Monk episode review — 1.1 — Mr. Monk and the Candidate
By: Patrick J Mullen
Tags: Mystery, Television, Comedy, Monk, TV

Original air date: July 12, 2002

Director: Dean Parisot

Writer: Andy Breckman

Rating: 9/10

Considering I’ve just about finishing Columbo, I thought I’d take a look at my favourite of its imitators. Monk is essentially the first show ever that became appointment viewing for me. I got into it right at its last season, but I still love it. I hadn’t seen any of it in quite a while because it was taken off Netflix long before Psych even, so it was time for a re-watch.

I compare Monk to Psych quite frequently because they both aired on the same network, and are both comedy mysteries. But where this is different than Psych is that the mystery often comes before the comedy. It never mattered if the plot to a Psych episode was interesting or not because those episodes relied on the chemistry of the leads and the many, many jokes. Here, the mystery writing is a bit sharper, and it’s still generally a very funny show.

It would also often copy the Columbo formula of setting up the murder by showing uswho the killer is, with the rest of the episode revolving around Monk having to prove how the person did it.

Adrian Monk (Tony Shalhoub) is a former detective of the SFPD, now working as a private consultant over in Santa Clara. He always had his quirks, but he went off the deep end after the unsolved murder of his beloved wife, Trudy.

He suffers from a severe case of OCD, and has a fear of driving, germs, milk, and others.

He investigates a breakin in Santa Clara that he insists is a murder, with the help of his nurse, Sharona (Bitty Schram). After an attempted assassination on a man running for mayor of San Francisco that results in a dead bodyguard, Monk gets called in to work on that investigation, and he thinks the two are related, despite all apparent evidence to the contrary.

Monk works with his old friend, Captain Leland Stottlemeyer (Ted Levine), and his partner Randall Disher (Jason Gray-Stanford).

Monk is welcomed by the mayoral candidate, Warren St. Claire (Michael Hogan), but not so much by his wife, Miranda (Gail O’Grady) or his top advisor, Gavin Lloyd (Ben Bass).

The series occasionally gets a bit too goofy, and this is the case at the funeral for the slain bodyguard, when Monk drops his keys into the casket and has to get them out with a paper clip attached to floss. It is funny, but it’s a bit odd.

Monk successfully connects the two murders, and the investigation takes them to a person who had purchased a scope, but he’s quickly removed from the list of suspects, as he’s in a wheelchair.

Monk then realizes that he was only pretending to be in a wheelchair, but since they let him go, they can’t find him. Monk does figrue out that the main campaign advisor was the guy behind the murders, so he accuses him in a very fun scene that has him defending himself by trying to identify which building is the source of a gunshot.

But Sharona is captured by the actual gunman, and there’s a scramble to find him, with Monk taking Randy’s gun.

I’m actually amazed at how many of Monk’s phobias he conquers to go after Sharona here. It’s a bit contradicted by the rest of the series, but if we’re imagining this as a movie, it’s pretty damn compelling. And it’s not without its laughs, such as when Monk enters a sewer, he stops to straighten a “Danger Do Not Enter” sign.

This is a very strong first entry for the series, a very good two-parter. The highlight is probably Monk in a room full of children who are all coughing and sneezing, but there are plenty of other fun moments, too.