TVSquad

Most of last night's episode focused on Disher, the bumbling young lieutenant whose outrageous theories usually afford no help whatsoever to the investigation. When he swears to his colleagues that he saw his dentist (Jon Favreau) murder a man while he was under anesthesia they refuse to believe him. Upset, he turns in his badge and tries to restart the garage band he had in the twelfth grade. He even manages to write seventeen songs in one night.

Last night's episode had some great laugh out loud moments. When the dentist and his assistant become linked to an armored car heist, they drug Monk (who, naturally, hates going to the dentist) and try to do their own rendition of the torture scene from Marathon Man. Before that, however, the sexy dental assistant arrives at Monk's home and tries to place a Kleenex soaked in chloroform on his face by telling him he has a smudge on his lip. Always a slave to his phobias, Monk tries to wipe away the smudge even after he realizes the Kleenex has chloroform on it.

The basic plot of last night's episode was Disher being absolutely correct and no one believing him. That plot has only been used about a million times on a million other shows, but as always, Monk remains a character-driven show and that's why it works and doesn't seem cliche. Given the title of the show, every episode must focus on Monk somehow, but it's always nice when the lives of the other characters are delved into more deeply, even if in the case of Disher we just find more layers of goofiness.