomination for outstanding lead actor in a comedy series (Tony Shalhoub)
  • 2006 nomination for outstanding guest actress in a comedy series (Laurie Metcalf as Cora)

Golden Globes

  • 2003 award for best performance by an actor in a television series - musical or comedy (Tony Shalhoub)
  • 2004 nomination for best television series - musical or comedy
  • 2004 nomination for best performance by an actor in a television series - musical or comedy (Tony Shalhoub)
  • 2004 nomination for best performance by an actress in a television series - musical or comedy (Bitty Schram)
  • 2005 nomination for best performance by an actor in a television series - musical or comedy (Tony Shalhoub)

Screen Actors Guild

  • 2003 nomination for outstanding performance by a male actor in a comedy series (Tony Shalhoub)
  • 2004 award for outstanding performance by a male actor in a comedy series (Tony Shalhoub)
  • 2005 award for outstanding performance by a male actor in a comedy series (Tony Shalhoub)

Edgar Award

  • 2003 nomination for best television episode teleplay ("Mr. Monk Takes a Vacation", Teleplay by Hy Conrad)
  • 2004 nomination for best television episode teleplay ("Mr. Monk and the 12th Man", Teleplay by Michael Angeli)
  • 2004 nomination for best television episode teleplay ("Mr. Monk and the Very, Very Old Man", Teleplay by Daniel Dratch)
  • 2005 nomination for best television episode teleplay ("Mr. Monk and the Girl Who Cried Wolf", Teleplay by Hy Conrad)

Monk in other countries

The series has been exported to and dubbed in many countries, including:

Reruns and syndication

  • In Australia, reruns of the show are featured on the TV1 channel on the Foxtel/Austar/Optus TV cable platforms.
  • In the UK, Monk was first shown on BBC Two and has since been rerun on both BBC One and the Hallmark Channel. It was shown every weekday on BBC One as part of the daytime schedule, in a slot previously occupied by shows such as Murder, She Wrote and Diagnosis: Murder. Season 3 of Monk ended on the 19 April 2006 on BBC One and has now been replaced with reruns of Murder, She Wrote. It has not been indicated when or if Monk will return to the BBC for season 4, which is currently being shown on US television networks.

Trivia

  • In addition to a rapidly growing DVD collection, the show also has a soundtrack CD that features the original music score. The first season theme song by Jeff Beal is also available from USA Network as a free MP3 download.
  • The first detective novel based on the series has been released on January 3, 2006 and is entitled "Mr. Monk Goes to the Firehouse", in which Monk is having his house fumigated. Accepting an invite by Natalie, Monk stays at her house but inevitably, does not find the house to be up to his obsessive standards. The plot follows Monk trying to investigate how a beloved firehouse dog died on the same night as a fatal house fire. The story is told by Natalie in a first-person perspective. A second novel, "Mr. Monk Goes to Hawaii", is planned for release in July 2006, as well as three more after that, which will be published through July 2008.
  • Tim Daly, Tony Shalhoub's former co-star from Wings, makes a cameo appearance in the episode "Mr. Monk and the Airplane". Sharona sees him, and comments that "it's Tim Daly, that guy from Wings." Monk says he never watched the show.
  • The episode "Mr. Monk and the Big Reward" concerns itself with Monk not having enough work and Natalie trying to get the police to put him on retainer. The episode ends with Captain Stottlemeyer telling Monk that the city has decided to guarantee him sixteen murders a year for two years. This is a reflexive reference to USA Network's announcement that Monk had been renewed for two years at sixteen episodes per year.
  • One of the running jokes of the show is that Monk is almost never described as having OCD. Sometimes, characters go out of their way not to mention it, such as in an episode where Monk shakes the hand of two white women, then a black man, then wipes. This is taken as evidence of racism. Instead of simply explaining his disorder, Monk and Sharona simply stare at each other briefly, mouths open. He has also been called "particular" and "persnickety" by Natalie.
  • In the end sequence of "Mr. Monk and the T.V. Star", a rabid crime drama fan named Marci praises Monk and comments that he should get his own show. She also asks that if Monk were to ever get his own show that the opening theme should stay the same. This is a direct reference to the change in the opening theme for "Monk" between the first and second seasons. The end theme for that episode is the theme from the first season instead of the usual end theme from the second season. The crime drama show itself, which Monk finds unrealistic, spoofs CSI.
  • In the series, Captain Stottlemeyer (Ted Levine) is married to Karen Stottlemeyer (Glenne Headly), a documentary filmmaker, much as writer/producer Andy Breckman is married to Beth Landau, also a documentary filmmaker. (Landau's name was also used for the murdered english teacher in the season 2 episode "Mr. Monk Goes Back to School".)
  • In "Mr. Monk vs. the Cobra," Monk says he never takes off his shoes. But in "Mr. Monk Gets Fired," he takes off his shoes and socks.
  • Adrian Monk's age is almost never mentioned. He is 47 years old. This is due to him saying that he was 12 when he first went to the dentist's office. Then he says that he last went to the dentist 35 years ago.
  • As of Mr. Monk and the Big Game Adrian Monk has solved 104 murders, though he only has 100 trophies because he prefers the number 100.

See also

References

  • "Monk - The Obsessive Compulsive Detective". WrongPlanet.net. Retrieved January 18. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help); Unknown parameter |accessyear= ignored (|access-date= suggested) (help)
Wikiquote has quotations related to Monk.
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Monk_(TV_series)&oldid=66450261"