To be perfectly honest, throughout the 8 seasons, where I have followed every episode of "Monk", most of the time, I could solve the mystery in the first 15 minutes, give or take 5 minutes. As a fan of old fashioned Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Dame Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers deduction type murder mysteries, Monk did not fully satisfy.
However, the stories were almost always clever enough to make me smile, and most of the stories did not cheat (i.e. hiding a crucial clue until the end of the show).
After all, I think the writers and producers of "Monk" realized for series television, that it would be difficult to create a very clever, almost perfect, murder each episode. They understood that although the murder mystery was key, the "secret" to creating a great consulting detective in the footsteps of Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot, and Miss Marple involved creating a memorable character with quirks, whose unique life and eccentricities made him or her perfectly suited to be a master sleuth.
Holmes had his scientific method and insatiable need to test the limits of his mind and deductive reasoning (even at the expense of a cocaine addiction). Hercule Poirot was a Belgium dandy, perfectly dressed with his egg shaped head, perfectly shaped and waxed handlebar mustache, a gigantic ego, and dramatic conclusions. Marple was the diminutive octagenarian spinster, who saw the entire world from her little English village, and could extrapolate her experiences from the tiny village to understand the hearts of men and women, who murdered.
Adrian Monk was/is the detective beset with obsessive compulsive disorder, a serious and sometimes debilitating mental illness, but whose disorder to create order in the world (to make it even and balanced), allowed him to see the clues in the mess of an unplanned killing, and the purposeful manipulations in a carefully planned murder.
I must admit that I relished Monk, because of his madness - a mental illness tragically born out of the murder of his wife; the only murder he could not solve. In creating the character, the writers and producers infused a pathos and vulnerability in Monk, unlike his detective predecessors. We weren't sure how Monk would rise to the occasion, when saving lives meant enduring intense personal anguish from his disorder. This was the special connection between me and Monk and to us all. How do each of us rise to the occasion to be a hero in spite of the memories or personal issues that hold us back from fully enjoying our lives and being present?
Friday, December 4, 2009, Monk finished its run with the last two hour episodes "Monk and the End", and in it, we saw a Monk before the murder of his wife, after the murder of his wife, and after solving the mystery of who ordered the murder of his wife. More importantly, after the solution of his wife's murder, we saw a Monk rediscover a reason to live. So, when the last frame aired, we knew that, although we would not be spectators to new mysteries, we knew that his adventures would continue, and his life would be good. What more could we want when the television screen faded to white.
However, the stories were almost always clever enough to make me smile, and most of the stories did not cheat (i.e. hiding a crucial clue until the end of the show).
After all, I think the writers and producers of "Monk" realized for series television, that it would be difficult to create a very clever, almost perfect, murder each episode. They understood that although the murder mystery was key, the "secret" to creating a great consulting detective in the footsteps of Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot, and Miss Marple involved creating a memorable character with quirks, whose unique life and eccentricities made him or her perfectly suited to be a master sleuth.
Holmes had his scientific method and insatiable need to test the limits of his mind and deductive reasoning (even at the expense of a cocaine addiction). Hercule Poirot was a Belgium dandy, perfectly dressed with his egg shaped head, perfectly shaped and waxed handlebar mustache, a gigantic ego, and dramatic conclusions. Marple was the diminutive octagenarian spinster, who saw the entire world from her little English village, and could extrapolate her experiences from the tiny village to understand the hearts of men and women, who murdered.
Adrian Monk was/is the detective beset with obsessive compulsive disorder, a serious and sometimes debilitating mental illness, but whose disorder to create order in the world (to make it even and balanced), allowed him to see the clues in the mess of an unplanned killing, and the purposeful manipulations in a carefully planned murder.
I must admit that I relished Monk, because of his madness - a mental illness tragically born out of the murder of his wife; the only murder he could not solve. In creating the character, the writers and producers infused a pathos and vulnerability in Monk, unlike his detective predecessors. We weren't sure how Monk would rise to the occasion, when saving lives meant enduring intense personal anguish from his disorder. This was the special connection between me and Monk and to us all. How do each of us rise to the occasion to be a hero in spite of the memories or personal issues that hold us back from fully enjoying our lives and being present?
Friday, December 4, 2009, Monk finished its run with the last two hour episodes "Monk and the End", and in it, we saw a Monk before the murder of his wife, after the murder of his wife, and after solving the mystery of who ordered the murder of his wife. More importantly, after the solution of his wife's murder, we saw a Monk rediscover a reason to live. So, when the last frame aired, we knew that, although we would not be spectators to new mysteries, we knew that his adventures would continue, and his life would be good. What more could we want when the television screen faded to white.