User:DReifGalaxyM31/Mr. Monk and the Leper

"Mr. Monk and the Leper" is the tenth episode of the fifth season of Monk, and the 71st episode overall.

Plot
Late at night, Natalie Teeger is sitting in her car, while Adrian Monk walks into a dimly lit bar where he is supposed to be meeting someone. Monk goes to a dimly lit booth at the far back of the bar, and meets the shadowy figure. The figure introduces himself as Derek Bronson, the CEO of Bronson Technologies, as Monk remembers. He says that everyone thought he was killed seven years ago in a ballooning accident. But he reveals that he actually landed on an island west of Guam, lived there for a few years, and then came back. When Derek moves his face into the light and reveals that he is a leper, Monk is immediately horrified. He runs towards Natalie. Because it is taking her forever to open the door to her new car, Monk runs away, heading back towards his house.

The next morning, Monk is seen scrubbing his right arm with soap like crazy, trying to get all leprosy traces off him. Natalie, exasperated, reminds him that he has been scrubbing his arm for nine hours and finds it amazing that he has any skin cells left. Realizing that the traces aren't coming off, Monk makes a very drastic decision, and he pulls out a can of kerosene, douses his hand in it, then throws a match to Natalie and asks her to light his hand on fire. She is eventually able to convince him that shaking Derek's hand is not a bad thing. In fact, she mentions that Derek has called again and upped the amount of money that he wants to pay Monk.

Later that day, Monk and Natalie pay a visit to a clinic run by Dr. Aaron Polanski (Paul Blackthorne), a specialist in leprosy. While they are waiting, Natalie notices a photo of Lieutenant Disher on the wall from his teenage years, showing the acne outbreaks he suffered as a kid. Dr. Polanski confirms Natalie's suspicions, and notes that Randy was one of his first patients. On the subject of leprosy, he informs Monk and Natalie that the disease is now commonly known as Hansen's disease, and it is not contagious, which does nothing to settle Monk.

Nonetheless, Monk goes back to the bar to meet with Derek. He explains what he wants Monk to do. He'd like Monk to break into his house and find some letters that would destroy Mandy, his wife. Monk accepts the offer, and he and Natalie go to the house. They scale the property fence on a ladder, or rather, Natalie does, as she opens the gate for Monk after climbing over. They use the given security code to disable the alarm system, although as they are rifling through the study, Mandy catches them in the act. Held up at gunpoint, they admit that Derek is alive. Mandy meets Derek at a parking garage. As Monk and Natalie watch, Mandy tells Derek that in a week, there will be a probate hearing at which he will be legally declared dead, and that his sister's sons will inherit the estate. Not wanting to let Mandy lose the estate, Derek calls out to Monk, saying he has one more favor to the detective.

The next day at the police station, Monk and Natalie explain their story to Captain Stottlemeyer. Natalie also asks Randy if he knows Dr. Polanski. Randy denies it until she mentions to him the photos hanging on the wall in his office. He is forced to admit that the photos were from a case, when he was posing as a teenager with bad acne. Monk is going to testify to having seen Derek at the probate hearing.

That night, Derek is seen playing the piano for Mandy at their house, revealed to actually be someone faking his leprosy. As soon as he finishes the piece, she pulls out a pistol from behind her back and shoots him, and his body slumps over the keys with a loud thud.

Monk, meanwhile, testifies that Derek Bronson is alive at the probate hearing. However, the lawyers mention that there is no way to authenticate that Monk actually saw Derek, as he only saw the man in a dimly lit bar and parking garage. To verify if Monk's claim that he met Derek is right, the Judge overseeing the hearing asks Monk to turn around and describe his shirt. Monk promptly asks him whether he refers to the shirt he is wearing or the one his stenographer is wearing. He deduces that they were having an affair on one of the office couches. The judge, impressed with Monk's deductions, decides to rule that Derek is alive and well.

Meanwhile, Stottlemeyer and Disher are called by a landlady to an apartment, answering to a missing persons case. She thinks that her missing tenant is dead, even though there is no sign of a murder. They search the apartment, or rather, Stottlemeyer does, while Randy doodles out the show's theme music on the piano. Stottlemeyer and Disher find some interesting details about the missing pianist: the first is that a notation in his appointment book shows that he played at a private party a year ago for Mandy Bronson. Also in the apartment is a gym bag loaded with bandages, a makeup kit, and even a book on various types of skin diseases, revealing that the man that Monk had met in the bar wasn't really Derek Bronson.

That night, Natalie goes on a date with Dr. Polanski. As they are making out in his car, she mentions that Derek went back to the leper colony where he stayed at while in exile. Then Dr. Polanski reveals a new secret. He mentioned to her earlier that he only got to experience one other case of leprosy/Hansen's disease up close and personal: himself.

At Natalie's house, Monk is hanging out with Julie. Julie makes an attempt to squeeze some ketchup onto some french fries, and she asks why anyone would bother using ketchup in 1840 (regarding the label on the bottle). Suddenly, Monk's memory is jolted: the security panel in Derek Bronson's house had a label saying it was made by a security company founded in 2003. If Derek has not been home in seven years, how could he know the code to deactivate his own alarm system? Monk realizes he has been used as a dupe.

But before he can say anything more, Natalie bursts back in, back from her date with Dr. Polanski. Her reaction to the leprosy is almost as bad, if not, worse, as Monk's was. She starts drinking a stream of very hot water out of the water tap, and even instructs Julie to fill the bathtub up with Listerine, and then she and Monk are talking simultaneously about what they've learned.

Monk and Natalie go back to Mandy's house the next day. Monk is unsettled to find that Natalie is drinking a bottle of mouthwash, asking where her part about tolerance went, and she promptly reminds him that she had her tongue down her leper's mouth.

With the discovery that he's been conned, Monk has a new theory about what happened: Derek Bronson has been dead for the past seven years. His wife shot him, got rid of his body, and since then, she has been living off his money. Mandy knew that, with no body ever being found, after seven years, the will was going to kick in, Derek's nephews would inherit everything, and she'd lose the estate forever. To keep her lifestyle, she found an old acquaintance, the pianist, and seduced him to get him to pose as Derek. Then they sought out someone who could be an unwitting accomplice. Monk realizes he was the best patsy Mandy could use: they knew that if he thought Derek was a leper, he'd never want to take a good enough look at the man to realize that "Derek" was an imposter (further helped by making the meetings happen in dimly lit locations).

Monk and Natalie scale the wall, and they hear a loud hissing noise. They quickly find it to be coming from a hot air balloon in the backyard, which Mandy is inflating. Monk and Natalie sneak over when Mandy suddenly has to walk away to take a call on her cell phone. When they get there, they find the dead body of the pianist in the balloon basket, weighed down with barbells. Monk recognizes the victim as the imposter. He also quickly realizes that the barbells add weight to the basket. It means that Mandy is going to dump the body in the ocean, just like she did with her husband seven years ago.

Meanwhile, Randy casually strolls into Dr. Polanski's office. He looks briefly at a magazine on dermatology. Then he looks up at the photos of him on the wall. Embarrassed by them, he waits for the receptionist to get up from her desk, goes to swipe one off, and only gets them off the wall by prying it off with the pen chained to the receptionist's desk, taking out a small chunk of the wall and knocking down lots of other photos, just as Dr. Polanski walks up. Dr. Polanski agrees to toss Randy's photo off (though pretending not to notice that Randy has forcibly pulled it off). Randy mentions to Dr. Polanski about his dating with Natalie, and in reply, Dr. Polanski informs Randy that he also thinks that the Derek Bronson that Monk met was an imposter, through a different clue: Natalie has told him that Derek claimed to have gone back to a certain leper colony on Kimino Island in the Pacific, but he has checked and found that the colony in question has been closed for two years, and the bandages he was described as wearing did not make sense. Randy suddenly remembers the bag in the missing pianist's apartment with the makeup kit, bandages, and a book on skin disease, and realizes that the pianist was using it to impersonate a leper. Randy decides that he needs to have another chat with Mandy. Dr. Polanski asks to come along, in case Natalie is in trouble. They take separate cars.

At the house meanwhile, Monk and Natalie are about to leave when Mandy comes back with her pistol. They realize that there is no time to call 911, and they'll have to go airborne to escape. They leave the ground, but Mandy opens fire on them. Bullets pass through the balloon fabric and air starts to come out. She is interrupted when Randy and Dr. Polanski arrive. Randy handcuffs Mandy, while Monk and Natalie continue sinking towards the ground. The basket hits the ground, and the impact knocks Natalie and the body out of the balloon. Monk is left clinging for his life on the edge of a cliff, just as the balloon is washed away into the ocean. Dr. Polanski reaches out, and after a few moments of pleading, Monk grabs his hand and Dr. Polanski pulls him up to the top of the ledge.

While Monk still fears lepers, Natalie decides to overcome her fear a few days later by going on another date with Dr. Polanski.

Additional information

 * "Mr. Monk and the Leper" is the only episode of Monk to have been aired in black and white in addition to color. After the original airing, USA Network then held an online poll for viewers to indicate which version they preferred. On the initial broadcast, the episode opened with Tony Shalhoub on a set providing an intro from the set about how it would be airing in black & white because of the episode's film noir type plot, as the image turned from color to black-and-white. After this version had finished, Ted Levine and Jason Gray-Stanford introduced the color version, with Ted insisting it was better in color because it is set in the present day and Jason preferring to agree with Tony.
 * For the benefit of viewers who like one version more than the other, both black-and-white and color versions of the episode were included on the DVD release. Hence, whereas the previous and following seasons had four discs with four episodes each, season 5 technically had 17 episodes, resulting in three discs with five episodes each and a fourth disc with two episodes.
 * The black-and-white version on the DVD release also features a commentary with cast and crew.
 * Lawrence O'Donnell, who portrays the judge at the probate hearing, later reprised his character in the season 7 episode Mr. Monk and the Genius (when he is granting a petition to have Patrick Kloster's first wife's body exhumed). There is a name-reference to his character in Mr. Monk and the Miracle.
 * In the season 6 episode Mr. Monk and the Wrong Man and the season 7 episode Mr. Monk and the Miracle, Monk mentions the events of this episode, namely Natalie making out with Dr. Polanski. A passing reference is also made in Mr. Monk in Outer Space.
 * Natalie always wears high heels when she has skirts or dresses on, but in the last few scenes of the episode, she is wearing flats. This was because these later scenes were shot when Traylor Howard was several months pregnant.
 * This is the first episode in which Natalie drives a Buick Lucerne (it is implied that this was very recent, as she has trouble finding the unlock button on her car keys). She continues to drive the Lucerne throughout the remainder of season 5. It is established in the novel Mr. Monk and the Dirty Cop that Natalie still owns the Lucerne. It is damaged in an accident in the novel Mr. Monk Is Cleaned Out.
 * This is one of several episodes where Monk and another character each reach the same conclusion at nearly the same time using different pieces of evidence. In this episode, Monk solves the case based on the fact that Bronson, who claimed he hadn't been home in seven years, could not have known the security code for his house if was installed four years after he disappeared. Randy solves the case from the fake leper, who was reading a book on skin disease and also had a makeup kit with bandages, and had ties to Mandy. Dr. Polanski solves it from researching and finding that the leper colony Bronson supposedly stayed at has been closed down recently, so he couldn't have been there this whole time.
 * Near the end the fake leper and Natalie fall from the gondola of the hot-air balloon. As Natalie gets up, the camera zooms in on her, and, minus the deletion of a few buildings in the background, her pose forms a near-perfect mirrored image of Andrew Wyeth's famous painting Christina's World.

Goofs

 * When Randy is looking at the leper's appointment book he notes that last New Year's Eve, he played a private party for Mandy Bronson. December 31, 2005 was a Saturday, but the book shows it as a Sunday. Obviously this is a 2006 appointment book (December 31, 2006 hadn't even occurred yet when this episode aired).
 * During the balloon scene, Adrian's hair is much thicker, a giveaway that he is in fact a stuntman.
 * When Natalie and Monk are arguing about touching a leper, Natalie mentions that she had just kissed a leper and that Monk's handshake was with a fake leper. Monk argues the point, but he seems to overlook a crucial hole: in the first scene at Dr. Polanski's office, Monk shakes Dr. Polanski's hand and doesn't ask for a wipe.
 * As Randy leaves Dr. Polanski's office, you can see that the hole in the wall is gone and most of the pictures are back up. You also see him knocking down some of the pictures twice while prying off his own montage.
 * The struggle to pull the montage off the wall wasn't planned and was only supposed to be a swipe, but the construction crew nailed it on so well that they had to shoot several takes and the crew had to come in to help loosen it before Jason Gray-Stanford was able to pull it off the wall, even then with trouble. The dialogue with Dr. Polanski was shot first and a few of the picture-ripping takes were stitched together, which is why there are continuity issues.