TVSquad

(S08E13) Just three more episodes till the end of Monk, so it sort of feels like they're wrapping up some loose ends. Tonight, the focus was on Leland Francis Stottlemeyer, Monk's best friend, the guy who has been solidly behind Adrian through all the difficult years since Trudy's death, helping Monk to cope and remain gainfully employed as a police consultant.

Leland's always been a good guy, but not so lucky in love. As the title suggested, if Mr. Monk is the best man, that means that Leland was the groom. More about the nuptials after the jump.

(S05E06) I think it's fairly easy to tell a person's high school or college experience by how excited (or not excited) they become when it comes time for a class reunion. I know my response to people asking if I was going to attend my ten year high school reunion was pretty much "hell no." My school experience was decent enough, but Adrian Monk's wasn't so great. In this episode he returns to Berkeley for his college reunion, after receiving an invitation addressed to "Captain Cool." We later find out he received that particular nickname not because he was popular, but because he defrosted the dorm refrigerator every weekend.

Before all that, of course, we get the obligatory Monk opening murder. A man, his face more or less obscured, pushes an old woman down a flight of stairs, and then breaks a beaded necklace to make it look as if she slipped and fell by accident. Disher and Stottlemeyer investigate, and Disher falls for the ruse, but Stottlemeyer points out that there are a lot of gaps Disher himself didn't notice. He turns it into a homicide investigation, which is good because otherwise the episode would only be five minutes long.

(S05E05) This episode was directed by Peter Weller, who also played the actor portraying Stottlemeyer in the season premiere, something I complete missed when I saw that episode. Shame on me.

The show also introduced a new love interest for Stottlemeyer, a no-nonsense real estate agent named Linda Fusco, played by Sharon Lawrence. They left their relationship pretty wide open by the end, so I suspect she'll be returning for more episodes, which is always cool because I like it when they take the focus away from Monk once in awhile and flesh out the side characters a bit more.

In this episode, Natalie, inspired by her late grandfather who started a toothpaste company in England ("talk about optimism!"), leases some office space and sets up a private detective agency for Mr. Monk. Their first client is the aforementioned Linda, who wants them to find out who dented her fender. She's convinced it was her ex-husband, but as they delve deeper they discover the man who did it is also the same man who drowned his lover by knocking her out, sealing her in a box, and dumping her over the side of his yacht (a yacht called "Lucky Lady" by the way. Never let it be said the Monk writers don't have a sick sense of humor).

Monk, like MASH, is difficult to define as either a "comedy" or a "drama," but whatever it is, the "drama" part was kicked up a few notches with last night's episode, which focused on Captain Stottlemeyer and his crumbling marriage.