- Title: Monk – Mr. Monk and the Psychic
- wiki: link
Monk Monday takes us back to San Francisco and the toils of the defective detective Adrian Monk (Tony Shalhoub). The first single-hour episode of the series following the two-hour pilot episode, “Mr. Monk and the Psychic” sees Monk volunteer his services to the former police commissioner (John Bourgeois) whose wife (Kate Trotter) goes missing and is later found dead by a psychic (Linda Kash). Given the loss of his own wife, the case hits close to home, but seeing discrepancies that can’t be explained, and not believing in psychics in general (or this specific psychic specifically), Monk begins to suspect the woman was murdered by her husband.
Fighting an uphill battle against Captain Leland Stottlemeyer (Ted Levine) who warns Monk against going after a man with the political sway of a former commissioner and Sharona (Bitty Schram) who is much more willing to believe in the power of a psychic, Monk eventually discovers a motive for the crime in talking to the man’s longtime mistress (Jenny Cooper) and evidence that links him to the psychic’s home. Now all he has to do is figure out exactly how the crime occurred.
The episode is notable for the extremely elaborate setup in the climax where Monk, with the help of the man’s mistress and Stottlemeyer, basically frames the suspect for another murder in order to get him to confess to his original crime. Despite the confession, I’d guess he’d have a pretty solid case against the department for entrapment. Other memorable moments include Monk’s reaction to Sharona petting an unknown dog in the park and the detective’s misadventure with a crucial piece of evidence in a hardware store.
