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Mr. Monk and the Election is the fifteenth episode of the third season of Monk.
Synopsis[]
When Natalie runs for school board, Monk must figure out who's behind an attempt on her life.
Plot[]
Natalie Teeger is running for the school board in an effort to keep Julie's school from being closed. She's set up a campaign headquarters office in a shuttered storefront, and she has a crew of supporters helping her with signs, mailings, and phone calls. While she tries to put Adrian Monk to work, a deliveryman wheels in a used copy machine that she purchased second-hand. Meanwhile, someone sets up an automatic rifle on a rooftop across the street and takes aim at the campaign office. He points it at Natalie as she and a repairman try to inspect the copier. He checks his weapon, and opens fire. In slow motion, bullets shatter the windows and rake the side of a photocopier. Everyone ducks, but thankfully no one is injured or killed, except a security guard in the building where the sniper is shooting from.
Monk, Stottlemeyer, and Disher trace the shots to a rooftop across the street, where they find the dead security guard and a note from the sniper that demands that Natalie withdraw from the race. Monk is suspicious: Natalie's last name is misspelled on the note, as the shooter missed the R on her last name, despite the fact that the handwriting is legible, proving that he took his time to write down the note. Not only that, but the shooter appears to have used Russian ammunition, based on the markings on the shell casing.
Their first suspect is Natalie's opponent in the election, Harold Krenshaw, another patient of Dr. Kroger whom Monk has a hostile relationship with. But he quickly proves to be innocent as he was in a session with Dr. Kroger at the time of the shooting.
Despite the continued threat, Natalie refuses to drop out of the race. When he realizes this is an argument he can't win, Stottlemeyer arranges for her to get full-on police protection, including daily sweeps of her office for explosives, for at least two uniformed officers to be posted on rotating shifts at the office at all times, and for Randy to be her personal bodyguard.
Monk steps up his investigation while also providing help to Natalie around the office. While folding posters, he keys in on the misspelled sniper's note and makes a realization: the misspelling on the note was the same as the misspelling on a campaign poster outside Natalie's headquarters, because the R on the poster had fallen off. The sniper didn't really know Natalie's name - all he knew was what he read on the poster. Whatever the shooting is about, it has nothing to do with the election.
Later, Natalie, Monk, and Randy are in Natalie's house rehearsing for a big debate with Harold when someone throws a grenade through the window. The grenade explodes and they narrowly escape death (Monk more narrowly than the others, since he contains the explosion by tossing the grenade into Natalie's refrigerator, but can't resist then taking a few extra seconds to place it neatly into an egg carton before slamming the door and running away). As Stottlemeyer is questioning Monk about why he straightened out the grenade, Monk mentions an interesting detail he noted about the grenade: it had Russian markings on it, like the sniper's shell casings. A close examination of the remaining fragments seems to suggest that the grenade was made in Chechnya, meaning it is the same guy, likely worried that Monk is close to catching him.
With Natalie still refusing to drop out of the race, Monk confronts her in the bathroom alone, and tells her she is being irrational. He empathizes with her belief that she has to live up to the example set up by her brave deceased husband, Mitch, but that is not a good reason to risk her life... then Natalie has a minor breakdown, shuts the door, and swears Monk to total secrecy about what she then reveals: the truth is that Mitch wasn't a brave man. After he was shot down in Kosovo, the Navy found evidence that he ran away from the crash site, abandoning the rest of his plane crew, before he was killed. That is the official version, anyway, though there is still a large question mark over the issue. Natalie honestly doesn't know which version to believe, but she now feels that she has to be the brave one her husband may not have been. Solemnly, Monk admits he understands.
That night, it's time for Natalie's big debate with Harold. During the debate, one of Natalie's recently hired campaign volunteers, Jack Whitman, hands Monk a flyer, and Monk realizes he's the culprit: Whitman folds his flyers inwards from each of the four corners, then half-and-half again, the same way the sniper note was folded. Plus, when Whitman is leaving shortly afterwards, Monk and Randy see him stop and hesitate briefly before going through a door, behavior that leads Monk to conclusion that he was recently released from prison. Just what Whitman's motive might be, though, is unclear.
Stottlemeyer does a little background digging on Whitman, and finds enough details about Whitman to suggest that he's definitely their suspect. Whitman has been arrested twice (the first time was for mail fraud and receipt of stolen property, and more recently for tax evasion). More recently, though, he's been running an import business that imports Eurasian rugs from places like Chechnya, Southern Russia, and Uzbekistan (matching the markings on the shell casings and the grenade). Whitman is also under investigation by the ATF, as they suspect that he's actually a major arms dealer using the business as a front. Just six months ago, they raided his office looking for evidence, but he'd burned or destroyed anything that might've incriminated him. They were only able to get Whitman for tax evasion, for which he did five months in jail. Moreover, he only just got out of prison a mere two days before the shooting at the campaign office. That he would immediately go shoot at Natalie's campaign office, join said campaign, and then try to kill Monk, leaves both Monk and Stottlemeyer baffled as to how exactly Natalie's campaign somehow was mixed up with Whitman's arms dealing.
After casting his ballot in the election, Monk puts it all together when he notices Whitman leave an an empty carton of copier ink cartridges in Natalie's office. the carton is from a discontinued company, but matches the brand of Natalie's second-hand Xerox machine. And it's the very carton that Whitman brought some of his own homemade lasagna to the office in a few days earlier.
Needing to get out of the parking lot, Monk and Natalie find themselves having to play "keep away" with two parking attendants to get Natalie's car keys (having previously watched some playground bullies subjecting a kid to this while they were touring the school a few days earlier). During the game, Monk delivers the summation.
Here's What Happened[]
Six months ago, Whitman was running his illegal arms business out of his office, when the ATF's SWAT team came knocking on the door. Just before the SWAT team could break down the door and arrest Whitman, he burned and destroyed all of the incriminating papers against him, except for a single piece of paper that had, unluckily, just gotten jammed inside the copier. The feds subsequently seized all of Whitman's assets, including the copier, which was subsequently sold through a police auction.
After Whitman got out of jail, he immediately sought to find the copier. It was easy for him to find out who had obtained the copier because the auction had been open to the public. He went to Natalie's campaign office intending to just steal it, but he panicked when he saw that a repairmen was about to open the machine and discover the incriminating document. Acting fast, Whitman grabbed a carbine from the trunk of his car, went up to the rooftop of a building across the street, and shot up the copier. He then wrote the threatening note in an attempt to distract the cops. Whitman then reasoned that Natalie would just throw the copier out if it were riddled with bullets. But she never did, so he volunteered for Natalie's campaign and waited for an opportunity to break into it. However, thanks to his the shooting, he's been unable to get into the copier, especially since Stottlemeyer ordered police to be posted at the office at all times. When Whitman learned Monk was getting suspicious, he lobbed a grenade into Natalie's house to try to again divert the police investigation.
Eventually, Monk manages to snatch Natalie's keys out of the air from the parking attendants, and he and Natalie drive off to convene with Stottlemeyer and Disher. They convene several uniformed officers, and raid the campaign office, arresting Whitman as he breaks into the copier and finally recovers the jammed document. To their amazement, it's a richly-incriminating ledger documenting Whitman's clients, with addresses all over the world, and delivery dates, complete with the various weapons they are being sold. Stottlemeyer gets on the phone to contact a friend at the Bureau who's been looking for this document to seal the federal case against Whitman.
To Natalie's disappointment, she loses the election to Harold by a considerable margin. More depressing for Monk, during Harold's victory speech, Dr. Kroger appears on stage and congratulates him - leaving Monk to wonder whether Harold was right, and Dr. Kroger really does like Harold better.
Background[]
- Harold Krenshaw reappears after his introduction in "Mr. Monk and the Girl Who Cried Wolf."
- The question over Mitch Teeger's final actions in Kosovo was revisited in Lee Goldberg's novel Mr. Monk Goes to Hawaii.
- Monk: The Official Episode Guide states that this episode was one of several season 3 scripts that was originally written for Sharona. As Tom Scharpling stated in the guide, it seemed more in-character for Sharona, and is somewhat out-of-character for Natalie given that she's only recently started working with Monk. In fact, originally, Natalie was supposed to win the school board election, but it was at Traylor Howard's insistence that the script was rewritten to have Natalie lose the race. In an interview, she stated that "just because she doesn't win doesn't mean she's a loser. Finally I said that losing can make you stronger and she would still be strong for her daughter."
- Harold Krenshaw's election as a member of the school board was later referenced in Mr. Monk and the Daredevil.
"What are you doing?"[]
In every episode of Monk and the Monk Movie, at least once, some variation of the question, "What are you doing?" is asked.
| Time | Quote | From | To | RE |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0:08 | What are you doing? | Monk | Stottlemeyer | Stottlemeyer eating a donut, making the box uneven. |
| 0:11 | What's he doing now? | Monk | Stottlemeyer | Krenshaw cleaning the two-way mirror. "Not vertically!" |
| 0:21 | What are you doing? | Natalie | Monk | Monk counting down out loud. "I don't have a stop watch." |
| 0:28 | What are you doing? | Jack | Monk | Monk waiting to ask a question during the debate. |
| 0:34 | What have you been doing? | Natalie | Monk | Monk signing in to vote. |