User:DReifGalaxyM31/Mr. Monk and the Rapper

"Mr. Monk and the Rapper" is the second episode of the sixth season of Monk, and the 79th episode overall.

Plot
After a long night of partying, rapper Extra Large (Marcello Thedford) emerges from a building in a back alleyway where a reporter is waiting to ask a few questions. Reluctantly, Extra Large agrees to answer her questions, which include the fact that his rival rapper Murderuss has been saying some threatening things about him. Meanwhile, his limo is making its way across town, and there is a bomb planted on the rear left wheel. When the car arrives, Extra Large gets in, and the car starts to pull away, but has barely gone a few feet when a rigged watch acting as the timer strikes 8:00 AM, causing the car to explode and killing the luckless rapper.

In another part of town, Adrian Monk and Natalie Teeger are trying to set Monk's clocks one hour forward due to Daylight Savings Time going into effect. As usual, Monk is obsessing about the fact that the clock is two seconds off. While he is obsessing over that, Natalie notices that Monk has brought her flowers, but she is upset to find that the note says "Happy Secretary's Day," considering that what she does is much harder than what a secretary would do, so refuses to help him fix the clock. Monk is still fussing over the clock being off, when he receives a visit from none other than Murderuss (Snoop Dogg), a rapper from Manslaughter Records, and his two associates Snake di Assassin and Silent Killa. Murderuss is no stranger to Natalie, who mentions that she's taken all of his records away from her daughter. He would like to hire Monk to clear his name, since he is the primary suspect in Extra Large's death. Being nervous, Monk unwittingly accepts the job.

Monk and Natalie join Captain Stottlemeyer and Lieutenant Disher at the crime scene. Natalie asks Randy about if he thinks Stottlemeyer respects him, and Randy gives her an ambiguous answer. When she tells the Captain about Murderuss's little visit that morning and Monk accepting the job, Stottlemeyer mentions that when Monk gets nervous, he blacks out and sometimes agrees to do stuff without even knowing it. Monk learns that the type of watch utilized as the timer is a white gold pocket watch, and that Murderuss wears just such a watch with him.

Stottlemeyer and Disher take Murderuss in to interrogate him. There is a mountain of evidence against him: it seems he was ticked off by the fact that Extra Large broke off from his label and started recording for Fresh Rhymes Records, another recording label. He also recorded a song on one of his latest labels called "Car Bomb," and that happens to be the way Extra Large was killed in (Murderuss deragatorily calls Randy "white" for his bad rapping abilities when Randy attempts to rap out an excerpt from the song). To make matters worse, the police have recovered a blasting cap. Stottlemeyer tells Murderuss that thanks to the serial number, they know that this particular cap was stolen from a construction site only a half block away from his house. Lastly, the limo driver was with the car all night long, and he's going to survive (currently he's in the intensive care unit).

Watching the interrogation from behind a window, Monk is still convinced that Murderuss might be guilty, but Natalie still thinks he is innocent. Regardless, he continues to investigate. Their next stop is the studio for Fresh Rhymes Records, where they watch a few people auditioning (and Monk has a bit of an argument with one of the auditioneers about word choice in one of the lyrics). They speak to the label's heads, Denny Hodges and Woody Mitchum. They mention that Extra Large had just moved to this label, and they had high hopes for him. In fact, they even remember where they were that morning: they were at their breakfast meeting, and Woody was late, and when he showed up, Denny was halfway through and there was no place setting for him.

Hodges mentions that he saw someone fitting Murderuss's description the night before the bombing in a parking garage, yet it was also very dark so he couldn't make out the man in question. While Monk holds his opinion, Natalie has a hunch, and she finds it odd that Hodges happened to see someone in that parking garage, and thinks Hodges is the killer. Monk dismisses her, noting that Extra Large was Hodges's meal ticket, and he had high hopes for his star. Their next step is to talk to the limo driver, who is out of intensive care now from the severe injuries of the explosion. That night, a mysterious man goes to the hospital and strangles the luckless limo driver to death. A white gold chain is found to be the murder weapon, and the footprint found matches a special edition shoe of the kind Murderuss wears.

Monk wants to now back out of the contract, but can't muster himself enough courage to do so. He and Stottlemeyer go to Murderuss's house to try to handle it. Being a cop, Stottlemeyer is kept in the entry hall and when Monk is about to opt out of the contract, he blacks out so he's still in.

With Murderuss about to be indicted and arrested, Monk packs his belongings and plans to escape from town with some plan in mind like buying a rail pass to make his way through Asia. Natalie once more brings up her suspicion on Hodges and him happening to see Murderuss in the parking garage at 7:00 PM that night, and Monk, looking at an analog alarm clock, suddenly realizes that the bomb missed its mark by a good hour due to Daylight Savings Time.

Here's What Happened
At a tribute concert for Extra Large, Hodges is giving a eulogy on his deceased star. Outside, Stottlemeyer formally apologizes to Murderuss for his accusations. Monk provides Murderuss with a summation. The crowd boos Monk when he comes on stage, but Murderuss quickly takes over and starts rapping out the summation:

It was not Extra Large who was the target of the bombing, but rather Woody Mitchum, Hodges' business partner, whom Hodges had decided to kill rather than try to split their profits. He planted the bomb that night, planning for it to go off when Woody was in the limo, but forgot Daylight Savings Time, so the bomb missed its mark by an hour and instead blew up Fresh Rhymes's biggest star instead. This summation does explain why when Woody showed up at the hotel for the breakfast meeting with Hodges, he didn't have a place setting: it was because Hodges had assumed that he was already dead. Hodges later killed the limo driver because he feared that the limo driver might have seen him fleeing.

Hodges, hearing this, tries to run, but runs into Stottlemeyer. He says that they can't prove any of this, but Stottlemeyer presents him with a search warrant, telling him that they've just found his little bomb factory in his basement.

Afterwards, while leaving out a back route, Murderuss invites Monk to be his security chief on his 27 stop tour. Monk declines, but this time, he remembers declining the offer, as he has his own work to do.

Additional information

 * Rap subculture is heavily predominant in the episode:
 * "It's a Jungle out There", the show's theme song, is still used in this episode. However, instead of the standard Randy Newman version used in all other episodes, a new version rapped out by Snoop Dogg is utilized instead.
 * When Monk, Natalie, Stottlemeyer and Disher are at the car bombing scene, Disher mentions how Extra Large was notable well before historical rappers like Naz, 50 Cent, Fat Joe, and Jay-Z. Also, the regular music themes are mostly removed from the episode and replaced with rap soundtracks.
 * Murderuss's colleagues are "Snake da Assassin" and "Silent Killa." These names, plus Murderuss's name, are all supposed to be bad puns on standard terms used to describe killers (murderer, assassin, killer, respectively). Their record label's name, Manslaughter Records, is also supposed to reflect this.
 * Monk getting booed on stage and then being quickly interrupted by a performer is similar to a scene in "Mr. Monk Goes to a Rock Concert" where he got heavily booed trying to get the crowd to cooperate.
 * It was a big mistake to leave the limo driver in intensive care without police protection, especially after Stottlemeyer reveals his existence to Murderuss. In fact, all things considered, this would be a good setup to catch the killer: post police at the victim's hospital room.
 * Unlike with some other episodes, when the episode is set is made clearer by the fact that the bombing is shown to have happened the day Daylight Savings Time begins. Because the episode was produced and aired in 2007, it could be assumed that the events in the episode happen over the weekend of March 10-11 and the subsequent week.

Production
Much of the episode was filmed on the Universal Studios Backlot in Hollywood, California. A soundstage can be briefly spotted in the opening scene (near the back street where the bomb explodes), as well as the edge of a facade. NBC-Universal also owns USA Network, on which Monk aired, so many scenes from the series were filmed at Universal Studios.