User Reviews

This episode is an exact representation of the problems I have with this mostly great show. It has flashes of great scenes, writing, and ideas but sometimes it just goes wayyy to far. The premise in this episode is great and it's enjoyable up until about 70% the way through. Then all of the sudden the writing goes off the deep end to where it's just completely unbelievable. You mean to tell me a "well established actor" who is presented as a down to earth nice guy suddenly goes completely nuts over an acting roll in like 2 days? Why would people keep hiring him? He would be blacklisted. Why do the police send in monk alone to talk to him and when they see him fighting in a struggle they just stand outside and do absolutely nothing? Why is monk not more freaked out by this man and is instead hugging him in the final scene? (I get that it was most likely intended for dramatic effect for the audience to showcase monk's pain over losing Trudy but it was just done in such an unrealistic and ridiculous fashion that it broke my immersion with the scene)

It's frustrating because scenes in the show like earlier in the episode where they use the character actor to flush out monk's deeper issues by getting him to reflect, engaging the audience and informing them to as to why monk is so passionate about his job and why he does what he does are beautiful. And then they ruin it by making "fake monk" go absolutely insane for no reason. You can showcase a character actor getting "too invested" into a role in a more realistic fashion. This show is such a double edged sword when it comes to things like that.

How can you have a show about a man who is neurotic genius and points out the seemingly impossible, then yet let the show contain such glaring and obvious issues that monk himself would tear apart in an instant. It so ironic. 90% of the time this show is brilliant but sometimes it's like the writers hand off a writing baton to a 12 year old English class to finish up some of the episodes. The is one of those times unfortunately. It's a 10/10 for the first 70% of the episode and then just drops to a 4/10 out of no where. I gave it an 8 because Tony Schalhoub is an amazing actor and along with Ted Livine single handedly carries this show.

This episode gets very meta, with Stanley Tucci playing David Ruskin, an A-grade actor signed on to play Mr. Monk in a movie. It gets quite chilling and emotional at the end, with Trudi's memory causing trauma to David in a touching scene. I don't think Stanley is related to Michael Tucci from Diagnosis Murder.

Peter Weller was hilarious as Captain Stottlemeyer! Just so good and laugh-out-loud.

I thought I knew all the Monk episodes well, but this sweet surprise was waiting for me one afternoon when I needed it most. If only the followup film could have packed this much, well, everything. I laughed, I cried, then I cried from laughing so hard.

Stanley Tucci's friendship with Shaloub may be the reason, but they are magic together. I was doing some paperwork when I looked up and saw the scene where character David Ruskin (ultimate "method actor" played by Tucci) is meeting privately with Monk on a sofa in semidarkness. Ruskin is trying to get "into Monk's head" in order to better play him in a film about one of his cases. What the two of them accomplish, is bring us to tears (again for some, I'm sure). Amazing. And that was just the beginning of my awe at this episode.

When the perp of an accidental killing that opens the show is in a scene in a used car showroom with both Monk and Ruskin/Tucci (made up to look like Monk for the filming) there are true belly laughs as well. When Tucci who can't seem to get "out of character" and Monk try to smooth out the sale label on the windshield of a VW Beetle with the heel of the gun that is needed to subdue to perplexed perp, I teared from laughing so hard. This is a Monk for the ages, best viewed by those fully familiar with (and a fan of) the Monk character's painful past. For those folks, its a must.

Stanley Tucci did a fine job portraying an actor named David Ruskin in this episode. Ruskin is shadowing Monk & Co. as they investigate a real life homicide, preparing to portray Monk in a TV movie about a case this series had last year when Monk figured out how an astronaut killed someone while he was actually in space.

There were two crimes being investigated by our heroes. We began with a man and a woman apparently about to have a one-night stand but due to some playfulness a teddy bear was knocked off the shelf and the man saw there was a video camera inside. He thus knew she was picking up married men in bars, having some fun with them, and blackmailing them with the video evidence of their fling. He tried to get the camera away from her and they got to shoving each other until she accidentally lurched into something and fell to the ground, dead.

After seeing the gang at the scene investigating and meeting the famous actor who worked hard to say one of Monk's favorite phrases exactly like Monk, we then saw a sledge hammer breaking down a wall and that same man who was with the woman breaking into a pawn shop where he was interrupted by the store owner, brandishing a gun. All the bad guy wanted to do then was leave, but the man wouldn't let him. They struggled, the gun went off and the man looked horrified that this man had died.

Trying not to give away too much, I'll say that the burglary at the pawn shop was done strictly to destroy some evidence that the man and woman were together briefly in public, before she took him home and wound up dead. What he was trying to cover up quite likely would have never been discovered. But the bigger issue is that he was seen in public with the woman and there existed plenty of chance for several people to have noticed them together that night, so it just didn't make any sense for him to smash down a wall and steal from the pawn shop just to destroy the one other thing that could possibly have linked them together. Because neither death had been planned, or even intended in any way, there were all sorts of clues that linked the two killings and helped Monk figure out what happened.

A large portion of this episode dealt with the actor, Ruskin, who was known to get so involved in his prior roles that he had serious psychological issues. We quickly see that he is becoming so obsessed with "being" Monk that he begins to believe he is Monk and that Trudy was his wife. He misunderstands a message someone tried to give to the real Monk and winds up almost killing a car dealer (the man responsible for the two deaths in tonight's episode) in revenge for him killing Trudy, and gets into a ridiculous fight with Adrian.

While the first appearances of Ruskin were rather funny, once we learned about his prior problems, all the scenes with him were quite disturbing. He was in need of real help as he had lost touch with reality. None of those scenes was funny and they went on way too long in a couple of cases. There was even a really sad scene at the end with Monk and Dr. Kroger, as Adrian had regressed and instead of cutting his visits from 3 per week to 2 as planned, he was now demanding the doctor see him all 7 days of the week. But they didn't do it like I stated, they slowly added a third visit, then a fourth, then a fifth, then ...It was too dragged out and not funny in the least.

I earlier rated this a 6 but on further review think I was too generous. Too many of the things supposed to be funny weren't and there was no cleverness to either crime committed because neither one was planned at all. It was cool to see the "actor" becoming like Monk initially, but where it led just wasn't funny, so I give this a 5.