Classic crime television shows are rarely gone for good. More often than not, they come back in one form or another. To name a handful of examples, Columbo resumed production a decade after leaving the airwaves, and was also turned into a series of books. The Rockford Files received eight follow-up television movies well after the series was cancelled. Veronica Mars got a feature film, two novels, and a season-long revival series. And Psych has three television and streaming movies, with more rumored.
And now, about fourteen years after Tony Shaloub wiped his hands for the last time after eight seasons of Monk, almost the entire original cast (save for Monk’s original assistant Sharona (Bitty Schram), who only has a brief appearance in archive footage) has returned for a movie. Other familiar faces, such as the vision of Monk’s late wife Trudy (Melora Hardin) and Monk’s therapist Dr. Nevin Bell (Hector Elizondo, who Shaloub actually had to cajole to come out of retirement), and Brooke Adams, Shaloub’s real-life wife, who played multiple roles over the course of the series and plays a publisher in the telemovie, are involved. All of these appearances are welcome, and many familiar characters who aren’t onscreen are referenced either through dialogue or through an assortment of blink-and-you’ll-miss-them Easter eggs. This isn’t quite the first reunion– a short video near the start of the pandemic, “Mr. Monk in Quarantine,” brought back the four main characters from halfway through season three onwards. This full-length telemovie shows what’s happened to the cast since the finale, and the news is mixed.
Numerous productions have incorporated the pandemic and its aftermath into their storylines, but very few have addressed the long-term psychological strain caused by extended isolation, health worries, and economic pressures. It’s an often-unspoken truth that a lot of people were broken in multiple ways during quarantine, and now, well over four years after lockdown began, people are still suffering from invisible wounds that they don’t know how to seek help for and which often don’t get the sympathy and understanding they deserve. Monk is one of those people.
A few brief glimpses of Monk’s life in quarantine are enough to show that he took both precautions and the strain of the pandemic harder than most people. As the telemovie points out on multiple occasions, in the wake of COVID, suddenly Monk’s sanitary habits that once were played for laughter are now accepted, even standard behaviors. The production doesn’t argue that Monk was ahead of the curve, but it does illustrate how society went from gently (and not-so-gently) telling Monk that he was overreacting to an unsterile world to telling him that he hadn’t gone far enough. Viewers don’t get an in-depth look at how this reshaped his mental health, but Shaloub presents the damage with poignancy and sensitivity.
Monk was always a comedic show with a dark edge, and in Mr. Monk’s Last Case, the darkness has broadened far from the edges and into the heart of the narrative. After years of isolation, with most of his support group having moved and having retired from detecting, Monk’s in a bad way. His assistant, Natalie Teeger (Traylor Howard) and his friend on the force Randy Disher (Jason Grey-Stanford) have moved across the country, and Leland Stottlemeyer (Ted Levine) has keft the force, so Monk’s no longer feeling the relief he used to get from putting the world right. Ever the perfectionist, he can’t fulfill the contract he signed with a publisher to write his memoirs. At the end of the original series, Monk was in a better place mentally than ever before, but as the telemovie shows, the pandemic crushed something inside him, and now he’s harboring a horrible secret: he’s suicidal.
If this sounds like the telemovie is depressing, it’s not. There’s as much comedy as there was on the series, but now the serious moments are far more serious than they were previously. Monk still has his comic reactions, but now they’re even more tinged with pathos. On the original show, Monk usually had to face one of his deepest fears, and then having mustered all of his strength to deal with it, usually found himself mildly triumphant but still fearful. Now, in the wake of a personal tragedy affecting someone very close to him, Monk has to push himself not just to go out into the world and investigate, but also to handle his basic routine.
In terms of the mystery, as was often the case on Monk, it’s more of a howdunit than a whodunit. Someone close to the most important person in Monk’s life is killed, and there’s one obvious suspect. The answer is simple and the cluing makes it fairly easy for the viewer to figure out the solution. One might have liked Monk’s return to have more twists and turns and puzzling, but the show always put Monk’s solving cases one step below Monk’s trying to survive in an overwhelming world, and the tradition continues here.
Monk was only ever able to function by restoring order from disarray, whether it was by cleaning or catching killers. This mystery is about more than finding justice for a dead man, it’s about finding a way to get Monk to heal. While in most Monk episodes, the emotional and dramatic climax of the episode came from arresting the villain, in Mr. Monk’s Last Case, the heart and soul of the production comes from showing Monk why he has a reason to live. Most Monk episodesbegan with someone dying. With a warning for a spoiler, Mr. Monk’s Last Case ends with a man coming alive again, buoyed not by cheap catharsis or empty hopes, but by the very sincere realization that he has rediscovered not just his purpose, but also his duty.
Monk fans can only hope that the title of this telemovie is a lie. Here’s hoping that more Monk movies are in the offing.
Mr. Monk’s Last Case: A Monk Movie
Peacock
2023
Nobody talks about the stepdaughter who never was but suddenly is. I don’t understand as there is no continuity from the series.
***SPOILERS***
Well, the stepdaughter character was introduced at the very end of the finale of the original Monk series, so her presence is in complete continuity with the show. The role was recast, however. Alona Tal played the role originally.