Saturday, January 12, 2008
Monk
I am always surprised at how often this television show is willing to turn to pathos rather than crime-solving or humor. Is this lazy writing or do they define this basically as a show about mental illness? I don't watch it that often but it almost always seem to center around the loss of his wife, which is tragic but many years in the past. Dwelling on it so often seems a bit like the easy way out.
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I don't watch MONK regularly, either, but it's usually good when I tune in. Monk's OCD is played mostly for humor, so I appreciate the occasional serious turn it takes. When the show premiered, it was established that Monk's wife was killed by a car bomb four years earlier. That doesn't seem a very long time to me.
In human terms, of course (although we're looking at 8 years now), but as a plot device played for pathos it gets tiresome. Last night's episode also traded on his inability to see people clearly. I don't see how he could be effective as a detective with this trait. In the very last minutes he solves the crime and it's explained so quickly, the viewer barely has time to take it in. I love Tony Shahloub, but I think maybe this concept for a show has run its course IMHO.
One of the things that concerned me early in the show's run was how much progress Monk would be shown to make. At first there was the hope he would be reinstated as a police officer, but I think they've gone away from that. One of the perils of a popular show is that viewers always want more, and problems that could be wrapped up in a few episodes are dragged out for years. I agree this has happened with Monk.
But it must have something going for it because I seem to watch it a lot.
I think Tony Shalhoub has stretched Monk beyond the character's original scope, in a good way, the same way William Shatner did for Captain Kirk, James Garner did for Jim Rockford, Tom Selleck did for Magnum, and so on.
Really nice discussion topic. Let's blog it.
It appears that his wife's death caused him to become super obsessive/compulsive which in turn gives him his super attention to detail which enables him to solve crimes. It is ironic that Columbo who was personally sloppy also had super attention to detail. So did Sherlock Holmes and Agatha Christi's super detective, Hucule Perot. Where is Rockford who solved crimes with shoe leather and trickery when we need him.
Jim Garner in Rockford is my all time favorite TV character. The plots are often pretty bad but he makes it worth watching. He solved crimes by getting punched in the face by the villain.
...in those mid-series episodes that pissed Garner off so much that he threatened to quite...and he had the example of MAVERICK to show that for him that might well be no idle threat.
Or, even, quit. Quite.
The most annoying thing I tend to note about THE ROCKFORD FILES is that Garner/Rockford is always grabbing at the arms of women, to escort them somewhere, but in the two or so instances that a woman does the same to him, he violently shrugs them off. Machismo of past decades will out.
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