by Liz Matson
Friday, July 12, 2002
``Monk.'' Series premiere tonight at 9 on USA.
Extra-strength antibacterial soap was made for people like Adrian Monk, a homicide detective with an extreme obsessive-compulsive disorder. He'll go after a crook, but keep the cooties, critters and crowds away from him.``Monk,'' USA's newest attempt to develop a signature series, premieres as a two-hour movie tonight at 9. Hourlong episodes will air Fridays at 10 p.m.
Because of his high anxiety, Detective Monk (Tony Shalhoub, ``The Man Who Wasn't There,'' ``Galaxy Quest'') is on temporary suspension from the police force and works as a crime consultant in the San Francisco area. Four years earlier, his wife was killed in a car bombing. In his grief, Monk developed a condition that causes him to fear everything from germs to crowded places. When he's not squeamishly helping the police, Monk obsessively folds his socks and puts them in plastic baggies and reviews his wife's unsolved case, searching for the reason for her death.In the opener, Monk is called in to assist at a murder scene in a young woman's apartment. He impresses the other cops by noticing clues in the room that they missed, such as an adjusted computer chair and the smell of Newport menthol cigarettes.
But he also unnerves them by obsessively worrying aloud about whether he left his gas stove on. Fortunately, he is accompanied by his personal nurse Sharona Fleming (Bitty Schram, ``A League of Their Own''), who tries to keep him focused on the crime scene.Throughout the day, she hovers around him like a stereotypical Jewish mother, handing him clean hankies, calming him down when he hyperventilates and cooking his dinners. She also keeps him out of earshot of cohorts who refer to him as ``the defective detective.'' Sharon prefers to see him as a ``Zen Sherlock Holmes.''In his sessions with a police shrink, Monk tries unsuccessfully to act ``normal'' in the hope that he will get a clean bill of health and win reinstatement to the police force. But his need to wipe germs, straighten pictures and avoid people always gets the upper hand.Monk gets a chance for redemption when someone tries to shoot a John McCain-look-alike mayor at a rally.
A bodyguard is killed instead, and at the mayor's request, Monk's former police captain, Leland Stottlemeyer (Ted Levine, ``The Silence of the Lambs''), reluctantly puts Monk on the case to find the shooter.There's the usual cast of characters involved: the brittle blond wife, the ambitious campaign manager and the conniving money man.Monk is convinced there is a connection between the murdered young woman and the bodyguard shooting, and sets out to prove his theory to his disbelieving captain. His snooping around leads to some unusual chase scenes as Monk tries to avoid germs and count poles as he pursues the bad guys.The crime plot is so-so and pulls together too neatly. It is set up like an old-fashioned English murder mystery. At the climax, Monk gathers everyone at the crime scene to smoke out the culprit.The show's concept is clever, and the pilot displays a blend of humor and drama with a bit of melancholy hanging over it.
Shalhoub is excellent as the twitchy, mild-mannered Monk. But Monk can be an annoying character, and at times you may find yourself wanting to yell, ``Snap out of it!'' at the television screen.