Monk Season 2
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Mr. Monk and the Very Very Old Man is the fifth episode of the second season of Monk.

Contents 1 Synopsis 2 Plot 2.1 Here's What Happened 3 Trivia 4 Quotes

SynopsisEdit

Captain Stottlemeyer takes a page from the Book of Monk in order to determine why anyone would want to murder the world's oldest man. The two are aided in their investigation by Karen Stottlemeyer.

PlotEdit

As the elderly residents of the Malden Retirement Home relax after dinner, just down the hall, a shadowy figure dressed as a security guard enters the room of Miles Holling, the world's oldest man who is just one day shy of his 115th birthday, throws him down onto his bed, and suffocates him.

Captain Stottlemeyer's wife Karen, who once profiled Holling in a documentary film she made, suspects that the elderly man's death was no accident. Leland is skeptical, believing that he likely died of natural causes. For the sake of marital harmony, Leland agrees to have Monk look over the scene, promising to investigate further if Monk believes there was foul play. To his consternation, Monk agrees with Karen.

Caught, Stottlemeyer asks the mayor of Malden to order Miles Holling exhumed for an autopsy. The mayor agrees, over the objections of his deputy mayor, Dennis Gammill. While waiting at the cemetery, Stottlemeyer visits the grave of Darren Leveroni, a high-school valedictorian killed five years ago by a hit-and-run driver. Of all Stottlemeyer's cold cases, it is the one that has affected him the most deeply. When one of the gravediggers asks him if the Leveroni homicide was his case, Stottlemeyer touches the gravestone and corrects him gently, "it still is." Stottlemeyer drops by Monk's apartment, informing him that the autopsy has confirmed that Holling was murdered. He also admits that Karen has kicked him out of the house. Monk offers him room, and Stottlemeyer is lonely enough to accept. The two men immediately start to clash, but both of them are resolved to make it work, for the sake of their friendship.

Holling's elderly son, Hiram, tells Stottlemeyer and Disher that his father had no enemies, but in the last two weeks he was getting anonymous death threats over the phone. The calls are traced to a payphone at a train station, and the clue is a dead end.

Between his marital troubles, the failure to solve the Leveroni homicide, and the fact that "my hippie wife's a better cop than I am," Stottlemeyer is in a deep funk and has no more confidence in his abilities as a detective. This only gets worse when Monk notices a rather obvious clue: that on the night of the murder, a security guard named George Rowe checked in, and misspelled his own name. He and Monk go to Rowe's house, and find him beaten to death, and his security pass stolen (or rather, Stottlemeyer does; Monk leaps onto a table and refuses to budge when he realizes that one of Rowe's pet snakes is loose inside the house).

Sharona tries to mend fences between Karen and her husband, but Karen insists that Leland doesn't respect her or her work - for instance, he's never watched the movie she made about Miles Holling. Sharona takes a copy to Monk's apartment.

Monk's obsessive all-night cleaning eventually drives Stottlemeyer to sleep in his office, where he ends up listening to Disher's theory that a serial killer is targeting anyone who's made a world record of some kind. Stottlemeyer then irritably and sarcastically tells Disher that they might as well warn "the fat twins on the motorcycles" and "the guy with a beard of bees."

Monk and Stottlemeyer are probably the most mismatched roommates in history, and they are soon at each other's throats. After only two days together, Stottlemeyer goes berserk and declares that Monk's late wife, Trudy, deserves to be made a saint by the Vatican, for putting up with Adrian's impossible standards. He begins packing his clothes, declaring that Monk is the world's best marriage counselor: two days with him, and no husband in California would ever complain about his spouse again. He declares that he is going home, to beg his wife's forgiveness and do whatever it takes for her take him back. Monk diffidently reminds him what he must do: watch the movie.

The two men sit through the (incredibly boring) documentary on Holling. Towards the end, there is footage of Malden's bicentennial celebration, where a time capsule is buried at a public ceremony. Holling is the guest of honor, and is chauffeurred to the town square by Deputy Mayor Gammill. At this point, Stottlemeyer sits up and rewinds the footage several times (to Monk's consternation). He notices Gamill drove up in a rental car. When the mayor, on the film, announces that he plans to dig up the time capsule in 5 years if Holling is still alive, so he can add a final chapter to his autobiography, Stottlemeyer says the words usually reserved for Monk: "I just solved the case."

Here's What HappenedEdit

Stottlemeyer and Monk go to Gammill. When they buried the time capsule in Malden five years before, Gammill was driving rental car in Malden. Since Gammill had been living in Malden for more than 5 years, it was very strange that he was driving a rental car. Gammill claims that he drove a rental car because it was a nice occassion for them to bury a time capsule. Since that ceremony occurred at about the time of the still-unsolved hit-and-run murder of Darren Leveroni they came to talk to Gammill. When Darren was killed, a witness saw a Blue Oldsmobile leaving the Crime Scene. Stottlemeyer requested a list of Blue Oldsmobile Owners from DMV and the request came through Gamill's office but he wasn't on the list. Gammill says that it's an oversight or clerical error. When Monk asks him what happened to it he reported that his Blue Oldsmobile was stolen. Gammill used to have a drinking problem and he joined Alcoholics Anonymous shortly after that. Gammill denies that he was Darren's killer and says that they won't be able to prove it. He then gives his Defense Attorney's business card to Stottlemeyer. Stottlemeyer & Monk decide to leave right now. Mayor also shows up. But as Dennis waves a mocking goodbye, Monk notices a snake bite on Dennis's wrist. Since Dennis got bit by a snake, Stottlemeyer and Monk suspect that Dennis also killed George & Miles. The mayor allows police to dig up time capsule. While they're digging up the time capsule, Karen's filming the whole thing. 5 years ago, Dennis was shcoked because Mayor made an excellent deal with Miles. The Excellent Deal was that if Miles lived for 5 more years and if the mayor was still in office, then the mayor would dig up the Time Capsule and he'd allow Miles to add a final chapter to his autobiography. If Miles added a Final Chapter to his Autobiography, then the other letters would've been handed out to random people. Since they suspect that Dennis put a Confession in the Time Capsule 5 years ago, they suspect that Dennis was hoping for Time Capsule to stay underground for at least 100 years & they suspect that Dennis wanted Miles to die. They suspect that Dennis made threatening phone calls to Miles. Since Miles still survived, they suspect that Dennis chose to kill Miles. They suspect that Dennis killed George tosteal George's security pass. Dennis stole George's security pass to gain access to Miles' room to kill him. When they find Dennis's letter in the Time Capsule, it says that Dennis killed Darren. Dennis reveals that he accidentally killed Darren. Dennis lied that his Blue Oldsmobile got stolen. Dennis got rid of his Blue Oldsmobile because it was going to connect him to Darren's death. Dennis accidentally killed Darren because Dennis was drunk.

Among the letters, Sharona also finds a love letter Karen wrote to Leland, though she didn't mean for him to ever see it. Leland has gained a new appreciation for the importance of his wife's work, while she is touched that he saw, and enjoyed, her movie. They reconcile lovingly, and Stottlemeyer and Monk are equally glad to be rid of each other.

Throughout the episode, Stottlemeyer has been baffled by Monk's insistence on having the coffee table in his study askew, when everything else in his apartment has to be perfectly straight. In the tag, the explanation is given: when Adrian and Trudy lived there, she would often pull the table in to put her feet up, so he could rest his head in her lap.

TriviaEdit

• The exchange between Monk and Stottlemeyer, when Monk wants to know what time Stottlemeyer will be home so he can fix dinner, is a tribute to a particular scene from Neil Simon's celebrated stage play The Odd Couple, which the episode as a whole is a parody of.
• This episode marks the last "live" appearance of Stellina Ruisch as Trudy Monk; her pictures continue to be seen in Monk's apartment until Melora Hardin replaced Ruisch in Season 3.
• Actor Bill Erwin, who plays Miles Hollings' son, Hiram, is actually four years older than Patrick Cranshaw, the actor who played Miles.
• The method where one of the characters solves both a new case as well as a previously cold case due to a video was later reused in the series finale two parter.
• George Rowe's pet snakes were named "Larry, Moe, and Curly", which were the names of The Three Stooges.

QuotesEdit

Stottlemeyer: I mean, how can you live with yourself? You gotta tell someone.
Monk: The urge to confess...
Stottlemeyer: It's the cop's best friend.

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Stottlemeyer: I thought you were afraid of heights.

Monk: Snakes trump heights. It goes, Germs, Needles, Milk, Death, Snakes, Heights, Crowds, Mushrooms, Elevators...
Stottlemeyer: Okay, okay, I don't need the entire list.

---

Stottlemeyer: Monk, I'm going to say something I've wanted to say for a long time.

Monk: What is it?
Stottlemeyer: I just solved the case.

---

Stottlemeyer: (reading) "On December 7th, 1998, I killed Darren Leveroni with my car. May God forgive me because I will never forgive myself. Signed, Dennis Gammill." (breathing heavily) The urge to confess...

Monk: It's the cop's best friend.

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