- Title: Monk – Mr. Monk Meets Dale the Whale
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Monk Monday takes us back to San Francisco and the toils of the defective detective Adrian Monk (Tony Shalhoub) attempting to solve a case where he knows the who but cannot fathom the how. The who in this case is excessively obese Dale the Whale (Adam Arkin) who all evidence points to murdering a local judge he had disagreements with. However, Dale Biederbeck is too large to leave his own apartment let alone travel across town and kill someone. Knowing they can’t possible tie him to the crime, Biederbeck taunts both Stottlemeyer (Ted Levine) and Monk reopening old wounds for our detective.
The only part of the episode that doesn’t really make much sense is Sharona (Bitty Schram) going to work for Biederbeck to snoop. Although it plays into the criminal’s overconfidence and it allows her to discover just how awful it is, it only presents a very small piece of evidence that likely wouldn’t have been needed to solve the crime. Highlights include the setup of Stottlemeyer walking Monk through the crime scene without telling him the details, the running gag of Sharona’s horrible taste in men continuing, and the confrontations between Monk and Biederbeck allowing Monk to reverse the smugness by the end of the episode and get a bit of payback for his wife who Biederbeck hounded over a story several years prior.
