Monk: Mr. Bean Meets Rainman
That's probably the best way to describe the character of Adrian Monk, the obsessive-compulsive detective on USA's hit "dramedy". (I came up with the Mr. Bean part; Billy came up with Rainman.) Billy and I settled in to watch it Friday night and were laughing all the way through. This show is so great! We can't believe we've missed out on it for the last 4 years!

In Friday night's episode, Monk was "hired" by some girls on a high school basketball team to find their coach's killer. When they came to his door to talk with him, they found him painstakingly ironing 3 shoelaces: the left one, the right one, and a spare. Monk actually spent time trying to figure out which was which - and he did. Once the girls had convinced him to help them, he enlisted the help of his assistant, neighbor Natalie Teeger (whose daughter was one of the girls), to examine the scene of the crime - the girls' locker room. Monk was concerned about cooties and said the jury was still out on that. He had Natalie do all the "dirty work" - checking for dust on an electrical outlet cover, climbing to look on top of lockers to see if a window had been opened, etc. As the show went on, Natalie took over the role of coach for the girls' championship basketball game and made Monk her assistant. He knew nothing about the game, so he parroted everything she said and did. When he got his own whistle, he drove everyone nuts with it and had it taken away twice. After Natalie was thrown out of the game, Monk had to take over. He didn't have a clue what he was doing, and when he tried to coach the girls during a time out, he spent the whole time going over the mathematical impossibility of giving 110%. One girl insisted that she was going to give that much anyway, so he told another girl to just give 90%. A third girl announced that she was going to give 115%, so he knocked the 90% girl's efforts to 75%. When she was giving her all on the court, Monk was fretting that she was giving more than 75%. Too funny!

There was so much more that happened, though. Monk has an incredible eye for detail and can pick up on clues other people miss altogether. The writers for this show are amazing, and the cast is superb. This show is definitely a new favorite of mine.

Unfortunately I won't be home Friday night to watch it. Since I'll be at my parents' house this weekend, I may see if I can get my dad to tape it for me - and then watch it with me sometime Saturday. Oh, and it also airs on USA on Saturday mornings at 9:00 (Central Time). Maybe I can catch one of the earlier episodes then.