Monk : Season 3

Monk and his friends go to New York City to discover the connection between Trudy's murder and Warrick Tennyson, whose name was given to Monk by Dale the Whale in last season's cliffhanger, ""Mr. Monk Goes to Jail."" As they're checking into their hotel, mayhem breaks out in the lobby and three people are killed, including the Latvian ambassador to the United Nations. Monk quickly discovers that the ambassador's coat is wet--an odd detail because minutes earlier he was standing near Monk in a

In yet another case of murder in a room locked from the inside, a music producer is found dead with bullets in his back, head. and chest, clearly neither an accident nor a suicide. But this time there's a further twist: the dead man's pet chimpanzee, Darwin, is caught with the murder weapon in his hand. Not wanting to make a monkey of himself by falsely accusing a chimpanzee of murder, Stottlemeyer takes the chimp into the interrogation room, tempting the animal to fire what he thinks is an

Three deaths during a city-wide blackout result in a joint investigation by Stottlemeyer, Monk, Sharona, and Disher, with the unprecedented cooperation of the FBI and the help of power company spokeswoman Michelle Rivas, an attractive brunette who is inexplicably attracted to Monk. While Sharona and Dr. Kroger pressure Monk to call Michelle, Disher follows up on Monk's suggestion that the power outage is connected to a '90s radical named Winston Brenner. Everything fits--the handwriting in the

Karen Stottlemeyer has decided to film a ""cinema verite"" documentary about her husband's work, but her timing couldn't be worse. The police commissioner shouts at the captain (on camera) for focusing on a routine arson fire in a wig factory and relying on Monk to solve a more newsworthy case involving a female victim whose body was cut up with a chainsaw. Monk is in even worse trouble. After presenting some useful leads involving the chainsaw victim's age and nationality, he accidentally

When five members of the West Coast Mafia are shot down in a barbershop, Monk is pressured by mob godfather Salvatore Lucarelli and his nephew ""Fat Tony"" to solve the case. But the FBI in the person of Agent Colmes is pressuring him, too. Despite Captain Stottlemeyer's insistence that Colmes is not to be trusted, Monk accepts his offer of reinstatement on the police force if he can bring down the whole gang. The only clues are a partially completed crossword puzzle and a gumball machine that

It's Sharona's turn to be terrified. After several frightening and mysterious encounters with a blood-soaked man that no one else can see, she begins to doubt her own sanity, and Stottlemeyer advises Monk to give her time off to restore her nerves. Monk is left with an irritating substitute nurse whose philosophy is the opposite of Sharona's: everything from Monk's requests for wipes to the obsessively systematic organization of his refrigerator has to go. Wanting Sharona back again, Monk goes

When Edna Coruthers, a model employee at a giant chain store called Mega-Mart, is killed by a falling television set, Monk is called in to investigate by the store's security chief--who turns out to be his disgraced ex-partner, Joe Christie. Neither Monk nor Stottlemeyer wants to work with Christie, whom they hold responsible for some missing cocaine and the death of two police officers, and both of them disregard the evidence that Edna might have been murdered--a broken shoe heel (suggesting

With Sharona in New Jersey to visit her ailing mother, Monk is left in the very incompetent hands of his annoying upstairs neighbor, Kevin Dorfman, but the prospect of a week with Kevin is eased somewhat by a visit from Trudy's father, Dwight Ellison. Dwight invites Monk (and Kevin) to spend the week with him and his wife, Marcia – and at the same time investigate gameshow host Roddy Lankman, who appears to be involved in a conspiracy to allow one of his contestants, Val Birch, to win every

After Captain Stottlemeyer is shot in the shoulder by an unknown assailant, a somewhat rattled and very angry Disher is left in charge of the investigation. Although Monk is almost as distressed as Disher, he provides very little help with the investigation, even allowing a suspect to get away. Feeling depressed and helpless, Monk decides to try a new medication that controls his OCD and eliminates his phobias but also makes him insufferably egotistical, unempathetic, and oblivious to the

With Sharona in New Jersey remarried to her ex-husband, Monk has been without an assistant for three months and it's time to find a new one--if only he could find a suitable applicant. When Natalie Teeger, a thirty-something widow with an eleven-year-old daughter, arrives at his house, he thinks she's applying for the job, but she's really been sent by Captain Stottlemeyer to get Monk's help--two men have broken into her apartment in the last few days and she had to kill the second one with

When John Ricca, author of a controversial and unfavorable biography of martial artist Sonny (""the Cobra"") Chow, is found dead in his home, all the evidence points to Chow as the murderer. Unfortunately for Captain Stottlemeyer, his chief suspect has been dead for six years. While Monk and Natalie (who's more interested in being reimbursed for her business expenses than in solving the case) visit Chow's former teacher, Master Zee, who claims that Chow died in his arms, Stottlemeyer resorts to

After witnessing a Chinese gangland murder, Monk has to stay in an FBI safe house--a cabin in the woods--in the protective custody of Agent Grooms, with Stottlemeyer and Natalie as company. Awakened by a man's scream, Monk convinces Stottlemeyer and Natalie that a woman in a nearby cabin has murdered her husband. Agent Grooms, however, remains skeptical. After Grooms disconnects their telephone, Stottlemeyer locks him in the bathroom and the three ""borrow"" Grooms's car and set out in a

When Monk, Natalie, and Julie get stuck in a traffic jam after a multi-car collision blocks the freeway, Monk gets out of the car to investigate. He soon deduces from the absence of skid marks and other clues that the young man in the overturned Volkswagen that caused the pile-up was murdered and his body placed in the car to make his death look like an accident. But the highway patrolman in charge of the ""accident"" scene wants nothing to do with Monk (or the not-very-successful lawyer who has

In the middle of the night, Monk receives a phone call from a drunken Stottlemeyer, who has gone to Las Vegas with Disher for a fellow officer's bachelor party. Stottlemeyer believes that a wealthy casino owner has murdered his wife, but he needs Monk's help to prove that the death wasn't an accident. Unfortunately, when Monk arrives in Vegas with Natalie the next morning, Stottlemeyer can't remember anything that happened the previous night--including how his pants happened to be thrown out the

With her daughter's school about to be closed as a cost-cutting measure, Natalie becomes a candidate in the upcoming school board election despite Monk's fears that she'll desert him if she wins. Natalie's frustrations with a jammed photocopier and other defective equipment bought at a police auction are dwarfed by fear for her life when a sniper fires into her campaign headquarters, further damaging the equipment and killing a security guard. The only clues to the identity of the sniper are an

After twenty-two-month-old Tommy Graser finds a severed finger and gives it to a policeman, Monk walks through the park with Tommy trying to retrace the child's steps. He finds no body or other incriminating evidence, but he does discover a surprising affection for the placid and intelligent toddler, who constantly repeats Monk's name and quietly submits to having his hands wiped when he touches ""nature."" A lab technician identifies the finger as that of a twenty-five-year-old man, and Monk