TV: It's a bungle out there

Adrian Monk has always been quirky, fearful, hamstrung by his neuroses. But when did he become so damn stupid?

In the two episodes I've seen of the new season of Monk, Tony Shalhoub's title character, as well as his supporting cast, have taken to acting like complete idiots for the sake of a joke. In the season premiere, a gag about Monk trying to say something to Capt. Stottlemeyer (Ted Levine), but being interrupted by a jackhammer, went on forever. He must've started, and been interrupted, a good 30 times. Wouldn't a person with a brain in his head try to go inside to speak? Or wouldn't Stottlemeyer get the gist of what Monk was saying (it was something extremely simple, like, "Maybe we should talk to him"), and say, "I get it, let's go"? No. They both stand there for minutes on end, playing out this pathetic scene that could only happen between two characters who are feeble in the head.

On the most recent episode, a man died inside a panic room, and a hole was cut inside the door to get to him. When Monk later accidentally gets locked in the panic room, he... well, he panics. But in an incredibly stupid fashion. While he's wailing and crying for help, Stottlemeyer is looking at him through the hole, shouting instructions at Monk on how to reopen the door. Monk, of course, acts as though he can't see or hear Stottlemeyer, because apparently the writers think that's "funny". It was an interminable vaudeville performed by an idiot.

In the same episode... man, I don't know where to begin. In the same episode, the murder victim's pet chimpanzee has been taken into custody as the prime suspect, and Capt. Stottlemeyer has decided to lock himself in a room with the chimp (to recreate the scene of the crime), give the chimp a gun, and see if it has the manual dexterity to actually pull the trigger. And that's not even the stupid part. Stupid part #1: the Captain's assistant, Lt. Disher, was supposed to give the Captain an unloaded gun to use, but he gave him a loaded gun by mistake. What policeman (outside of Chief Wiggum) is that careless about firearms? Stupid part #2, Stottlemeyer accepts Disher's word on the gun being unloaded, neither checking for himself, nor realizing the weight of the gun indicates it's loaded. Relatively minor, but it's an incredibly unrealistic portrayal of a policeman's attention to gun safety. But stupid part #3, the really stupid part, is when Disher realizes his mistake. He rushes to warn the Captain... but the Captain refuses to listen to him, or unlock the door, because he's involved with an extremely extended and totally unfunny pantomime, trying to incite the chimp into pulling the trigger. I mean, if you're a cop, and another cop is screaming and pounding on the door, don't you think that would set off a little alarm in your head? Maybe you're not going to immediately leap to the conclusion, "This monkey has a loaded gun," because you'd have to be an idiot to be in a situation in the first place where that phrase would ever be relevant. But wouldn't you think that something might require your immediate attention, and you should maybe stop screwing around and find out what it is?

Idiots, all of them.

This show is losing a lot of goodwill from me. Monk is about a brilliant man who is handicapped by his mental tics, not a stupid man who just has to wash his hands a lot. The writers need to get back on the ball, pronto.