Mr. Monk Takes Manhattan

"Mr. Monk Takes Manhattan"
Monk episode
The cast stands in Manhattan
Episode no.	Season 3 Episode 1
Directed by	Randall Zisk
Written by	Andy Breckman
Production code	T-2101
Original air date	June 18, 2004
Guest stars
Frank Collison as Warrick Tennyson Mykelti Williamson as Captain Walter Cage Jeffrey Dean Morgan as Steven Leight Olek Krupa as Elmer Gratnik
Season 3 episodes
June 2004 – March 2005 "Mr. Monk Takes Manhattan" "Mr. Monk and the Panic Room" "Mr. Monk and the Blackout" "Mr. Monk Gets Fired" "Mr. Monk Meets the Godfather" "Mr. Monk and the Girl Who Cried Wolf" "Mr. Monk and the Employee of the Month" "Mr. Monk and the Game Show" "Mr. Monk Takes His Medicine" "Mr. Monk and the Red Herring" "Mr. Monk vs. the Cobra" "Mr. Monk Gets Cabin Fever" "Mr. Monk Gets Stuck in Traffic" "Mr. Monk Goes to Vegas" "Mr. Monk and the Election" "Mr. Monk and the Kid"
Episode chronology
← Previous "Mr. Monk Goes to Jail" Next → "Mr. Monk and the Panic Room"
Monk (season 3) List of Monk episodes

"Mr. Monk Takes Manhattan" is the first episode of the third season of Monk, and is the 30th episode overall. It was the third season premiere, and served as another installment in the series' ongoing plotline about the murder of Monk's wife.

Plot

After receiving a tip from Dale "The Whale" Biederbeck in the preceding episode, "Mr. Monk Goes to Jail", Adrian Monk flies to New York City, accompanied by Sharona Fleming, Captain Stottlemeyer, and Lieutenant Disher, all with the same mission – to find Warrick Tennyson, who Dale said was “involved” in the murder of Monk’s wife, Trudy.

Suddenly, while they are checking in at their hotel, the new Latvian ambassador Dmitry Kreslov and his two bodyguards are shot to death in one of the elevators. The shooter runs out of the hotel covering his face, and Monk says he can identify the man – but only by the shape of his left ear. Although Stottlemeyer says they are there to find Tennyson, Captain Walter Cage (Mykelti Williamson) asks for their help in solving the ambassador’s murder, which could have dire political implications. Stottlemeyer encourages Monk, reminding him that it's important to make a good impression for the NYPD.

Monk notices some clues: the ambassador’s coat is damp, but his bodyguards’ are dry. When the Ambassador brushed past Monk a few minutes before the murder, Monk remembers his coat was dry. Monk also heard the ambassador say something that sounded like, "she’s now gone meatless."

The four retrace the ambassador's movements that day; his last stop before arriving at the hotel was at a small bar/restaurant near Central Park. At the bar, Disher reveals that he just got a new Rolex watch that can tell him the times all around the world (When he shows it, it's 5:30 in New York, 3:30 in Denver, 12:17 PM in Los Angeles, and in Paris, time has stopped (proof that the watch is malfunctioning). Stottlemeyer and Disher go back to the precinct to find out where Tennyson is hiding.

Monk and Sharona, meanwhile go to Brooklyn to question Elmer Gratnik, a Latvian exile who might have had a motive. When they find him, he is playing a game of chess against another Latvian player. Gratnik doesn't know anything about the murder, but his opponent recognizes the ambassador’s words as "Šis nav mans mētelis," which in English translates as “This is not my coat,” in an obscure Latvian dialect (more specifically the Courland dialect around Ventspils).

Meanwhile, Stottlemeyer is suspicious of Cage’s continued dancing around the subject of Tennyson. He breaks into Cage’s office and examines his records, finding that Tennyson is dying in a hospital and has only a few days left to live. Because he’s being questioned in connection with a federal racketeering case, the District Attorney is not letting anyone else see him. Stottlemeyer confronts Cage, who admits the truth, but says the fact remains, the only way to get access to Tennyson is to solve the ambassador’s murder.

While Monk and Sharona are making their way back to the station, Monk reluctantly rides the New York City Subway, despite his terror of crowds, germs, and closed spaces. Sharona says she is proud of him, but when they stop at the Hoyt–Schermerhorn Street station to change lines, Monk reels at the sight of a man casually urinating in a corner. He is so horror-stricken that he stumbles back onto another departing train, leaving Sharona behind.

Lost in New York, Monk gradually goes to pieces, as well as losing $20 Dollars in a "find the queen" card game despite winning, as well as the clerk leaving when Monk asks for his gaming license on 49th street. When Sharona, Stottlemeyer, and Disher finally track him down in Times Square, he has been "converted" by one of the street preachers and is "spreading the word," yelling loudly about the impending Apocalypse. Sharona comes up to take hold of him, and is severely embarrassed when Monk calls her a "fornicator" in a loud voice.

However, as Monk regains control of himself, he looks up at one of the big TV screens and sees a man, Steven Leight (Morgan), being interviewed on the news about the recent murder of his wife in an apparent mugging in Central Park. Monk insists that Leight is "the guy," whom he recognizes by his ear.

No one can guess why Leight would kill the Latvian ambassador, but Monk cracks the case when Leight, during his interview, casually eats a mint found in a bar near Central Park, where the ambassador was before returning to the hotel.

Here's What Happened

Leight killed his wife in Central Park, then took her jewelry to make it look like a routine robbery. Afterwards, he went to the bar and had a drink to steady his nerves before calling the police. When the ambassador left the bar, he received Leight’s overcoat by mistake from the bar’s cloakroom.

When Leight got his coat to leave, he realized what had happened. His wife’s jewelry was still in the pocket of his coat, and he had to get it back. So he ran to the hotel just as it was starting to rain, followed the ambassador into the elevator, and killed all three men, switching the ambassador’s (now wet) coat with his own.

Midway through the summation, Monk becomes distracted when he recognizes one of the bar’s busboys as "The Urinator" from the subway. Monk barely manages to finish the summation shortly after being reminded. Shortly thereafter, a ballistics report arrives, confirming that Mrs. Leight and the ambassador were killed with the same gun. Leight is arrested.

Having cracked the case, Monk and Co. are allowed to visit Tennyson (Collison) on his deathbed. Tennyson remembers being hired by a man to build and plant the bomb that killed Trudy. When asked, he says he doesn’t know the name or the description of the man that hired him, since it was dark when they met, and it looks like Tennyson is a dead end. But Tennyson remembers one vital clue: the man in question had six fingers on his right hand.

Monk asks for a few moments alone with Tennyson. When the others are gone, Tennyson asks for forgiveness, but Monk cannot bring himself to give it. He turns off Tennyson's morphine drip saying, "This is me, turning off your morphine," ensuring he will spend his last few days in agonizing pain. But a few tense moments later, he says, "This is Trudy, the woman you killed, turning it back on," and does.

The gang prepares to leave New York, having gotten at least one step further in solving Monk’s most important case.

Continuity

• One season later, in "Mr. Monk Bumps His Head," Monk receives a trace from someone who claims to have found photo id on the six-fingered man and to meet at a gas station. However, the source later fights Monk and gives him amnesia after Monk discerns the photo's lack of validity. Three seasons later, in "Mr. Monk Is On The Run," Monk comes face to face with the six-fingered man, who admits that Tennyson built the bomb, but he detonated it. Dale "The Whale"'s reasons for sharing part of the truth with Monk also become clear.

Trivia

• Adrian Monk's age is said to be 45.
• Stottlemeyer becomes annoyed with an NYPD officer for using the word "Frisco," a typical reaction of many San Franciscans and Northern Californians despite the word's increasing popularity in hip-hop.^[1]
• Latvian site miljons.com featured this episode as a joke for its incorrect depiction of Latvia, noting that there is no way the key sentence in the episode could sound as anything in actual Latvian dialect.^[2]
• Ted Levine and Mykelti Williamson (Captain Cage) played fellow cops in Michael Mann's 1995 film Heat.

External links

• USA Network page for Mr. Monk Takes Manhattan

References

1. ^ Sullivan, James (October 14, 2003). "Frisco, that once-verboten term for the city by the bay, is making a comeback among the young and hip. Herb Caen is spinning at warp speed.". Datebook (San Francisco: San Francisco Chronicle): p. D-1. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2003/10/14/DD67721.DTL&type=travelbayarea. Retrieved June 12, 2008. 
2. ^ http://miljons.com/lv/10429/asv_seriala_monk_3._sezonas_1._serija_tiek_nogalinats_lat