Why I Love the TV Show Monk
By: Mark Farrar
Tags: Quirks, Monk, Tolerance, TV, Life Lessons

I recently finished working my way through the TV series Monk, and I have to say I think it’s brilliant — and here’s why:

The story lines are varied, creative, and, for the most part at least, credible. The main character, Adrian Monk, has been expertly crafted — the writers have taken your basic quirky detective stereotype and piled on so many obsessions and fears that he stands head and shoulders above the rest. Following on from that, I think it’s clever how the character of Monk is not only annoying to the other characters in the show, but to us, the audience too. He embodies the observational and thinking skills of Sherlock Holmes, but without the arrogance and patronizing qualities that detract from that character. The acting is, as expected, first rate, which is useful for me because it takes very little — almost nothing, in fact — to yank me out of the story and remind me that this is all make-believe. The variety in the main characters (e.g. the captain, the lieutenant, his two assistants, the two doctors, his brother, and the competitive patient) allows for some interesting interactions. The series is somewhat reminiscent of Columbo, but for me, the big problem with that show was how he seemed to latch on to the criminal almost immediately, with no good reason. Of course, Columbo was predicated on us knowing who the perpetrator was from the start, and then watching the detective pick away at that person until sufficient evidence was uncovered to arrest them. I liked that overall structure, but the way he almost always “knew” who the murderer was straight away detracted from the credibility. In spite of it being a police homicide show, there is plenty of humour too to lighten the mood.

If there’s anything I don’t like about the show, it would be how Monk gets away with behaviour that, to me, should be unacceptable.

For example, there’s an episode where he wipes out all of the case history from a pathology lab — because he’s obsessed by cleaning the keyboard.

And there are many instances where he meddles with stuff in other people’s houses or offices.

I know that highly gifted people are often given a bit of leeway because of their talents, but on occasion, this was taken too far for me.

If anybody came into my house and started rearranging items, I’d tell them to stop immediately, and in no uncertain terms.

But enough about my opinions — are there any lessons we can learn from this show?

Well, yes, I think there are:

While Monk clearly has a natural talent for remembering things (maybe even an eidetic memory), his success comes largely, I think, from paying attention to everything he sees. Humans, like most animals, have had to survive based on observing the world around them, but these days, we humans no longer have to fight for our survival every single day like we used to — well, not for most people in countries such as the USA, at least), and I think that shows in all sorts of ways. Maybe because of the above, he rarely jumps to conclusions, which is something many of us do. While there is almost never such a thing as perfect information, I feel it is usually better to wait until you have sufficient information on which to act. In this context, “sufficient” is clearly subjective, but acting on insufficient evidence often leads to undesired results. As I’ve already touched on, when you’re in somebody else’s property, leave their stuff alone! Moving things around is just plain rude. While many of Monk’s “quirks” are annoying and difficult to understand, I think the message of tolerance comes through — just because somebody else’s behaviours seem weird and even unreasonable, that doesn’t mean the person is doing them for no reason at all — they may have, in their own mind, a perfectly good rationale for why they do what they do. Remember, we usually never know what battles other people are dealing with. On a related note, the sheer range of fears that Monk has — hundreds, as best I can recall — serves to highlight that life for some people is a constant challenge. I get some of the phobias (e.g. germs), but some of his other quirks appear to have no possible good reason (e.g. touching each post he walks by), and that teaches us that, again, we should be tolerant. In the movie , Tobias says that everybody has at least ten deep-seated fears — but for most people, those fears are not things they encounter every single day. Imagine, though, for a moment, that you did — how would that affect your life? Might it not paralyze you too? I also think it’s a good vehicle for inspiring us to question things we take for granted. For example, Monk often asks why some activities are considered fun, and the answer is, in many cases, because we’ve been told they are.

Monk will, I am sure, remain one of my favourite series, and the fact they kept it going for eight seasons, with barely (in my opinion) a bad episode, speaks volumes about it.

The main hindrance is being able to get past all of his annoying behaviours — but once you manage that and see how well the show has been written and produced, I really think it’s worth the effort.

And finally, there is, of course, one mystery that not even Adrian Monk can solve — how on earth did Randy Disher ever get promoted to lieutenant, because he comes over as a first-class moron much of the time?