User:DReifGalaxyM31/Mr. Monk Goes to Vegas

"Mr. Monk Goes to Vegas" is the 14th episode of the third season of the television series Monk, and the 43rd episode overall. It was filmed on the set of the television series Las Vegas.

Plot summary
Monk and Natalie go to Sin City to investigate the death of a casino owner's wife, a death that Stottlemeyer believes might be foul play.

Plot synopsis
In Las Vegas, Nevada, casino mogul Daniel Thorn (James Brolin) and his beautiful wife Sheryl (Challen Cates) are preparing to leave their penthouse to attend a fundraiser. Sheryl mentions not being able to find her usual earrings, so she fastens on another pair instead. Daniel complains that he wishes he could stay home and skip the fundraiser, but Sheryl reminds him that the dress she's wearing is one he bought her just for tonight and a lot of people will be there just to have their pictures taken with Daniel. As they head to the elevator, she catches her trademark scarf on a door, and her husband chides her for always getting it caught. Sheryl insists that she has to wear it, despite Daniel saying it will kill her soon. They get on the elevator, as Roberto, their cook, bids them a good evening.

When they get downstairs, the Thorns step out of their private elevator, where they are mobbed by the paparazzi. Lewis, the casino bellboy, informs them that he's put some diet sodas in their car. Sheryl notices that she doesn’t have their tickets. Daniel looks through his pockets and realizes that he can't find them either. Sheryl decides to head back upstairs to check for the tickets, and steps back onto the elevator. The doors close, but the end of her scarf gets caught, and her husband shouts a warning. As the elevator starts its way up, Sheryl can be heard screaming for help from inside. Daniel calls Roberto on his cell phone and has him check on Sheryl. The elevator starts up and the scarf is partially ripped off. When the doors open on the penthouse level, Sheryl is on the floor, dead.

Sometime later, Adrian Monk is awoken in the middle of the night by a phone call. He answers, and an excited (and obviously very drunk) Captain Stottlemeyer answers. He excitedly tells Monk that he can prove that Daniel Thorn murdered his wife and wants Monk to give a second opinion. The next day, Monk and Natalie Teeger arrive in Sin City. Monk notices the large amount of activity at the casino, and Natalie comments to Monk that everyone is miserable, so Monk is probably the happiest person there (as soon as she says that, a woman behind them immediately screams and jumps up and down in triumph at a slot machine). Natalie mentions to Monk that she lived in Las Vegas for two years, and tells Monk that there's a lot about her life that she hasn't told him about.

Upstairs, Stottlemeyer, Lieutenant Disher, and some other guys, are rudely aroused by an impatient person knocking on the door. Stottlemeyer realizes that he can't find his pants. Randy tells him that he threw them out the window after a girl bet him a dollar that he wouldn't. Stottlemeyer pulls a dollar bill out of his trousers and realizes that she did pay off. The knocking gets more and more insistent. Stottlemeyer wraps a towel around himself and walks over to the door. He looks through the peephole, then angrily asks the others who invited Monk. He lets Monk and Natalie into the room. Monk is a little disturbed to find that Stottlemeyer has no recollection of solving any murder and doesn't remember calling Monk.

While Randy goes off to the tables to gamble, Monk tries to get Stottlemeyer to remember what he did during his hangover. He finds himself forced to start the investigation from scratch. They talk with Lewis, who confirms that Sheryl was completely alone when she got on the elevator. The report on Sheryl Thorn's death rules it an accident - Sheryl's scarf caught on the elevator door, strangling her and snapping her, and no one could have joined her afterward - the elevator had a thumbprint scanner that responded only to Daniel or Sheryl’s touch. Examining the crime scene, Monk looks at the shape of Sheryl’s thumbprint in the file, and notices that it is at a funny angle, as though she turned her hand upside down to press it. Looking around, Monk notices a broken fingernail embedded in the leather rail opposite the door, which is too far from the door to have broken off while Sheryl was being strangled. He thinks that something must have happened in here that may have been murder.

Monk and Natalie track Daniel Thorn down to a groundbreaking ceremony for a new hospital in Sheryl's memory. When Thorn hands his coat off to Natalie (not knowing who she is) in order to pose with a shovel for the paparazzi, she goes through its pockets and finds the tickets to the benefit. Monk and Natalie confront Thorn, and Monk notes that the night Sheryl was killed, they were heading to a fundraiser at a local pavillion for Sheryl's hospital, and she apparently forgot the tickets, which are in Thorn's coat pocket. Thorn pretends surprise and chagrin, and claims that it was a horrible misunderstanding gone wrong. But Monk and Natalie are now firmly convinced that there was a murder.

Monk gets Stottlemeyer to retrace his steps on the night he called, trying to find what he saw that clued him in. Meanwhile, Natalie chums up Lewis while digging for dirt on Thorn. Stottlemeyer leads Monk to the bar, where he is surprised to learn that he won first place in the karaoke contest the night before. A woman sitting in the bar says she was there the night before, and Stottlemeyer was saying something in excitement – but she will only tell him what if he sings the song "Ain't No Sunshine" again. He reluctantly does so, and she says that he was saying, “they don’t match,” over and over again. Neither Monk nor Stottlemeyer have a clue what it means.

Natalie comes back, having learned from Lewis that Daniel Thorn has a mistress, a dancer at another casino named Teresa Telenko (Krista Allen). She is a dancer at another casino. Monk and Natalie go to question Teresa during another show. She also pretends ignorance, and Monk notes that she suspiciously missed work on the night Daniel's wife was killed. Teresa claims she was sick.

Monk and Natalie go back to the private elevator to recreate the crime scene. When Natalie refuses to play the victim, as Sharona always did, Monk loops a long scarf around his neck, and closes it in the door. Above, Thorn presses the button to call the elevator. Downstairs, the scarf is yanked down, nearly strangling Monk before Natalie can cut him loose. When they arrive at the top, Thorn is angry at the fact that they seem to be making light of Sheryl’s death. He also says they’ve just proven how Sheryl was killed, but Monk points out that when he was strangling, he was rendered speechless: how could Sheryl have screamed for help from inside the elevator?

When Monk and Natalie arrive back downstairs, Stottlemeyer rushes up to them and informs them that Randy is almost down by $30,000. Randy is using a Blackjack handbook that he thinks will help him - in reality said book was printed by the casino in order to teach the reader how to lose. Monk’s photographic memory enables him to remember the cards as they are shuffled, and he decides to play a few hands, becoming amazingly proficient once he’s learned the rules. Stottlemeyer takes him aside, telling him that Randy has lost his life savings, and asking Monk to win it back for him. Natalie warns him about the dangers of gambling addiction, but Stottlemeyer pleads.

Monk takes his seat at the table, and Thorn drops by. He says he has decided to make it more interesting, and has the dealer add two more decks of cards to the shoe. Natalie warns Monk to be careful. Thorn jokingly warns him against cheating, indicating the security cameras and saying he has “friends in the ceiling.” With that remark, Monk remembers the emergency roof access panel in the elevator, solves the case. He gives the summation while simultaneously getting Randy's money back.

Here's What Happened
Daniel and his wife left the penthouse together, but Sheryl didn't actually make it downstairs alive - Thorn killed her in the elevator. He only had two minutes to do the job, but he had enough time because he had help - inside the roof hatch was Teresa Telenko, Thorn's mistress, disguised as Sheryl. With just minutes to work, Daniel used a rigged pulley system to hoist Sheryl's body up through the hatch, while subsequently allowing Teresa to drop into the main elevator, wearing an identical dress to Sheryl's, then replaced the roof hatch. They still had plenty of time. When the elevator doors opened, they went into their act. After Teresa got back onto the elevator, she lowered Sheryl’s body, and used Sheryl's limp hand to press the keypad (hence the funny angle), after wrapping Sheryl’s neck in the scarf she had caught in the doors. By the time the elevator arrived back upstairs, Teresa was back on top of the elevator car, and the scarf had dragged Sheryl’s body to the door. As Sheryl was always catching her scarf on items, no one was surprised about the fact that it had happened again.

Thorn says that they can’t prove any of this; Monk says there may be hair and rope fibers on the top of the elevator, but Thorn smugly informs them that they don’t have probable cause for a search warrant. He then orders security to throw Monk and his party out, accusing them of cheating. Stottlemeyer and Disher are sure to grab their winnings first.

As Monk, Natalie, Stottlemeyer and Disher prepare to leave, Lewis returns Stottlemeyer’s jeans, which he threw out the window on a bet during the party. In the pocket, he finds a copy of a tabloid magazine about Sheryl's death and quickly remembers the crucial clue that he saw: the article has "before" and "after" photos, including a photo of Sheryl getting on the elevator, and a photo of her dead body after the elevator stopped. In the "after" photo, Sheryl is wearing hoop earrings, but she is wearing a different set in the "before" photo. Monk is frankly amazed, since thousands of people, himself included, saw the magazine without noticing the clue. Stottlemeyer is not sure whether to be proud or not: apparently he can be as smart a detective as Monk, but only when he’s “drunk as a skunk.” They prepare to call the local police to get a search warrant.

They later watch as Thorn is led out of the casino in handcuffs. Disher confirms that they found hair and rope fibers on top of the elevator. Combined with the photographs, Thorn will not be able to get off. Thorn smugly says to Monk that he'll be out by tomorrow morning, but Monk jokes that he wouldn't bet on it. With Natalie’s help, Monk resists the urge to re-visit the casino tables.

Reception
Tell how the episode was received by critics and possibly fans. Also, give the number of viewers in this section.