7 Harsh Realities Of Rewatching Monk 15 Years After It Ended

Revisiting Monk 15 years after the series finale reveals some interesting truths about the show, from how it handled Sharona’s exit to whether its case-of-the-week formula ever became too repetitive. Monk ran for eight seasons, originally airing from 2002 to 2009. Tony Shalhoub and the cast of Monk recently reprised their roles for Mr. Monk’s Last Case: A Monk Movie, a Peacock original film that revisited the beloved detective 14 years after the events of the show. Monk is one of the greatest detective TV shows of all time and has aged surprisingly well.

Crime shows where the detective has a quirk or a gimmick are nothing new and continue to be part of the TV landscape. However, Monk took things to the next level by making its titular character extremely relatable despite his Sherlock Holmes-like deducing abilities. Monk was also a very funny series, with Shalhoub’s performance stealing the show every time. Monk is as good as ever in 2024, but some aspects of the show stand out on a rewatch.

7 Monk Was A Formulaic Show With Very Repetitive Episodes

Almost Every Episode Of Monk Was The Same

Monk never tried to be more than just a detective procedural, which had positives and negatives. On the one hand, mystery lovers and fans of the likes of Arthur Conan Doyle or Agatha Christie could enjoy Adrian solving one creative case every week. Monk rarely had two-part episodes or overarching storylines, meaning that Adrian and his friends were dealing with new characters and hanging around in a different location every episode. This approach was the basis for the show, but it got very repetitive sometimes. As fascinating as Adrian was, watching the same episode every week could get boring.

From the cold opens showing the crime being committed to the “Here’s what happened…” moment, almost every episode of Monk followed a very well-defined whodunit formula. After the cold open, Adrian would arrive at the scene of the crime, be briefed about the case by Leland or Randy, and start talking with the suspects. Monk would then put things together and realize who did it, which was usually followed by a confrontation with the killer in which they would tell the detective he had no proof to back up his claims.

6 Sharona’s Departure Is Still Frustrating 20 Years Later

Sharona Was One Of The Pillars Of The Show

Bitty Schram left Monk in season 3 due to a contract dispute. The show wrote off Sharona by saying that Adrian’s assistant was going to return to New Jersey and remarry her ex-husband. Sharona’s departure from the story is very abrupt and marks the end of an era for the show, even though Natalia was a great replacement. Monk was never the same again without Sharona, a character whose dynamic with Adrian was virtually impossible to replicate. Having worked with Adrian for years, Sharona had no problem calling him out or telling him what he should do.

Leland respected Monk too much to ever talk to him like that, whereas Natalie was a more traditional assistant who treated Adrian as her boss first and foremost. There was a sibling energy between Sharona and Monk that made their relationship hilarious, which was completely lost once Schram left the show. For those who fell in love with Monk during the first three seasons, watching the show after season 4 was certainly difficult. That said, the series did get back on its feet and continue for five more great seasons without Sharona.

5 Despite Some Flaws, Monk Spotlighted The Importance Of Mental Health

Adrian Monk Was A Layered, Human Character

While Monk’s depiction of OCD had flaws, especially with how it was sometimes written as a quirk and part of the detective’s gimmick, the show did a fairly good job at spotlighting mental health on television more than 20 years ago. Monk never looked down on Adrian due to his OCD or trauma, instead focusing on how the character moved on with his life and found a new way to do his job despite no longer being a police detective.

Monk’s therapists – Doctor Kroger and Doctor Bell – were recurrent figures on the show and helped Adrian every step of the way. Episodes like “Mr. Monk Is Underwater” highlighted how important therapy had been for Adrian, to the point he was able to make it through one of the most terrifying experiences of his life because of what he learned from Doctor Bell. The Monk movie also explores the character’s mental health, even touching on how Adrian, after relapsing on his OCD following the COVID-19 pandemic, entered a stage of severe depression.

4 Natalie Was A Surprisingly Great Replacement For Sharona

Replacing Sharona Wasn’t Easy, But Natalie Did It

TV shows that replaced beloved characters often found themselves struggling to introduce a new name that audiences would connect with. From recasts to new characters, it is no exaggeration to say that most times important characters are written out of a show, the replacement just doesn’t work as well. This is usually not because of the new character or actor but simply because audiences were already used to the previous one. This is why Monk’s replacement for Sharona working so well is fascinating in hindsight.

Natalie was Monk’s assistant from seasons 4 to 8 and became an essential part of the show’s legacy. It is impossible to talk about Monk without bringing up Natalie, which is a testament to how well her character works. Natalie was cleverly written to be the opposite of Sharona instead of a new version of Adrian’s previous assistant. It took a while before Natalie and Adrian became family rather than just coworkers, which made their relationship excitingly different from what Monk and Sharona had.

Monk never truly replaced Sharona, as seen by how disappointed fans of the show were that Adrian’s original assistant did not show up in Mr. Monk’s Last Case: A Monk Movie. However, looking back at Monk after season 4, it is safe to say the introduction of Natalie helped the show find a new identity after Sharona left. Had Natalie’s character not worked, Monk’s future past season 3 could have been very different and perhaps hadn’t lasted as long.

3 Some Of Monk’s Cases Were Either Too Easy Or Had No Twists At All

Monk Was Not A Traditional Whodunit

Monk’s premise was that Adrian could solve the cases no one else could, which is why it could be frustrating whenever the case of the week was just not that interesting. The show took a risky approach by showing the crime being committed at the beginning of most episodes, meaning that Monk was often not a whodunit but rather a “how they did it?” show. There were plenty of Monk episodes in which we, the audience, knew who did it but followed Adrian as he tried to prove how it was done.

While this was a clever take on the crime procedural genre, it led to a few anticlimactic episodes in which there wasn’t much to be discovered. Some episodes even show or at least tease at the beginning how the crime was committed, leaving nothing for us to figure out. Watching Adrian come up with his theories was fun, but so was solving the case alongside Tony Shalhoub’s character. The best Monk episodes were the ones that found the balance between teasing what happened and letting us figure out the rest.

2 The Most Important Case In Adrian Monk’s Life Was Very Anticlimactic

Monk Did Not Actually Solve Trudy’s Case

The most frustrating aspect of rewatching Monk is knowing that Adrian never actually solves Trudy’s case on his own. Granted, “Mr. Monk and the End” ends with Adrian finally bringing justice to the man who had Trudy killed and finding the closure he needed. However, on a closer look, Adrian did not solve the case. He simply found a tape in which Trudy explained everything, including her history with Judge Rickover. Monk’s most important case wasn’t solved by him but rather through an external factor in a very anticlimactic manner.

The fact that there wasn’t a proper “Here’s what happened” moment in the series finale is very frustrating, even though the solving of Trudy’s murder was never going to be treated like just another case. Still, I would have liked for Adrian to find out the truth by himself and only then discover the tape that could have been used as proof against Rickover. Monk’s final episode went for a more surprising twist, revealing that the key to solving the case had been at Adrian’s house this entire time – he just wasn’t ready to face it yet.

1 The Monk Movie Wasn’t Very Different From Most Of The Show’s Episodes

Mr. Monk’s Last Case Felt Like An Extended Monk Episode

While I loved Mr. Monk’s Last Case: A Monk Movie and would love to see a sequel, the film wasn’t too different from most of the show’s episodes. Once again, we saw bits of how the crime was committed at the beginning of the story and knew without doubt who the killer was. The Monk reunion felt like a great extended episode of the show, only with a broader scope and more locations. That said, the most interesting difference between the movie and the show is how the former incorporated COVID-19.

Every single Monk fan who watched the show when it originally aired in the early 2000s or reruns asked themselves how Adrian would have dealt with the pandemic and the quarantine. The Monk cast even did an online, scripted reunion in which Adrian’s friends checked on him in 2020. The movie builds up on that and shows how the quarantine affected Adrian’s mental health. This is arguably the best thing about the movie and made up for a not-so-very-special case that was solved relatively easily by Adrian.