Mr. Monk Takes His Medicine . . . And Impresses Tom

by Thomas M. Pender

The USA Network series Monk, starring Tony Shaloub as former San Francisco police detective Adrian Monk, was known to me by commercials alone for many years.  For whatever scheduling reasons, I never got the chance to check the show out for several of its first seasons.  However, the first episode I ever saw impressed me so much that it stuck with me for a year until I was able to track it down, and it also got me to watch the show regularly.

Monk, known as “The Defective Detective” in promos, was San Francisco’s most brilliant detective, who figured out the identities of murderers and motives for murder by the craziest and tiniest of details.  Then, according to the first episode, his wife of many years was killed in an auto explosion.  He was so in love and connected with his wife Trudy that her death affected his personality and connection with the world around him.  He fell victim to every phobia known to Man, particularly mysophobia, the fear of germs.

This first episode I was exposed to was entitled “Mr. Monk Takes His Medicine.”  (I would learn later that practically every episode started with the words “Mr. Monk.”)  In it, he allows a suspect to get away due to one of his fears, and he is shamed by this.  His psychiatrist (a semi-regular character, who helps as Monk constantly tackles his fears) gives him a prescription to try.  Of course, Monk is afraid to try it.

A while ago, I wrote a column on two of the most romantic lines I’d ever heard in films.  This one episode, which moved me a great deal, includes the single most romantic scene – or more specifically, gesture – I’ve ever seen.  When Monk arrives home, and lays awake in bed wondering what to do, he goes to his closet.  Since his house is meticulously germ- and dirt-free, it’s no surprise that when he goes to his closet to pull something down from the shelf, it’s in a zipper-sealed bag.  Unzipping the bag, he removes a pillow and lays back down with it, deeply inhaling at the corner of the pillow.  We next hear the voice of his late wife, who appears to him (as I later learned she does periodically) and holds a conversation with Monk about his mistake, the pills, and his fears.

I was dumbstruck by this.  The man, fictional though he may be, loved his wife so much that when she passed away, he kept her pillow in a sealed bag so that it would still smell like her.  This is ingenious writing.  The vision of Trudy even tells Monk that there’s no way the pillow can still smell like her after she’s been gone so many years, and he painfully replies that he can still smell her.

As I saw more and more episodes of Monk, the character quickly became one of my favorites.  He is a humorous character, but also a sympathetic and in his own way, a heroic character.  There are many reasons to like and to cheer for Adrian Monk, even though he has so many issues to conquer.  For me, his greatest quality is his love and devotion for his wife.  Some would say he is wasting his life by staying alone and mourning a lost spouse, but I believe that as long as someone is happy – either by moving on after a spouse’s death or by loving them alone – this can be a very romantic thing.

Certainly, the pillow ranks high on the romantic scale, whether or not the aroma of Trudy Monk’s hand cream and shampoo are still on it, as Adrian insists.

If you’ve never seen Monk, and enjoy characters who will intrigue you as they entertain you, I highly recommend the show.  If you are interested in this particular episode, it is the ninth episode of the third season, and is available for rent or purchase in the third season box set.  Also, it is available on Best of Monk, an eight-episode compilation of the (fan-picked, no doubt) best episodes of the eight-season run of the show.  Monk Takes His Medicine represents the entire third season, so I imagine that it touched a great many more viewers than just me.  I hope if you see it for the first or 100th time, it touches you likewise.