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Monk: Mr. Monk and the Red Herring (2005)
Another woman disappears from Monk's life
In the opening scene, Monk is talking to his doctor about how he's coping until Sharona comes back. The doctor points out to Monk that Sharona has sold her home, remarried her ex-husband, and moved back to New Jersey. In other words, she's not coming back, and that he needs to move on and find another assistant.
Meanwhile, a woman fights with a home intruder, ultimately killing him with a pair of scissors she finds in their struggle. Great shades of "Dial M for Murder". A different man two days before gained entry to the house saying he was with a utility company but seemed to be interested in her daughter's fish tank. The woman chased him away without a struggle. The police suggest bringing Monk in on this difficult case, but say that she'll need to go to him and personally ask him since he is having a hard time coping since Sharona left.
Monk does agree to come on the case, and he thinks that somebody is after either the fish in the tank or something in the tank with the fish. The fish is extraordinary, as it is a six year old fish when that breed is only supposed to live one or two years. Complications ensue.
A really funny scene occurs when Monk is asked by the woman to pretend to be an expert on fish and tell her daughter's science teacher that it is possible for the fish to be six years old. But the science teacher asks probing questions like - Where did Monk study? What was his degree in? What books has he written? , etc. And in the age of the internet his answers fall apart quickly. Plus Monk is just a really bad liar.
The client, Natalie Teeger becomes Monk's new assistant. This change out in personnel was necessary since Bitty Schram left the show over a salary she considered insufficient given the show's success and her part in making that success.
Monk: Mr. Monk Takes His Medicine (2004)
Mr. Monk becomes truly annoying
Monk is feeling especially despondent, and so his doctor brings up the topic of medication. Monk is against psych meds, but agrees to take home a bottle of a week's worth of pills with him in case he decides to try them. When he is frozen with inaction as a suspect flees he decides to take the pills. Freed from his fears, an alter ego emerges - "The Monk". This person is not afraid of crowds or food that others have touched, but he is also extremely irritating. And it also seems that since Monk no longer sees every detail, that he has lost his crime solving abilities too. How will this all work out? Watch and find out.
This isn't how psych meds work, but it is great fun to see Monk's alter ego confounding his colleagues. There is also a touching scene where Monk feels he is able to contact the spirit of his wife by smelling a pillow of hers that he has kept sealed and stashed away all of these years.
Monk: Mr. Monk and the Employee of the Month (2004)
Monk works with an old colleague who has been disgraced
A woman is killed by somebody who gets in at the department store they work at as early as the woman did, lures her out to the loading dock, and then dumps a bunch of TVs on her, killing her. The police, not knowing the set-up, just think it's an accident, but the store's head of security believes it was murder based on some letters written to discredit the dead employee that all seem to be from the same person.
Monk is on the case, and normally you'd think he'd be glad to have somebody on the inside who also thinks foul play is involved. The problem is that the head of store security is a disgraced cop. He was accused of stealing drugs from the evidence room and dismissed from the force. The perp walked because of the lack of evidence and later shot and killed two cops.
To catch the killer, Monk goes undercover as an employee of the store, and it's fun to see Monk trying to work with the rowdy public in a rowdy public place. On the bright side, because Monk sees everything, he is very helpful to shoppers who want to know where something is in the store.
Working with the disgraced cop, Monk begins to wonder if the guy is truly guilty and does a mini-investigation on this four year old case. What does he find out? Watch and find out.
Monk: Mr. Monk and the Girl Who Cried Wolf (2004)
Sharona under stress
Sharona starts seeing the figure of a man with a knife stuck into the side of his head and another knife stuck in his chest. She only sees him when she's alone - in a parking garage, in a public ladies room, when she's pumping gas into her car late at night.
And she's been losing things too - her keys, the remote control, her checkbook. She thinks she's maybe cracking up because her father cracked up when she was a teenager, forcing her mother to sell the family hardware store to pay bills. She fears she could become ill and cause a similar trauma to Benjy, and she wonders if being in close to Adrian Monk's weirdness could have brought this condition on. So what goes on here? Watch and find out.
In the meantime, Sharona is taking some needed time off and Monk is forced to cope alone. For fans of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer show from the 90s, you will get a treat with an appearance of the actress who played Anya in a small role.
Monk: Mr. Monk Gets Fired (2004)
Monk faces a loss of identity
Karen Stottlemeyer has picked an inopportune time to make a documentary about her husband's job. The precinct is currently working an arson at a wig store where the owner was killed, but the commissioner wants them to refocus on the solving of the "torso murder" where the dismembered body of a woman was found. Monk is brought in on this latter case, and the commissioner, who hates Monk, takes a clerical error that he made as an opportunity to fire him and pull his private license, denying Monk a way to make a living in any way that he has done so in his adult past. So Sharona is back working at the hospital as an R. N. and Monk is lost.
This episode really brings up how people are often their work and when they lose that it's like a loss of identity as well as income, even if you are not an OCD person.
Wings: Love Overboard (1996)
Roy and Antonio strut their stuff
The funniest thing about this episode is the side plot, not the main plot. In the main plot Casey confronts her husband about what he's stolen from her.
In a side plot, Roy asks Antonio if he'd like to make some extra money being an escort for older ladies on a cruise ship that is docking nearby. The problem is that being a dance partner is part of the duties of an escort and Antonio cannot dance. Roy promises to teach Antonio how to dance that night, after everybody leaves. I can't imagine an entire airport of any kind being abandoned at night, especially in my post 9-11 world, but I digress.
What entails is about the funniest five minutes of TV I've seen in a long time as Roy and Antonio trip the light fantastic. It looks like they and the crew probably had a great time filming it as well as there are additional shots of them dancing in the end credits.
Monk: Mr. Monk and the Blackout (2004)
Mr. Monk tries to get back into the dating game
A blackout occurs for a short period of time one night when Monk is at Sharona's house - he reacts with the uncertainty as you'd expect. It turns out the blackout was a result of sabotage, but no significant crime occurred during that time. A message is left at the scene of the crime, and Monk recognizes the writing style as that of a domestic terrorist who died ten years ago. Complications ensue.
I didn't find the investigation part of the episode that interesting, but what is funny is Monk being attracted to a pretty publicist who works for the power company. More importantly she is very attracted to him. Encouraged by Sharona, he asks her out for a date that goes disastrously. Especially funny is when he initially calls her and has laid out on his desk in front of him several stacks of notecards with the answer to what he considers every possible question she might ask him.
Monk: Mr. Monk and the Panic Room (2004)
Mr. Monk gets lazy...
...and is ultimately bested in criminology instincts by Sharona.
A wealthy man's alarm system goes off so he takes his pet chimpanzee and gets into his ironclad panic room and waits for the police to arrive. They do arrive minutes later, find some broken glass at an external door, but no intruder or signs that there has been one. The police knock on the door to the panic room, get no response, and so they break into it with a blow torch. The wealthy man is on the floor, dead from a bullet wound, and his pet chimpanzee is swinging a gun around, the apparent killer.
Monk, usually inquisitive about every aspect of a crime scene, shrugs his shoulders and says case closed. He just accepts the obvious theory that the chimp did it. Sharona questions the prevailing theory mainly because she feels empathy for the chimp and doesn't want him to be euthanized which the law requires for any animal that kills a human. Complications ensue.
Monk is a comedy with the murder mystery there just to hold the comedy together, so I can overlook the great big plot holes here and just enjoy the episode for its funny spots. There's a great scene where Stottlemeyer asks for an unloaded gun so he can take the chimp into the interrogation room and prove that the chimp is capable of firing a weapon. Unfortunately, after Stottlemeyer is locked in the room, Disher realizes he gave him a loaded gun by accident. There's also a great bit of business where the chimp is loose in Monk's house, taking the place apart. As a result he has a dissociative episode and puts a for sale sign up in the yard - he is renting by the way - saying "I can't live here anymore".
Glad Rag Doll (1929)
An early effort by director Michael Curtiz in America
Thus it is impossible to rate. The sound discs are lost as well, so there is no way to judge the pacing and the plot of the film. Often Richard Barrios' book "Song in the Dark" offers some insight on these early sound productions, but in this case there is no mention of the film.
That's too bad because this film was an early effort by director Michael Curtiz and starred Dolores Costello, who disappeared from film not so much because of lack of interest, but because she dropped out of acting for awhile to raise a family. We don't have much of a record of Costello's voice in these early talking films, although she did many of them, because they are all lost save "Noah's Ark", which also happens to be a Michael Curtiz film.
The most information that can be gleaned is from the New York Times film review that survives which calls it "an amateurish audible film comedy" and the author of the article puzzles over the title. Probably because Warner Brothers of that era named films to draw in audiences more than to indicate the nature of the plot. Apparently Costello plays a stage actress who becomes the object of affection of the member of a wealthy family - the Fairchilds. The head of the family, perhaps an older brother?, is willing to pay off the actress rather than see his brother marry her, although the feeling of affection is not reciprocated by the actress. Somehow, the actress winds up at a Fairchild garden party where the dances of the day are performed by the attendees. And apparently one of the matrons of the Fairchilds turns out to be a kleptomaniac. To what end I have no idea.
This sounds something like the plot of Golddiggers of Broadway, although that film was released just one month before this one. Lots of stills survive, and they all look like slices of roaring twenties life, so that makes the totality of the loss doubly tragic.
Monk: Mr. Monk Goes to Mexico (2003)
It's a comedy folks! Lighten up!
During spring break in a Mexican town, a young man from a well off San Francisco family is offered a coupon for free sky diving. But his parachute doesn't open and he dies in the fall. But the medical examiner says that young man actually died of drowning as there is a pint of water in each lung. The mayor, friends with the boy's family, asks Monk to go to Mexico to investigate what actually happened.
Mexico makes a great setting for Monk's OCD and Sharona's partying instincts, which do get the best of her. At first Monk resists going, saying that the problem with Mexico is "it's not here". So he packs 18 bags of food, wipes, and bottled water he is familiar with - that also gets stolen from his car on the first day. It's not that they don't have bottled water in Mexico, they just don't have the brand that he drinks.
It was a great, extra quirky episode of Monk. Remember, this is not Law and Order. It's a comedy show with a murder mystery as a weekly topic, not the other way around.
Monk: Mr. Monk Goes Back to School (2003)
Mr. Monk gets vertigo
English teacher Beth Landow tells her married lover, science teacher Derek Kilby, that he must tell his wife about them and leave her or she will tell her. The next morning - Saturday - Kilby is proctoring the SAT when the body of Beth Landow hits Kilby's car from the observation tower and the car alarm goes off. The students get up from their desks and look out the window. Kilby doesn't make a move. Monk is asked to investigate the case by someone who works at the school, which just happens to be the same private high school that his late wife attended. To further investigate, Monk becomes a temporary English teacher, taking the place of the recently deceased Beth Landow.
You already know the "who" in this case, but what you don't know is the "how" - How did Kilby manage to kill Beth while he was proctoring the SAT across campus at the same time. This is what Monk has to figure out, and if you have seen enough murder mystery movies where the victim dies in tower such as the one shown in this episode, the clues are there. What makes it worthwhile is the comedy, such as Monk introducing himself to his new English class the first day and taking about half of that first class to write his name "Mr. Monk" when you consider his own exacting standards.
Monk: Mr. Monk and the Earthquake (2002)
Mr. Monk feels the earth move
Wealthy philanthropist Henry Rutherford is on the way out the door after breakfast when a earthquake hits. His young wife sees her chance and hits him over the head, then drags him next to a heavy piece of furniture and pushes it on top of him, killing him, thinking that everyone will just think the earthquake did it and she'll be in the clear and in the money.
The police have temporarily condemned Sharona's apartment building because of the quake, and so she goes to stay with her maneating, man stealing sister Gail. Oh, and Monk is staying there too as the trauma of the quake has made him temporarily lose the power of speech as he speaks only gibberish but thinks he is speaking English.
How does this involve Monk since nobody suspects that the wealthy old man was murdered? Rutherford was leaving a phone message for Sharona - they are both involved in restoring a church - when he saw his wife come at him to knock him out and cried out about what was happening, and as soon as Sharona gets back home and listens to her messages the jig will be up.
So Rutherford's widow and her boyfriend have to get into Sharona's apartment and get rid of that message. The easiest way they figure will be for the boyfriend to wine and dine Sharona, since she is always easy prey for a pretty face. How does this work out? Watch and find out.
Sharona is always blaming Monk for her relationships not working out, but she has some terrible judgment when it comes to men, absent of Monk, who often warns her about her bad choices. Among the worst is the killer in this episode, and then there are the married men hiding their wives and even a streaker on the more harmless end of the scale.
Monk: Mr. Monk Takes a Vacation (2002)
Mr. Monk takes an unwanted but eventful vacation
Monk is on vacation with Sharona and her son, mainly because he can't tolerate the idea of being without her at his side to calm his obsessions. While on the beach, Sharona's son, Benjy, is looking through binoculars and sees a murder on an upper floor of the hotel. Nobody else, of course, sees this.
Monk goes to the hotel management and encounters intense resistance from the hotel management who seems to want Monk, the murder question, and the body - if there is one - for that matter to just go away. But Monk finds an alliance in the person of Rita Bronwyn, house detective. Imagine Barnie Fife if he was a woman AND competent AND a fan of film noir - you'd have Rita. Many Monk episodes have the "who" quickly established, and it's the why and in particular the how that is in question. But here it is the who - victim and murderer - that Monk seeks.
And yes the result is even more ridiculous than normal, but this is a comedy show first and a murder mystery second.
Monk: Mr. Monk and the Airplane (2002)
A few homages to Tony Shalhoub's life and career
Monk thinks Sharona is picking her aunt up at the airport, but instead she is going to New Jersey to see her aunt. She has waited until the last possible moment to tell Monk so that he cannot spend days obsessing over the situation and must make the decision to either go with her or stay on the spot. He decides to go with her, even though this will be his first (successful) ride on a plane. Of course his obsessions about clean bathrooms, people being too close, and people coughing play into all of this.
But on top of that, Monk becomes convinced that a man on the plane and his wife are in fact the man and an imposter, mainly based on him seeing in the airport that the wife had to stand on her toes to hug her husband, and the woman on the plane does not. Thus Monk thinks there is a murder mystery afoot, and he drives everyone crazy trying to solve the case, or even convince the flight crew that a murder has been committed in the first place, since the body is on the airport grounds somewhere.
Tim Daly, a costar of Shaloub's when they were both on Wings, has a guest appearance involving a matter separate from the murder mystery. And Brooke Adams, Shaloub's actual wife, plays a flight attendant who is driven off the wagon and to drink by Monk's annoying behavior.
Monk: Mr. Monk Goes to the Theater (2003)
You have to be a good actor to play a bad actor convinceingly
Sharona's sister is starring in a play, and part of that play is her stabbing a guy who has escaped from jail. But Sharona's sister Gail ends up stabbing the actor with a real knife and he collapses to the floor dead. Gail is suspected of doing this deliberately since she and the actor had dated briefly, and she is held without bail. Monk is on the case.
A complicating factor is that Sharona's mother is coming to visit and Sharona has embellished her resume in regard to what her mother knows about her life, and that includes her mother thinking that Sharona is Monk's partner in detecting rather than his assistant.
The funniest part about this episode is Sharona and Monk reenacting the crime in the theater and the director wanting to employ Monk as an actor to fill in until his replacement for the dead actor can arrive due to Monk's perfect recall of a scene in a play. Actually performing the part before an audience plays into all of Monk's paranoias in a most hilarious way.
There is also a speed dating scene that makes it obvious that Monk is not ready to date again, although he is actually there as part of the investigation.
Monk: Mr. Monk Goes to the Circus (2003)
In the words of Dr. Evil's son...
...why not just shoot him? I've got a gun in my room.
And the victim is shot with a gun, but in the most public and elegant way possible. The assassin is a hooded ninja figure who does flips, lands in the restaurant, shoots the victim, and then somersaults out. Why??? And that question is never truly answered.
The ex-wife comes into focus as a suspect, but she has a big cast on her leg, her bones shattered from an accident during one of her acrobatic performances a few weeks ago. How could she possibly have committed the crime?
An interesting side plot is Sharona getting deeply offended by Monk's lack of empathy when she is frightened by a circus elephant and confesses to Monk her lifelong fear of elephants, only to be brushed off by him. She responds by sulking and not coming to work for a few days. Has she forgotten exactly who it is that she works for?
Monk: Mr. Monk and the Red-Headed Stranger (2002)
Too much celebrity worship and name dropping, not enough mystery
One of Willie Nelson's staffers may have embezzled some money and Willie threatens to fire the guy if the books don't balance by that night. Later in the afternoon, the same staffer sees a sign to not use the front door, to come around to the side door. When he does he is shot and killed - the audience does not see the actual killing. When the audience rejoins the scene there is a blind woman screaming murder and Willie Nelson bending over the body. Complications ensue.
Willie Nelson being slobbered over by Monk - a huge fan - takes up a good part of the proceedings as does Willy Nelson performing. Nelson is an OK actor - he's done several movies and he never embarrassed himself, but he's not Tom Hanks either. There are some humorous parts - Monk is invited to perform with the band on clarinet, and a streaker turns up a couple of times even though this is not 1974. I'd say this is one of Monk's blander season one episodes, but the quirky Monk humor keeps it at a 7/10.
Monk: Mr. Monk and the Marathon Man (2002)
A possibly iconoclastic moment for Monk
A woman is strangled and then thrown out of her penthouse apartment to the pavement below. There are two prime suspects - her ex-husband and her married lover, the wealthy owner of a chain of furniture stores. Monk settles his attention on the married lover as having the greatest motive, but at the time the woman was killed the man was running a marathon, made every checkpoint, and finished the race.
Competitors are tracked by a computer chip. Monk thinks that perhaps the suspect gave his chip to another runner to carry so that he could duck out and commit the murder. But when Monk looks to see who the most likely accomplice could be - someone who hit checkpoints at the same time as the suspect - the only likely candidate is Tonday, Monk's lifelong idol of long distance running, a guy who is still entering and running marathons at age 63. Furthermore, investigation shows that Tonday is staying at a suite that is far more expensive than what he should be able to afford. What an iconoclastic possibility!
There's a real awkward moment when Monk and Sharona visit the offices of the people who run the marathon and ask some questions. All of the staff introduce themselves and shake hands with Monk as people do, but the last person to shake Monk's hand is a black man. When Monk breaks out a wipe to try and clean his hands the black staffer is insulted and so are the white staffers. They completely misunderstand Monk's color-blind OCD germ phobia and think it is boilerplate racism.
Monk: Mr. Monk and the Other Woman (2002)
Is Monk turning a page in his life?
A law office is broken into, a file torched, the attorney killed, and the legal secretary is killed as well when she wanders into the scene at the wrong time. The police immediately suspect Lawrence Grayson, the man whose file was burned in the break-in. Grayson makes no bones about the fact that he was on the outs with his attorney because he lost the case he had against a neighbor for building what he considered an oversized garage. The neighbor in question turns out to be a very pretty and classy woman, reminding Monk very much of his late wife Trudy. Will Monk let his strong attraction impact his objectivity, especially when Grayson turns up murdered, not far from the pretty neighbor's garage? Watch and find out.
In this episode, Monk discussed with his therapist why he has not tried to date in the years since his wife's death, and part of that is that Monk is still very much in love with his wife. Also in this episode, for once Sharona is not in love with a wrong guy who is part of the solution to the crime.
Monk: Mr. Monk and the Billionaire Mugger (2002)
Mr. Monk and the deadbeats
A self-made billionaire goes out for the evening, but then he arrives at his destination and dresses all in black, like a ninja, and attempts to mug a couple at knifepoint. The man the billionaire is trying to mug has a gun and kills the billionaire dead, thinking him to be a common thief. In the distance a policeman lurks, but as soon as the shots ring out the policeman runs for the hills. The press dub him "the fraidy cop". The police can't figure out who the patrolman is who bolted and ran, and they also can't figure out why a billionaire would risk his freedom and his life for forty bucks. They figure he was going through some middle age crisis and looking for a thrill and leave it at that. But, as usual, Monk says not so fast.
A side plot is that Sharona is having to get on Monk's case about not paying her regularly. It's not that Monk doesn't want to, it's just he's not aggressive about demanding payment from clients who can pay but won't. This results in Sharona leaving Monk's employ for a short while and him feeling lost as a result.
Monk: Mr. Monk Meets Dale the Whale (2002)
A whale of a tale
A judge is murdered in her home as she begs for help after calling 911 and she identifies her killer on the phone as eccentric Dale the Whale. When the police arrive they find that there was some stir fry on the stove although the judge had eaten out that night and brought part of what she could not eat home in a doggy bag. Why did she not eat that rather than cook an entirely different meal? Also, a passerby saw an extremely fat man stand on a chair and shut off the smoke alarm that was blaring from the cooking on the stove.
Dale the Whale is a very wealthy man who weighs over 800 pounds and is confined to his bed in his sprawling mansion. He could never manage to walk around somebody's house and kill them, although he does have a motive. Yet Monk believes this guy is the murderer. Complicating factor is that Dale sued Monk and his wife Trudy when she was alive for libel in an article she wrote. Dale took the "continue losing until they surrender" strategy, draining Monk and his wife of all of their assets. Thus Monk has every reason to hate Dale. Will it cloud his judgment? Watch and find out.
Monk: Mr. Monk and the Psychic (2002)
Too many suspects
You see the crime occur. You see a man calling his wife who is hurrying along the road that she must hurry faster because their dog has been badly injured. You can see that the dog is fine - She is in the car with the man. The man has put some crates on the road where his wife will be coming from. She sees them at the last moment, swerves to escape them and goes off the cliff. The man returns home and calls his wife in as missing. The fly in the ointment here is that the man who caused his wife's death is a police commissioner.
Monk suspects the man when he has an emergency hand washing need and goes all the way into the commissioner's bedroom area to find a bathroom. When there he notices that the commissioner is already quite busy packing up his wife's things not long after her death.
The other mystery here is that a psychic wakes up in her car shortly after the woman's disappearance and finds the body of the commissioner's wife. Are these two in it together? Watch and find out.
Raffles (1939)
a production code era remake of a classic
David Niven is a gentleman thief who gets caught in a bind when a Scotland Yard inspector catches up with him. Olivia deHavilland costars as his romantic interest. Interesting premise, deeply flawed execution.
David Niven is perfectly cast in the role, but the pacing of the moving is painfully slow, and it just drags on and feels so much longer than its 75-ish minute length. I think the big problem is that Niven's character next to no reason for actually being a thief, so we're dragged along on escapades that don't really seem to have much point.
And then there is Olivia deHavilland, who was criminally underused in this film, to the point that she could have been completely written out and you wouldn't miss her. This movie had so much promise, and it just fell flat. I still prefer the 1930 film with Ronald Colman in the title role. It was a very fluid early talkie.
So Long at the Fair (1950)
a solid rewarding mystery
A brother and sister check into a Paris hotel days before the 1889 World's Fair kicks off. But the brother disappears overnight and nobody even remembers seeing him.
Perhaps an appropriate tagline would be: A solid, rewarding mystery with an exceedingly clever solution to a classic riddle. The gaslight theme isn't new at this point, and neither is the, "I know I see/saw this person but everyone else sees nothing" premise. However, the key to this intriguing mystery is that there is no mental illness and, believe it or not, no criminal activity. How, then, does someone disappear and why is everyone lying about it?
This movie helped launch the careers of both Simmons and Bogarde and I think they're both great in just about everything (if you haven't yet, check out Bogarde in a fantastic and similarly intriguing film, Libel, with Olivia de Havilland). There's very little chance you'll guess the reason and motive behind it all, but it makes perfect sense when it's finally revealed.
Women of Glamour (1937)
A rather unnecessary remake
A dissatisfied artist (Melvyn Douglas) finds new inspiration from a cynical, chance-met showgirl (Virginia Bruce). But will her modelling for him lead to more than just art?
This is a flat, light romantic drama, an anemic remake of Frank Capra's pre-Code Ladies of Leisure. Bruce has the impossible task of following in Barbara Stanwyck's footsteps, all of the pre-Code edges in the original version have been sanitized into blandness, and Capra's storytelling verve is sorely missing from this re-do. Douglas was the only element here that was an upgrade from the original, but even then there's still not much of a spark between our two leads.