Monk : Season 2

When English teacher Beth Landow falls from the clock tower at Trudy's former high school, the assistant principal doubts the police department's conclusion that the death was a suicide and invites Monk to investigate. Monk quickly concludes that the suicide note is a forgery: a highly respected English teacher wouldn't confuse ""its"" with ""it's."" A few words with the teachers in the lounge lead him to suspect that the murderer is a science teacher, Derek Philby. Unfortunately for Monk,

When a friend's college-age son dies mysteriously in Mexico, the mayor sends Monk to investigate. Doubting the coroner's report that the young man ""drowned"" in mid-air, Monk nevertheless has difficulty concentrating on the case. His eighteen suitcases carrying not only his clothes and ""back-up pillowcases"" but a year's supply of food and his favorite brand of bottled water are stolen, leaving him with nothing he considers safe to eat or drink. Even worse, someone is trying to kill him, first

When a ruthless CEO and his wife are lured to an industrial park and are shot dead in their car, Monk connects their murders to a star baseball player's quest for the single season home run record.

When a sarcastic and unpopular ringmaster is murdered by an acrobat wearing a face mask and a Ninja-like costume, Stottlemeyer suspects an animal trainer who not only has a motive (he's the former lover of the ringmaster's dinner date) but also owns the murder weapon. Monk, however, suspects the ringmaster's ex-wife, a trapeze artist billed as ""the Queen of the Sky"" who is also a sharpshooter. Unfortunately for Monk's theory, the trapeze artist, Natasia Lovara, has a broken foot, confirmed by

In an attempt to stabilize his shaky marriage, Captain Stottlemeyer redecorates his office with the New Age artifacts that his ""hippie wife,"" Karen, has given him, but he can't bring himself to watch the documentary that she spent forty-five thousand dollars to film. When Karen thinks that her documentary subject--the world's oldest man--was murdered, the captain rejects the suggestion as absurd but calls in Monk to pacify her. Unfortunately for the captain, Monk agrees with Karen, and

Sharona's actress sister, Gail, is suspected of murdering Hal Duncan, a fellow actor who dies onstage after Gail stabs him with what she insists is a retractable knife. When Sharona's mother (who thinks that Sharona is Monk's partner, not his assistant) arrives for a visit and Sharona tells her the bad news, Monk and Sharona promise to ""do whatever it takes"" to discover what really happened. ""Whatever it takes"" turns out to be a bit more than Monk bargained for, however. After talking with

In a new twist on the "how could he (or she) possibly have done it" theme that we saw first in "Dale the Whale", Monk suspects that the man responsible for the mail bombing murder of rich and beautiful Amanda Babbage is the victim's brother, Brian – who has been in a coma for four months after attempting to lure Stottlemeyer and Disher into a car chase and crashing into two cars. Since the package was postmarked three days before the bombing, Stottlemeyer is naturally skeptical, but he prefers

Suspecting that her boss, Elliott D'Souza, has been murdered by playboy/publisher Dexter Larsen after withdrawing his financial backing for Larsen's Sapphire magazine, D'Souza's secretary hires Monk to investigate. After enlisting the help of the initially reluctant Stottlemeyer and Disher and convincing them that D'Souza's death was no accident despite his being alone in a room locked from the inside, Monk suddenly tries to withdraw from the case. The reason? Larsen has obtained and is

Faced with a string of nine brutal murders, all with different MOs and no apparent similarities among the victims, Captain Stottlemeyer calls in Monk to help him investigate. Suspicion falls at first on Henry Smalls, an insurance agent whose calendars appear in three of the victims' photographs. But as Monk, accompanied by Sharona and her new boyfriend, Deputy Mayor Kenny Shale, waits in the dark for Smalls to return home, he helplessly witnesses a fatal stabbing in which the suspect becomes the

In a new twist on the ""how could he (or she) possibly have done it"" theme that we saw first in ""Dale the Whale,"" Monk suspects that the man responsible for the mail bombing murder of rich and beautiful Amanda Babbage is the victim's brother, Brian--who has been in a coma for four months after attempting to lure Stottlemeyer and Disher into a car chase and crashing into two cars. Since the package was postmarked three days before the bombing, Stottlemeyer is naturally skeptical, but he

When Monk's older brother Ambrose calls him about a ""life-or-death matter,"" Monk accepts the call grudgingly and agrees to meet the brother from whom he's been estranged since Ambrose refused to attend Trudy's funeral seven years before. In fact, Ambrose, an agoraphobic packrat whose house is full of bundled up newspapers, has not left the home he and Adrian grew up in for thirty-two years. Believing Ambrose's claim that his next-door neighbor, Pat Van Ranken, has murdered his wife after a

After visiting the set of the hit TV series Crime Lab S.F. during a celebration of its one hundredth episode, Monk suspects the show's star, Brad Terry, of murdering his ex-wife so he won't have to share his huge new paychecks with her. But the actor's alibi seems solid--he was with photographers when the victim's screams were heard. To complicate matters, a fan confesses to the crime and Terry passes a lie detector test. After Terry invites the captain, Disher, and Sharona--but not Monk--to a

Unable to pay for Monk's services as a private detective, middle-aged law student Julie Parlo offers him a trade--she'll help Monk become reinstated as a policeman with the SFPD if he'll help her find her missing grandmother. The only clue to the identity of the kidnappers is a roughly drawn lightning bolt on a note left at the grandmother's house, leading Stottlemeyer and Disher to suspect the former leader of an anti-Vietnam War group from the Seventies. But when the captain, anticipating Monk

On her way to film a documentary (apparently about a union dispute), Captain Stottlemeyer's wife, Karen, is badly injured when her car is struck by a tow truck whose nonunion driver has been killed by a sniper. Distraught and furious, the captain blames a sleazy union official and his thug, a theory that seems to be confirmed when a second tow truck driver is murdered. But Lieutenant Disher, in charge of the crime scene investigation, discovers an odd detail that doesn't fit well with this

After a phone call from Lt. Disher, Monk and Sharona find him in Captain Stottlemeyer's office, drinking Scotch to console himself because his 58-year-old mother has married a 37-year-old antique dealer he's sure is up to no good. The con man, Dalton Padron, has taken his aging bride to a marriage counseling clinic for their honeymoon, and Sharona persuades Monk that the best way to catch him is to pose as husband and wife and join him at the clinic. In a group therapy session, Sharona accuses

Who would murder a death-row inmate forty-five minutes before his execution--and why? That's the question Captain Stottlemeyer asks Monk--but Monk's response is to ask why it matters. As Monk is hurrying to leave the prison, however, he gets a phone call from his old nemesis, Dale ""the Whale"" Biederbeck, that changes his plans. The police consider Dale a suspect in the inmate's murder (the young man owed him twelve hundred dollars) and refuse to give him a window in his cell until his name is