Monk - General Discussion

[LexieLily]

She also had at least two cars simultaneously at one time, because she bought one for Julie when she got her license. (The end tag scene of Mr. Monk and the Three Julies, when Julie and her friends give Stottlemeyer a ride home.)

[chessiegal]

2 hours ago, LexieLily said:

She also had at least two cars simultaneously at one time, because she bought one for Julie when she got her license. (The end tag scene of Mr. Monk and the Three Julies, when Julie and her friends give Stottlemeyer a ride home.)

And that car changed. It was red in that episode. Later in Mr. Monk and the UFO and she had to borrow Julie's car, it was bluish. Another car or show inconsistency?

[LexieLily]

18 minutes ago, chessiegal said:

And that car changed. It was red in that episode. Later in Mr. Monk and the UFO and she had to borrow Julie's car, it was bluish. Another car or show inconsistency?

I didn't even notice that the car changed. I just wondered if Stottlemeyer, as a cop, let Natalie and Julie off with a warning rather than a ticket for minor Julie having other minors in her car when she was only recently-licensed ;).

[Katy M]

3 hours ago, LexieLily said:

I didn't even notice that the car changed. I just wondered if Stottlemeyer, as a cop, let Natalie and Julie off with a warning rather than a ticket for minor Julie having other minors in her car when she was only recently-licensed ;).

Probably didn't care because he's not a traffic cop.  And/or the writers were older and that wasn't the law back when they were kids and they didn't think about it.

[Bastet]

53 minutes ago, Katy M said:

And/or the writers were older and that wasn't the law back when they were kids and they didn't think about it.

Yeah, when I was a teenager (in CA), my first license, obtained the morning of my 16th birthday, had no restrictions (and, yes, I drove my friends out that night).  I just looked it up and now:

Quote

During the first 12 months after you are licensed, you cannot drive between 11 p.m. and 5 a.m. and cannot transport passengers under 20 years old, unless accompanied by a California-licensed parent or guardian, a California-licensed driver 25 years old or older, or a licensed or certified driving instructor.

(There are exceptions.)

Apparently, restrictions on teenage license holders were enacted in 2006 and 2008.  I didn't bother looking into the specifics of which restrictions went into effect when, but Julie not being able to have her friends as passengers - unless Natalie was with them - would have been new, and possibly very new, depending on when that rule took effect and when the episode was written, since Julie didn't start driving until 2008 if my IMDb search is correct. 

Edited July 15, 2022 by Bastet

[chessiegal]

I doubt the writers even considered whether a new 16-year-old licensed driver could have other teens in the car. They had a story line in mind and went with it.

[Bastet]

44 minutes ago, chessiegal said:

I doubt the writers even considered whether a new 16-year-old licensed driver could have other teens in the car. They had a story line in mind and went with it.

Well, yeah, "never let the truth get in the way of a good story".  But, depending on the timing, they may not have even had any reason to know in the first place.

[chessiegal]

Monk marathon on Hallmark Movies & Mysteries tomorrow from 3 am to 9 pm ET.

[andromeda331]

5 hours ago, chessiegal said:

Monk marathon on Hallmark Movies & Mysteries tomorrow from 3 am to 9 pm ET.

That's great!

[LexieLily]

7 hours ago, chessiegal said:

Monk marathon on Hallmark Movies & Mysteries tomorrow from 3 am to 9 pm ET.

Muchas gracias!

[bluegirl147]

On 7/14/2022 at 1:56 PM, fishcakes said:

It also says she often wears Louboutins but I only noticed it the one time.

On 7/14/2022 at 2:08 PM, andromeda331 said:

That's a lot of cars.

If I had to guess I would say there wasn't a lot of communication/coordinating between wardrobe and whatever department would be responsible for what cars the characters drive and the writers.  The writers know Natalie is supposed to be strugglingish single mom without the resources to buy designer shoes but the wardrobe department might not care and may have gotten the shoes at a discount from the designer.

Also I don't think Hollywood understands viewers notice everything.  Especially now with binge watching where we are watching a bunch of episodes one after another so things are staying fresh in our minds.

I know that there used to be people in charge of continuity.  I wouldn't be surprised if they no longer have them. 

[chessiegal]

They showed my favorite episode of the series yesterday - Mr. Monk and the Kid. I tear up at the end every time. Tony is so good with that cute little boy.

[chessiegal]

Another Monk marathon. Sundance channel, Sunday July 24, starting at 6 am for 24 hours, to celebrate the 20-year anniversary since the show premiered. They start with the Pilot, but then pick and choose from later episodes.

[fishcakes]

19 hours ago, bluegirl147 said:

If I had to guess I would say there wasn't a lot of communication/coordinating between wardrobe and whatever department would be responsible for what cars the characters drive and the writers.  The writers know Natalie is supposed to be strugglingish single mom without the resources to buy designer shoes but the wardrobe department might not care and may have gotten the shoes at a discount from the designer.

Also I don't think Hollywood understands viewers notice everything.  Especially now with binge watching where we are watching a bunch of episodes one after another so things are staying fresh in our minds.

Thinking about this more (I have way too much free time), with the cars at least, it was likely due to a sponsorship arrangement. I usually watch the show on DVD, but occasionally will catch a TV airing. I noticed the closing credits of one broadcast episode had a "Promotional consideration provided by Buick" card, but that's not on any of the DVDs. And I think you're right; they just figured if all the cars were silver, we wouldn't notice they were different.

As for the clothes, my own completely speculative and unfounded theory is that the producers really love Traylor Howard and wanted to make her happy. I don't know, maybe actors get to keep some of the clothes after filming? Another thing about the DVDs is that on a few of the commentaries, Andy Breckman absolutely gushes about Traylor, talking about how wonderful and sweet she is, and calling her "our angel." And other writers and behind the scenes people are pretty positive about her as well. I've been reading the books, which all had to be greenlit by Breckman apparently, and Natalie's the star of those. So it might be a combination of her being a lovely person, but also a little bit of sticking it to Bitty Schram, whose Sharona wasn't portrayed in the kindest light in either the book she appeared in or in her Season 8 reappearance.

Edited July 19, 2022 by fishcakes
Words are tricky things

[Bastet]

4 hours ago, fishcakes said:

I don't know, maybe actors get to keep some of the clothes after filming?

Not unless they've negotiated that into their contract, which isn't common (Rue McClanahan famously did with Blanche's Golden Girls wardrobe; after her death her estate raised a great deal of money for charity by auctioning it off).  Actors have notoriously stolen favorite pieces (clothing, props, etc.) as mementos on the last day of filming, because the production companies/networks/studios are ridiculously stingy with them.

[chessiegal]

Hallmark Movies & Mysteries is running Monk until 11 pm. Happy Friday!

[fishcakes]

I finished reading all the Monk books, except for the one that my library doesn't have, which is okay because they're not very good. But I powered through 18 of them, so kudos to my OCD, I guess.

The main problem is that the writer of the first 15 books is Lee Goldberg, who co-wrote 3 episodes of the show, but I assume his co-screenwriter did most of the heavy lifting because the Monk he writes in the books is not at all like the TV character. Monk in the books is a completely detached-from-reality imbecile who acts normal for a couple minutes while he's doing the "here's what happened" part, but otherwise there's no way that guy gets through even a single day without someone trying to murder him for being insanely annoying. It got worse after the TV show ended and there were no constraints on the book plots, so Goldberg decided to turn Natalie into a Mary Sue, making her first a police officer, then a private detective who is Monk's boss, and everyone, including Monk and Stottlemeyer, constantly telling her what a great detective she is. In three or four of the post-show books, he hints that Natalie and Monk are going to end up as a romantic couple (I am making an alarmed face just thinking about it) before mercifully dropping that only to give Monk a girlfriend who runs a store called "Poop," where she sells items made from animal feces, in case you need any more evidence that he has no idea who Monk is.

The last four books were written by Hy Conrad, and they're pretty good. He wrote something like 30 of the show episodes, had a producer credit, and was with the show for its entire run. He couldn't undo all of the ridiculousness of the earlier books, but he returned everyone's personalities to normal and got rid of the girlfriend. He also is just better at writing mysteries. He'd drop enough clues throughout that the reader could take a guess about who the killer was, and then Monk would find the final piece that made the whole thing make sense.

But going by the reviews on Goodreads, where the Goldberg books seems to be more popular, mine is the minority opinion.

Edited August 21, 2022 by fishcakes

[chessiegal]

Thanks @fishcakes for the review of the books. One of the reasons I enjoy Monk is Tony's acting. The writing on the show is good too. I have no interest in the books.

I watched Mr. Monk and the Leper this morning. Randy walks into a room with a piano and starts playing the original theme song. Captain asks him what he's doing, and Randy says - just a little background music. Captain says - but they don't just keep playing it over and over. 🤣 I love when a show makes fun of itself.

[christie]

7 hours ago, fishcakes said:

In three or four of the post-show books, he hints that Natalie and Monk are going to end up as a romantic couple (I am making an alarmed face just thinking about it) before mercifully dropping that only to give Monk a girlfriend who runs a store called "Poop," where she sells items made from animal feces, in case you need any more evidence that he has no idea who Monk is.

I'm making that same alarmed face just reading that part of the sentence. As for the second part: 

a) gross and

b) Monk would NEVER (and I don't blame him).

[LexieLily]

13 hours ago, fishcakes said:

The main problem is that the writer of the first 15 books is Lee Goldberg, who co-wrote 3 episodes of the show, but I assume his co-screenwriter did most of the heavy lifting because the Monk he writes in the books is not at all like the TV character. Monk in the books is a completely detached-from-reality imbecile who acts normal for a couple minutes while he's doing the "here's what happened" part, but otherwise there's no way that guy gets through even a single day without someone trying to murder him for being insanely annoying. It got worse after the TV show ended and there were no constraints on the book plots, so Goldberg decided to turn Natalie into a Mary Sue, making her first a police officer, then a private detective who is Monk's boss, and everyone, including Monk and Stottlemeyer, constantly telling her what a great detective she is. In three or four of the post-show books, he hints that Natalie and Monk are going to end up as a romantic couple (I am making an alarmed face just thinking about it) before mercifully dropping that only to give Monk a girlfriend who runs a store called "Poop," where she sells items made from animal feces, in case you need any more evidence that he has no idea who Monk is.

You are a better person than me, because what I've read about the books on Reddit were enough to make me not want to read them. Aside from completely annihilating Natalie's character, apparently Monk drinks milk in the books!

Were some of the books written pre-show and some post-show? There was a never-filmed season-three script for an episode about Monk and Sharona investigating a murder on a cruise ship, and according to Hy Conrad that script became one of the later novels.

[fishcakes]

10 hours ago, LexieLily said:

Were some of the books written pre-show and some post-show? There was a never-filmed season-three script for an episode about Monk and Sharona investigating a murder on a cruise ship, and according to Hy Conrad that script became one of the later novels.

The first ten were written while the show was still on, and they're a little bit better than the next five Goldberg wrote because that's when things got really bizarre: Adrian drugs Ambrose and takes him on an RV trip, Ambrose marries a 20-something biker ex-convict, the poop girlfriend, Natalie becomes a cop with no training. It was ... not good.

The cruise ship story was Mr. Monk Gets on Board, and Conrad said that they tried for years to get that one made, but none of the cruise lines would let them film on one of their ships because they didn't want people thinking that passengers were getting murdered lol.  He expanded that script, made it a Natalie instead of Sharona story, and brought back the Mexican captain and his lieutenant. That book was one of the better ones, even though he was still trying to undo the "Natalie is really the boss" thing.

He did drink milk once! I think that was in the first book, which should have been a warning to me. The weird thing was that Goldberg was always really careful to mention in the acknowledgments that on the show they changed the type of bottled water that Monk drinks from Sierra Springs to Summit Creek, so he also changed it in the books, as if he were such a stickler for accuracy.

Edited August 22, 2022 by fishcakes

[Clawdette]

Building on the Randy playing the original theme song, I loved the episode when Marci Maven (Sarah Silverman) complains about her favorite TV show changing its theme song.  I, too, love those winks at the audience.

[chessiegal]

Caught an editing error on Mr. Monk and the Leper. When Randy is pulling his picture off the wall at the doctor's office, the drywall comes off with it, exposing lath. The doctor tosses the picture aside. In the next scene, the drywall has magically repaired itself and there is just an empty spot where the picture had been.

[chessiegal]

This is what the IMDb says about the picture continuity fail.

Quote

When Randy is trying to pry his photo off of the wall in the doctor's office, he causes most of the other photos to fall off the wall, and leaves a huge hole where his photo was. A few seconds later the other photos are back up and the hole has repaired itself, with only some glue residue remaining where his photo was. It is mentioned in the audio commentary that this is the result of the scene being created from several takes.

[chessiegal]

Cozi started airing Monk weekdays from 2-5 pm ET today. They started with the 2-part pilot then skipped Episode 3 and went to 4. 🤷‍♀️ 

ETA: They are airing Episode 3 tomorrow, and it appears they are not showing the season in the order it aired.

Edited October 3, 2022 by chessiegal

[Clawdette]

I'm so happy that Monk has returned to Hallmark Mysteries.  It's the background sound of my work at home day.

[chessiegal]

11 hours ago, Clawdette said:

I'm so happy that Monk has returned to Hallmark Mysteries.  It's the background sound of my work at home day.

I am too, except they moved the time to start at 11 am ET and are showing 4 episodes. Didn't it used to be 6? I appreciate they show them in order. COZI shows 3 episodes starting at 2 pm ET, and they jump around with the order. Usually the same season, but I don't know why they don't show them in order. I don't like that, and neither would Monk! 😄

Sundance airs 4 episodes on Sundays starting at 6:45 am ET.

[fishcakes]

This is a recent interview with Tony Shalhoub by the SAG foundation. It's long at almost an hour and a half, but pretty interesting. Caveat: the woman interviewing him is terrible; almost all of her questions are, "I was wondering, sort of, what was sort of your experience on like you know the sort of process of ..." and she has no ability to follow up or respond to what he's saying, but fortunately, he's good at just continuing to talk until she asks the next question on her list.

If I did this right, I've cued up this one part near the end of the interview where he talks about Ted Levine's audition for Monk (if I didn't do it right, the story starts at 59:44).

 

[andromeda331]

Mr. Monk Goes to Group Therapy's murderer is oddly relevent to right now. The murderer buried his victim and her car in the lake but with the drought the water levels are dropping. Six bodies have been found so far in Lake Meade due to the dropping water levels due to the drought. 

Edited February 7, 2023 by andromeda331

[chessiegal]

Hallmark Movies & Mysteries is having a Monk marathon tomorrow, Saturday, February 11. 

[andromeda331]

On 2/10/2023 at 1:52 PM, chessiegal said:

Hallmark Movies & Mysteries is having a Monk marathon tomorrow, Saturday, February 11. 

I'm watching it. It's great! 

[peacheslatour]

Check out the Cozi TV 10 for 10 on You Tube. It's kids acting out Cozi shows like Monk, Columbo, Fraiser, Roseanne and other shows. It's hilarious!

[Bastet]

Here's the Monk one:

I liked the Roseanne one better; I don't think they picked a very good scene for this one.

[peacheslatour]

3 minutes ago, Bastet said:

Here's the Monk one:

I liked the Roseanne one better; I don't think they picked a very good scene for this one.

No, not the best. The standout to me is the Columbo one. The kid playing him is brilliant.

[andromeda331]

I liked it.

[chessiegal]

We were watching Andy Griffith the other day, and it dawned on us that they wrote Randy Disher as Barney Fife.

[Katy M]

On 3/3/2023 at 1:44 PM, chessiegal said:

We were watching Andy Griffith the other day, and it dawned on us that they wrote Randy Disher as Barney Fife.

I feel like Disher is at least a tad more competent. They do let him carried a loaded weapon and he's managed not to shoot anyone.

[fishcakes]

What's great about Randy is that he's very competent when he has to take charge, for example, when Leland got shot or when he was out sick with a bad back. Randy just immediately snaps into boss mode and kills it. The ending they gave him, as Police Chief in a small town, actually seemed perfect for him, and it continued the pattern of small town chiefs and sheriffs (Mr. Monk and the UFO, Mr. Monk Bumps His Head) being good at their jobs instead of the more stereotypical rubes that lazy writers fall back on.

The rest of the time, though, Randy was like a puppy, trying so hard to please Leland with his nutty theories (suicide by monkey, lol) and everyone else with his music. I think my favorite Randy moment was when he sang his tribute song for a presumed-dead Monk's memorial service. "Shot down! In his pri-ime. Forty-eight. Or forty-ni-ine." It's so funny to me that he didn't bother to find out Monk's exact age probably because he already had the rhyme down.

[chessiegal]

I think my favorite Randy theory is how Dale the Whale got out and back in his room - liposuction + reverse liposuction. 😅

[shapeshifter]

6.1 “Mr. Monk and His Biggest Fan” (guest starring Sarah Silverman) has Randy obsessed with playing Jenga, which pans out in the end when they’re trying to capture the killer in a lumber warehouse, and Randy uses his recently honed Jenga skills to knock out the armed killer with a piece of lumber, Jenga-style.

[chessiegal]

The writers were laying a foundation in 6.1. When Leland and Linda were having lunch, Linda says - What's a girl gotta do to get your attention - commit murder?  Hee.

[Annber03]

1 hour ago, shapeshifter said:

6.1 “Mr. Monk and His Biggest Fan” (guest starring Sarah Silverman) has Randy obsessed with playing Jenga, which pans out in the end when they’re trying to capture the killer in a lumber warehouse, and Randy uses his recently honed Jenga skills to knock out the armed killer with a piece of lumber, Jenga-style.

That was awesome :D. I love that he got a win there. 

[LexieLily]

1 hour ago, shapeshifter said:

6.1 “Mr. Monk and His Biggest Fan” (guest starring Sarah Silverman) has Randy obsessed with playing Jenga, which pans out in the end when they’re trying to capture the killer in a lumber warehouse, and Randy uses his recently honed Jenga skills to knock out the armed killer with a piece of lumber, Jenga-style.

I loved that :D. Made the rest of the episode worth it! 

[andromeda331]

On 3/8/2023 at 4:33 PM, Annber03 said:

That was awesome :D. I love that he got a win there. 

 

On 3/8/2023 at 5:03 PM, LexieLily said:

I loved that :D. Made the rest of the episode worth it! 

Me too. That was awesome. 

[LexieLily]

Tony did a Zoom interview where he said that in May filming will start on a ninety-minute Monk movie that will end up airing on Peacock. It sounds like it will be set in a post-Covid world. 

I'm cautiously optimistic as long as Ted, Jason and Traylor are back as well. Even Bitty for a cameo? (If we're going down the list of side characters I'd love to see Emmy [Julie].)

[Door County Cherry]

2 hours ago, LexieLily said:

Tony did a Zoom interview where he said that in May filming will start on a ninety-minute Monk movie that will end up airing on Peacock. It sounds like it will be set in a post-Covid world

Really?  Is this an April Fool's Day joke?

This would make me so happy!

[LexieLily]

13 minutes ago, Door County Cherry said:

Really?  Is this an April Fool's Day joke?

Not April Fool's but it is Pi Day! 3.14159....

[Door County Cherry]

2 hours ago, LexieLily said:

Not April Fool's but it is Pi Day! 3.14159....

That's even better.  

Ha, I really thought you misheard or  mistaken but I did some research and you ain't lying.  

Here's the video with the confirmation.  

 

[andromeda331]

I'm actually surprised. I had hoped they'd do a couple movies after the series  like with Psych ended but as the years went by I figured it wasn't going to happen.

[chitowngirl]

Peacock won’t be free soon-I’ll have to decide whether I want to pay for yet another streaming service…🤔