Natalie Teeger

Natalie J. Teeger
Traylor Howard as Natalie Teeger in "Mr. Monk Goes to a Rock Concert"
First appearance	"Mr. Monk and the Red Herring"
Last appearance	"Mr. Monk and the End - Part II"
Created by	David Hoberman
Portrayed by	Traylor Howard (2005–2009)
Information
Aliases	"Dirty Natalie"[1] "The Eager Ms. Teeger"[2][3] Natalie Teegerb[4]
Gender	Female
Occupation	Current: Adrian Monk's personal assistant Former: Bartender
Family	Bobby Davenport (father) Peggy Davenport (mother) Jonathan Davenport (brother)
Spouse(s)	Mitch Teeger (deceased)
Children	Julie Teeger (daughter, with Mitch Teeger)

Natalie J. Teeger is a fictional character on the American crime drama Monk. She becomes Adrian Monk's personal assistant midway through the third season of the show. She is portrayed by Traylor Howard.

Traylor Howard was introduced after USA Network released actress Bitty Schram, who portrayed Sharona Fleming, mid-way through the show's third season, stating they wanted to take the character in new directions.^[5] Natalie was hence introduced in the role of Monk's assistant to fill in the void left by Schram's departure.

Relationship with Adrian Monk

Natalie first meets Adrian Monk in the episode "Mr. Monk and the Red Herring", when he investigates two men who had broken into her home, after she stabs and kills Brian Lemmon, the second intruder, in self-defense with a pair of scissors. Monk's former assistant Sharona has just left, and Monk asks Natalie if she would become his new assistant. Initially, she refuses, but over the course of the investigation, Monk proves himself kind to Natalie's daughter Julie, which makes Natalie change her mind and accept the position (not to mention, an opportunity to get out of her current job as a bartender, which she admits to hating). That episode mostly served as a way of bringing both Natalie and Julie into the series. However, the transition from Sharona to Natalie was not rapid, as Natalie's and Monk's chemistry is shown to be uneasy until the end of the episode "Mr. Monk Gets Stuck in Traffic." In the novel Mr. Monk and the Two Assistants, Natalie mentions that for a while, Monk, Stottlemeyer and Disher frequently compared her to Sharona, but finally accepted her for who she was.

Since becoming Monk's assistant, Natalie has become an extremely devoted friend, as well as a devoted assistant. On several occasions, Natalie says explicitly that she loves him, though she might mean that in a platonic sense. Such an example of this is in "Mr. Monk and the Man Who Shot Santa Claus" (however, on several occasions, Natalie has sometimes done some dangerous things for Monk, like accidentally shooting him in the leg).

There have been occasions where Natalie is the only person to support Monk's ideas (such as in "Mr. Monk and the Other Detective," when Monk suspects loser-private eye Marty Eels of cheating), and she hence proves a valuable ally in helping him gather the evidence needed to make an arrest. She is also shown to be rather cunning, and is able to trick other people into doing things that help Monk with a case. In "Mr. Monk and the Bad Girlfriend," when Monk suspects Linda Fusco of murdering her partner, Natalie uses the pretext of wishing to view an apartment to keep Linda out of her house to buy Monk additional time to snoop around on his own, although Linda somehow figures this out. Later, at Linda and Stottlemeyer's going away party, Monk and Natalie set up a sting operation to arrest Linda, where Monk pretends to talk to Natalie from Linda's house on a webcam (in reality, he was sitting in the back of an impounded rental truck).^[6] In the season 7 episode "Mr. Monk and the Bully," when Monk and Natalie are trailing Roderick Brody's wife, Natalie successfully tricks a businessman into taking a photo of their target. The episode also establishes that she shows some basic legal knowledge, possibly picked up from working with Monk, as evidenced in a scene where Natalie withholds Roderick's name from Captain Stottlemeyer, citing client confidentiality.

Despite their platonic relationship, there have been instances where other characters believe that Natalie suppresses romantic feelings for Monk through gestures and comments, or even think they are a couple: in "Mr. Monk and the Class Reunion", when Dianne Brooks (Cynthia Stevenson) first meets Natalie, Dianne appears to interpret that Natalie is Monk's girlfriend, a relationship that Monk and Natalie deny having. In the season 7 episode "Mr. Monk Gets Lotto Fever," when Natalie (as a lottery hostess) is signing autographs and Monk grabs some wipes from her, one of Natalie's fans asks her if Monk is her boyfriend.

Usually, when the two deny these comments, the asker will look suspiciously at Natalie, as if he or she thought there was something more in her denial. In other instances, Stottlemeyer and Disher will give each other looks as if they think they saw something in Natalie's reactions to Monk's situation or how she talks about him. Natalie's family has also given similar reactions, as well as characters from various episodes. While this may be a coincidence of Traylor Howard's acting style, it is definitely a noteworthy aspect of Natalie's relationship with Monk. Such a reaction can be seen in the season 7 episode "Mr. Monk and the Genius," when Monk notices Patrick Kloster (David Strathairn) approaching their car through the mirror. Frantically trying to find out what to do to get Patrick to move on, Natalie blurts out "We should kiss! No! I didn't say that! I wasn't thinking; I never said that!"

Over the course of her relationship with Monk, Natalie is shown to also pick up a few detective instincts of her own on the way. In fact, in the novel Mr. Monk in Outer Space, Stottlemeyer asks Natalie to try to figure out what happened at one crime scene, and she makes an accurate guess of what happened (without making much of an effort, mostly because of the nature of the crime). By the time of the novel Mr. Monk and the Dirty Cop, Natalie has picked up enough skills to start asking herself questions about the case at hand.

Biography

Natalie's past is filled with instances of youthful devilry, in a seeming deviation from her strict posh upbringing. Certain elements of her past are revealed throughout several of the novels and episodes:

• In the season 3 episode "Mr. Monk Goes to Vegas", Natalie reveals that she worked as a blackjack dealer in Las Vegas for two years while Mitch was still alive, and she is a recovering gambling addict. At the time her husband died, she lived in base housing on a base in South Carolina.
• In the season 4 episode "Mr. Monk Goes to the Office", Natalie mentions to stock analyst Warren Kemp that she worked in an office for two weeks before quitting; she claimed she was unable to stand the "same routine" every day, and she spent time in a jail in Vermont for throwing a man through a window in order to protect a friend.
• In the season 4 episode "Mr. Monk and the Secret Santa", it is mentioned that the summer after she completed high school, Natalie worked in a shopping mall where her boss "liked [her] a bit too much." Natalie uses this to convince her old boss to hire Monk and her as respectively a store Santa and his elf in an attempt to bring murder suspect Frank Prager out of hiding.
• During a conversation between Monk and Natalie in the season 5 episode "Mr. Monk Goes to a Rock Concert", Natalie mentions having studied about how the Spanish Inquisition locked people in outhouses, after Monk likens accidentally locking himself into a port-a-potty to a medieval torture device.
• In the season 5 episode "Mr. Monk is At Your Service", Paul Buchanan, who had a crush on Natalie through high school, mentions to Monk that she has a tattoo. Monk (posing as a butler named Adrian Melville) is surprised to hear about this. Buchanan mentions that Natalie's tattoo is in a place where no one can see it. However, Natalie's opinion of Paul Buchanan is one of hatred, which is the primary reason why she believes that the guy killed his parents.
• In the season 6 episode "Mr. Monk and the Naked Man", it is revealed that Natalie was an exchange student in Greece when she was 19 years old.
• In the season 6 episode "Mr. Monk and the Three Julies", Natalie mentions that Mitch took her to the firing range all the time, so she knows how to use a gun. However, her experience in using loaded firearms is called into question in the episode "Mr. Monk on Wheels", where she accidentally shoots Monk in the leg after picking up Sarah Longson's stainless steel Walther PPK handgun.
• In the season 7 premiere episode "Mr. Monk Buys a House", it is revealed that Natalie knows Morse code. When Captain Stottlemeyer and Lieutenant Disher accompany Monk and Natalie to Cassie Drake's house, Stottlemeyer and Disher knock Morse code messages on the door. Natalie immediately chastises both of them, saying "That's not the way I heard it. My husband was in the Navy, remember?" Later in the episode, when Monk and Natalie are taken hostage by "Honest" Jake Phillips (Brad Garrett), Natalie's knowledge of Morse code comes in handy: With no form of communication to the outside world to call for help available, Natalie lights some rags, puts them in the fireplace, and opens and closes the flue to emit smoke signals that Stottlemeyer and Disher notice and interpret as Morse for "SOS".

Natalie has held several jobs, including bartending, which she quit to become Monk's assistant. The exact number of jobs Natalie held before meeting Monk (17 in all) is mentioned in "Mr. Monk Goes to a Wedding" when Peggy asks her to sample a Bloody Mary, and Natalie has to remind her that she isn't bartending any more. It takes Peggy a few tries to get the current job right. During her tenure on the series, Natalie does temporarily take up several other careers:

• In "Mr. Monk Gets Lotto Fever," she spends approximately two weeks working as a lottery hostess, but she is accused of scheming with Stottlemeyer to rig the lottery drawing. She quits after Monk clears their names. While working on this job, Natalie's position as Monk's assistant becomes strained, leaving her unable to concentrate on Monk's homicide investigation. Eventually, Monk becomes so fed up with her lottery antics and autograph signings that he openly mocks her in front of her fans and nearly calls her a bimbo (he stops midway and calls her a "bimportant person").
• In "Mr. Monk and the Badge", after Monk gets reinstated, Natalie works as assistant to a concert promoter, though Monk warns her that her new boss won't be as good as him.

Family

Natalie is more or less a pariah of the wealthy Davenport family, owners of Davenport Toothpaste, which is described in "Mr. Monk, Private Eye" as being the third largest toothpaste company in the world after Colgate and Crest. She keeps this hidden from Monk, Stottlemeyer and Disher until the season 4 episode "Mr. Monk Goes to a Wedding," when she mentions that she has kept this a secret because of the fact that she is heavily estranged from them. It is later revealed in the season 5 episode "Mr. Monk, Private Eye" that the company was started by Natalie's entrepreneur grandfather, Neville Davenport. The novel Mr. Monk in Outer Space also reveals that this business almost went under when it was discovered that the original formula for their toothpaste was laced with sugar - hastening to peoples' dental decay.

Natalie's decision to marry a "common" man like Mitch estranged her from her parents Bobby and Peggy Davenport; for years, Peggy refuses to display Natalie and Mitch's wedding photograph at her house on top of the piano where all the other photos are kept, and considered Natalie's marriage "illegitimate" even though she and the rest of the family dote on Julie. To further keep herself from the rest of her family, Natalie is revealed to have adapted Mitch's surname as her own after his death.

Natalie has a brother, Jonathan, whom she and Monk rescue from his murderous new wife, Theresa, who has married him to get at the family fortune, in "Mr. Monk Goes to a Wedding," after they prove that Theresa also tried running down Lieutenant Disher in the parking lot because Randy would have recognized her as Darlene Coolidge, a black widow bride Randy investigated when he was a sergeant in Philadelphia. Natalie subdues Theresa at the wedding, saving her brother's life. This seems to spark a reconciliation between Natalie and the rest of her family, as she and Monk are seen later having a more or less friendly brunch with Natalie's parents during their next on-screen appearance, in the season 5 episode "Mr. Monk Is At Your Service."

Mitch was a Navy fighter pilot who was killed in Kosovo in 1998 ("Mr. Monk and the Election"). They have a daughter named Julie, a teenager (she was 11 when first introduced with her mother in "Mr. Monk and the Red Herring"). Julie has been taught to believe that her father died heroically, though in reality, the details of his death are very murky and unclear, and he may have been trying to desert when he was killed, as Natalie mentions in the season 3 episode "Mr. Monk and the Election" and in the novel Mr. Monk Goes to Hawaii. Before he died, Mitch gave Julie a pet fish named "Mr. Henry," which Natalie has secretly replaced each year (as that is the lifespan of the fish, a crimson marble) so that Julie does not realize that the original fish died.^[7]

In the episode when Monk first meets Natalie, he shows that the fish is more important to him than an actual moon rock, which is part of what causes Natalie to decide to work for Monk.^[7]

She renews her old friendship with Mitch's old friend and comrade, Lieutenant Steven Albright (Casper Van Dien) in the season 7 episode "Mr. Monk Is Underwater", and in the series finale, "Mr. Monk and the End," the two are dating steadily and Natalie is planning to introduce him to Julie for the first time.

Novel series

Lee Goldberg's series of novels based on Monk are written from Natalie's point of view. In a way, it likens her to being Monk's Dr. Watson, that is to say, his chronicler.

In the novels, Natalie has an on-again, off-again romance with a firefighter named Joe Cochran, whom she first meets when Julie asks Monk to investigate the killing of a beloved firehouse dog in Mr. Monk Goes to the Firehouse. The two are strongly attracted to each other, but Natalie decides not to grow too close to another man in a dangerous job. Cochran subsequently also appeared in Mr. Monk and the Two Assistants and Mr. Monk in Outer Space.

The novels also serve as a way to expand Natalie's past prior to when she met Monk. In Mr. Monk is Miserable, it is known that she and Mitch went to Paris, and in Mr. Monk Goes to Hawaii, it is known that they also once spent a weekend getaway in Mexico, and she is found to be very unnerved when hack psychic Dylan Swift somehow manages to get information on her past to create "messages" from Mitch's "spirit". It also establishes that Mitch was shot down two days before his 27th birthday.

In Mr. Monk and the Two Assistants, Natalie has an epiphany - she notes that with the exception of the fact that Monk has OCD, they are actually not that different - both have lost their spouses (Mitch and Trudy, respectively) to violent deaths (plane crash and car bomb), and they were both heavily affected by their spouse's death.

Background information and notes

• Natalie drives a variety of vehicles throughout the series. These include a silver 2005 Nissan Quest and a silver 2005 Jeep Grand Cherokee during seasons 3 and 4 and the first half of season 5, a silver 2007 Buick Lucerne in the second half of season 5, a silver 2007 Ford Escape during season 6, a 2008 Audi A3 during the first half of season 7, a 2008 Nissan Sentra in the second half of season 7, and a 2008 Hyundai Genesis during the later part of season 7 and in season 8. In the novel Mr. Monk and the Dirty Cop, Monk and Natalie are hired by Intertect, a private investigation agency, and as part of Natalie's benefits plan, she drives a 2009 Lexus SUV (though whether the car is a RX, GX, or LX is not established), in addition to receiving a higher salary and dental insurance. In "Mr. Monk and the Three Julies," Natalie often "borrows" Captain Stottlemeyer's new car, a midnight onyx Dodge Charger, severely damaging it in the process (first breaking the passenger-side rearview mirror, and then completely smashing up the hood after supposedly "cutting across the creek," even though Stottlemeyer insists that there are no bridges across the creek).
• Natalie has appeared in more episodes (87) of the series than Sharona (37).
• Natalie only holds firearms twice in the series, and both times they are someone else's firearms: the first is in "Mr. Monk Is At Your Service," where she and Monk train twelve-gauge shotguns on Paul Buchanan. The other time is in "Mr. Monk on Wheels," when Natalie grabs Sarah Longson's Walther PPK handgun during a fight to subdue her, and accidentally shoots Monk when she turns around.
• Natalie is often seen wearing Christian Louboutin shoes as shown by the trademark red sole. Christian Louboutin shoes are expensive (some pairs in excess of $1,000), and taking into account Natalie's low salary from Monk, she either has a jones for shoes, wears knockoffs, or they are gifts.
• During several episodes of the fifth season ("Mr. Monk Makes a Friend," "Mr. Monk Is At Your Service," "Mr. Monk Visits a Farm," "Mr. Monk and the Really, Really Dead Guy" and "Mr. Monk Goes to the Hospital"), Traylor Howard was pregnant, so Natalie is always carrying boxes, newspapers and the like, or sitting/standing behind something like a car or a desk to hide her enlarged stomach in these episodes. However, in "Mr. Monk Is At Your Service," Natalie pretends to be pregnant to Paul Buchanan, which she later explains to Monk as having achieved by stuffing a pillow under her shirt.
• There have been several episodes of Monk that guest star actors or actresses that have worked alongside Tony Shalhoub, Ted Levine or Traylor Howard. Vincent Ventresca, who portrays sports agent Rob Sherman in the season 6 episode "Mr. Monk and the Birds and the Bees," had previously starred on Boston Common, a show on which Traylor played a principal character. In the 1998 film Dirty Work, Traylor Howard portrays Kathy, who works for a used car dealer who is portrayed by David Koechner. David Koechner stars in the season 6 episode "Mr. Monk and the Daredevil" as Joey Krenshaw (Harold Krenshaw's cousin). She also starred alongside Alfred Molina (who portrays Peter Magneri in the season 6 episode "Mr. Monk and the Naked Man") in the 2002 sitcom Bram & Alice.

Family tree

Bobby Davenport

Peggy Davenport

Theresa Scott/Darlene Coolidge

Jonathan Davenport

Natalie Teeger

Mitch Teeger

Julie Teeger

References

1. ^ Mr. Monk and the Dirty Cop
2. ^ "Mr. Monk Is On The Run"
3. ^ "Mr. Monk and the Magician"
4. ^ "Mr. Monk Is Someone Else"
5. ^ Byrne, Bridget (2004-08-31). ""Monk" Boots Bitty". E! Online (E! Entertainment Television, Inc.). http://www.eonline.com/uberblog/b48158_monk_boots_bitty.html. Retrieved 2008-03-06. 
6. ^ "Mr. Monk and the Bad Girlfriend"
7. ^ ^{a b} "Mr. Monk and the Red Herring"