TVSquad

(S05E02) This may have been the funniest episode of Monk I've ever seen. The sanitation workers of San Francisco have gone on strike and garbage is piling up all over the city. Monk, not surprisingly, is not taking it well at all, and actually mails his garbage to Dr. Kroeger, his shrink. Kroeger knows this because the garbage is actually sorted by size and color. Monk becomes so obsessed with ending the garbage strike that when the president of the union is found dead with a bullet to the head, he rules it a suicide without actually investigating. Natalie manages to convince Monk to investigate anyway, despite Monk's protest that what he's doing is "for the greater good."

Since this is Monk, we know it's not really suicide, but murder. Monk's first inclination is that the mayor is involved, but that theory only leads to a dead end. Monk's preoccupation with getting rid of all the garbage in the street makes it nearly impossible for him to concentrate on the case, so Capt. Stottlemeyer takes Monk to a "clean room" where circuit boards are built so Monk can think about the case with a clear head. Monk figures out that it was actually the union accountant who killed the union prez after the president found out he was cooking the books and stealing from the pension fund.

But that's all normal Monk-type stuff, solving the case and all that. No, the best parts of this episode was seeing the measures Monk was willing to take to get everyone's mind off the case and back to cleaning up the city. At one point, Monk actually borrows a garbage truck and begins to clean up the garbage himself. His ingenious plan is to fill the truck, drive it into the bay, borrow another truck, and repeat the process over and over. He also develops a theory that rock star Alice Cooper killed the union president, because as everyone knows, rock stars love antiques and the president was shot to death while sitting in an antique chair. Monk defines Alice Cooper as "the kind of hippie who breaks into people's offices, beats them up, and shoots them in the head."