Be warned--this review is full of spoilers. Two aspects of this episode make it about the worst Monk ever. With all due respect to the earlier reviewers who loved this one, I simply cannot ignore the elements that you folks didn't seem to mind.
The story: A Guinness World Record Museum is broken into and a security guard is killed. It is learned that the only thing missing the next day is an egg-eating robot-a mechanical man who simulates the rapid eating of hard-boiled eggs.
Monk and Natalie are for some reason walking to the police station instead of driving, but stuck at a corner because the stoplight is broken and Monk has the patience of Job. After 10 minutes, Natalie goes on, while Monk wants to wait another half hour. An older woman named Marge comes along and does the reversal of the traditional boy-scout duty by taking Monk by the arm and leading him across the intersection and to the police station, where she is again reporting her neighbor for playing his noisy drums all day.
Marge gets Monk to talk to the noisy neighbor. She befriends Monk who enjoys her so much that in a short while in a session with his psychiatrist he mentions his actual mother as his "other mother," in relation to Marge. Suddenly, he starts worrying that she is up to something because it seems like everyone else whoever befriended him was just after something.
Along the way, we see another holdup, this time at a jewelry store where the stupid owner on recognizing the hooded bandit reveals that he knows who it is, which pretty-much forces the robber to kill him-after the viewer sees that it is Marge's noisy neighbor.
Captain Stottlemeyer and Randy come to Monk's to talk to Marge because they are suspecting that neighbor, John Keyes, of being the killer/robber because he used to work at the store. During the time of the killing, she had phoned the police again about the noisy drummer next door, and they want to make sure of what she saw and heard. She reports seeing him through the window while hearing the noisy drums, positively.
Monk happens to notice a photo of Marge's son Paulie, who she had told him died at an early age, and suddenly concludes that the birthmark on Paulie matches the drummer, meaning her son didn't die. He rashly accuses her of planning the whole thing with her son so that they could share in the jewelry store heist with Marge's giving John the alibi being trusted because Monk would vouch for Marge. He literally yells at her about being a liar and being involved in the robbery and killing.
But we soon learn that her son did indeed die and that John was bailed out of jail by his mother. Monk tries to apologize to Marge, but she coldly says, "I lost my son...again." She treats Monk coldly but politely afterwards, but has no desire to go back to the fine relationship they had started, due to Monk's wild accusations against her.
What we learn at the end is that John broke into the museum to steal the robot so that he could get this mechanical man to actually play the drums in his house while he was robbing the jewelry store. He was counting on Marge to report the noise to the police, as she had done before.
Why did I dislike this episode so much? Two sets of reasons. First, the crime plots make no sense at all. Why on earth did John need to break into a guarded museum to steal a robot, when he could have just closed his curtains and played a recording of his own drum playing, instead of hoping Marge would look through his window and believe she saw him playing? How did he know no other neighbor, or Monk, would come over to complain, and from a close distance, perhaps look into his living room and see that the drummer was a robot-thus spoiling his alibi?
But what really troubled me was Monk going ballistic against his newest and dearest friend, Marge, based only on a birthmark on a man that looked like one in a photograph of a baby. He already knew the name she had provided for her dead son. He could have easily said nothing and checked out if indeed Paulie had died as Marge said.
Beyond that, the thought that he was supposed to be a character witness for Marge makes no sense. Her honesty wasn't going to be questioned, only her eyesight, if anything. If John was charged with the murder and robbery, the D.A. would only challenge Marge's ability to clearly see her neighbor from her own home. Even then, all Monk could testify to is that he had known her a short while and she seemed like a really nice lady. Does it really make sense that she would be spending hours and hours being nice to Monk just so he could testify that she's a nice person? Of course not!
If somehow she was doing what Monk thought, there's another reason her actions made no sense. He learned about her son on visiting her and seeing that she had tons of pictures of her late husband and only one of a baby boy. If she had a son who grew up and was now a criminal she was helping, she would surely have gotten rid of all the pictures of him, not leaving one in plain view for Monk to see so she'd have to lie. If her son was alive and still had that birthmark, she would surely have made sure Monk never saw a picture of him, and wouldn't want him to ever know she had a son.
Then there's the matter of the pair-under Monk's theory that Marge conspired with her son in this holdup/killing-actually wanting to involve this famous detective in their big crime, making sure he was around, knowing that this would GREATLY increase the chances of their being caught. Purposely involving Monk by the criminal(s) makes as much sense as some out-of-town district attorney in the 1960s trying to arrange for a defendant to be defended by Perry Mason, instead of a local attorney.
Monk jumping to a conclusion based on one minor non-conclusive bit of evidence and totally destroying his relationship with Marge before anyone had time to check for facts, was quite unlike him, and was extremely uncomfortable to watch. If he had stopped to think-something he normally does-he would have quickly realized that it wouldn't have made sense for them to get him involved in their crime. I understand the producers and writers were trying to show how Monk's history made him skeptical of anyone who was nice to him. But his brutal behavior toward this lady who was so nice to him BEFORE he had any real evidence against her made him a truly unlikeable person in this episode.
I felt bad for Monk when his "best friend" a few episodes ago turned out to be after something. In this episode, I felt Monk got what he deserved because of the horrible way he treated her.
Since the plot had Grand Canyon-wide holes in its logic in multiple ways, and Monk's behavior was truly offensive, I have to give this episode a one out of ten. The touching scenes between Monk and Marge were nice to see, but that just made it more disturbing to see Monk foolishly throw it away by jumping to a conclusion instead of doing what he normally does well-investigate. I am so glad it wasn't the first episode I ever saw because I probably wouldn't have watched another and would have missed out on a truly excellent series overall.
The story: A Guinness World Record Museum is broken into and a security guard is killed. It is learned that the only thing missing the next day is an egg-eating robot-a mechanical man who simulates the rapid eating of hard-boiled eggs.
Monk and Natalie are for some reason walking to the police station instead of driving, but stuck at a corner because the stoplight is broken and Monk has the patience of Job. After 10 minutes, Natalie goes on, while Monk wants to wait another half hour. An older woman named Marge comes along and does the reversal of the traditional boy-scout duty by taking Monk by the arm and leading him across the intersection and to the police station, where she is again reporting her neighbor for playing his noisy drums all day.
Marge gets Monk to talk to the noisy neighbor. She befriends Monk who enjoys her so much that in a short while in a session with his psychiatrist he mentions his actual mother as his "other mother," in relation to Marge. Suddenly, he starts worrying that she is up to something because it seems like everyone else whoever befriended him was just after something.
Along the way, we see another holdup, this time at a jewelry store where the stupid owner on recognizing the hooded bandit reveals that he knows who it is, which pretty-much forces the robber to kill him-after the viewer sees that it is Marge's noisy neighbor.
Captain Stottlemeyer and Randy come to Monk's to talk to Marge because they are suspecting that neighbor, John Keyes, of being the killer/robber because he used to work at the store. During the time of the killing, she had phoned the police again about the noisy drummer next door, and they want to make sure of what she saw and heard. She reports seeing him through the window while hearing the noisy drums, positively.
Monk happens to notice a photo of Marge's son Paulie, who she had told him died at an early age, and suddenly concludes that the birthmark on Paulie matches the drummer, meaning her son didn't die. He rashly accuses her of planning the whole thing with her son so that they could share in the jewelry store heist with Marge's giving John the alibi being trusted because Monk would vouch for Marge. He literally yells at her about being a liar and being involved in the robbery and killing.
But we soon learn that her son did indeed die and that John was bailed out of jail by his mother. Monk tries to apologize to Marge, but she coldly says, "I lost my son...again." She treats Monk coldly but politely afterwards, but has no desire to go back to the fine relationship they had started, due to Monk's wild accusations against her.
What we learn at the end is that John broke into the museum to steal the robot so that he could get this mechanical man to actually play the drums in his house while he was robbing the jewelry store. He was counting on Marge to report the noise to the police, as she had done before.
Why did I dislike this episode so much? Two sets of reasons. First, the crime plots make no sense at all. Why on earth did John need to break into a guarded museum to steal a robot, when he could have just closed his curtains and played a recording of his own drum playing, instead of hoping Marge would look through his window and believe she saw him playing? How did he know no other neighbor, or Monk, would come over to complain, and from a close distance, perhaps look into his living room and see that the drummer was a robot-thus spoiling his alibi?
But what really troubled me was Monk going ballistic against his newest and dearest friend, Marge, based only on a birthmark on a man that looked like one in a photograph of a baby. He already knew the name she had provided for her dead son. He could have easily said nothing and checked out if indeed Paulie had died as Marge said.
Beyond that, the thought that he was supposed to be a character witness for Marge makes no sense. Her honesty wasn't going to be questioned, only her eyesight, if anything. If John was charged with the murder and robbery, the D.A. would only challenge Marge's ability to clearly see her neighbor from her own home. Even then, all Monk could testify to is that he had known her a short while and she seemed like a really nice lady. Does it really make sense that she would be spending hours and hours being nice to Monk just so he could testify that she's a nice person? Of course not!
If somehow she was doing what Monk thought, there's another reason her actions made no sense. He learned about her son on visiting her and seeing that she had tons of pictures of her late husband and only one of a baby boy. If she had a son who grew up and was now a criminal she was helping, she would surely have gotten rid of all the pictures of him, not leaving one in plain view for Monk to see so she'd have to lie. If her son was alive and still had that birthmark, she would surely have made sure Monk never saw a picture of him, and wouldn't want him to ever know she had a son.
Then there's the matter of the pair-under Monk's theory that Marge conspired with her son in this holdup/killing-actually wanting to involve this famous detective in their big crime, making sure he was around, knowing that this would GREATLY increase the chances of their being caught. Purposely involving Monk by the criminal(s) makes as much sense as some out-of-town district attorney in the 1960s trying to arrange for a defendant to be defended by Perry Mason, instead of a local attorney.
Monk jumping to a conclusion based on one minor non-conclusive bit of evidence and totally destroying his relationship with Marge before anyone had time to check for facts, was quite unlike him, and was extremely uncomfortable to watch. If he had stopped to think-something he normally does-he would have quickly realized that it wouldn't have made sense for them to get him involved in their crime. I understand the producers and writers were trying to show how Monk's history made him skeptical of anyone who was nice to him. But his brutal behavior toward this lady who was so nice to him BEFORE he had any real evidence against her made him a truly unlikeable person in this episode.
I felt bad for Monk when his "best friend" a few episodes ago turned out to be after something. In this episode, I felt Monk got what he deserved because of the horrible way he treated her.
Since the plot had Grand Canyon-wide holes in its logic in multiple ways, and Monk's behavior was truly offensive, I have to give this episode a one out of ten. The touching scenes between Monk and Marge were nice to see, but that just made it more disturbing to see Monk foolishly throw it away by jumping to a conclusion instead of doing what he normally does well-investigate. I am so glad it wasn't the first episode I ever saw because I probably wouldn't have watched another and would have missed out on a truly excellent series overall.