User:DReifGalaxyM31/Mr. Monk and the Very Very Old Man

"Mr. Monk and the Very Very Old Man" is the fifth episode of the second season of Monk, and the 18th episode overall. It introduces Glenne Headly as Karen Stottlemeyer.

Plot summary
Monk and Stottlemeyer become the most mismatched roommates ever as they try to figure out who would kill the oldest man in the world.

Plot synopsis
At the Malden Assisted Living Center, reporters are standing outside the door trying to get in to interview Miles Holling, the oldest man in the world, as it's his 115th birthday. One nurse tells her colleague that they have to work this weekend because it's Miles's birthday. The second nurse is rather unhappy by this, but her friend reminds her that they are talking about the oldest man in the world. Meanwhile, a shadowy security guard walks towards Miles Holling's room. Inside the room, Miles puts on a gramophone record as the security guard enters, and closes the blinds. Miles tells the man that he's obviously not whom his nametag says he is, and the mysterious person promptly throws Miles onto his room's bed and suffocates the luckless man to death with a pillow.

The next morning, Captain Leland Stottlemeyer is talking to someone on the phone about zoning regulations when Lieutenant Disher barges in to inform Stottlemeyer that his wife wants to see him. Leland immediately panicks - as his office is not set up for Karen's visit. Leland tasks Randy with keeping Karen distracted for a few minutes. Leland quickly pulls out several of Karen's gifts, including a special dreamcatcher and a crystal, and a waterfall. Outside, Randy quickly learns that Karen makes unscripted documentaries, and is also pacifist as she recoils when Randy shows her his new gun. Karen eventually gets tired of waiting, and Leland quickly realizes he's forgotten to add water to the waterfall. With no water, he pours coffee into the device to produce a "coffeefall" as Karen comes in.

After they embrace, Karen tells her husband about the death of Miles Holling. She points out that she once made a documentary on the old man, and found out about his death when she went to the retirement center to wish him a happy 115th birthday. Karen also points out that there were several things about Miles's death that make her suspect that there's been foul play:
 * For one thing, Miles was found on the bed, but Karen knows that Miles always slept in a chair because he feared that if he lay down on the bed he would never wake up again.
 * There was a book in Miles's hands, like he'd been reading, but Miles was also nearly blind so he had trouble reading.

For the sake of marital harmony, Leland mentions that he is skeptical - but he promises to call Adrian Monk in and will investigate if Monk thinks there is reason to suspect foul play.

Monk, Sharona and Leland head down to the retirement center, and Monk speaks to the nurse who last saw him. Monk learns that Miles Holling never liked the shades down, and also notes that from the walker's position, Miles couldn't have pulled down the shades at all.

Caught, Monk, Sharona and Stottlemeyer go to the mayor's office in Malden to ask for Miles Holling's body to be exhumed and autopsied (as Monk fusses about where he, Sharona and the Captain are all sitting). The mayor agrees, over the objections of his deputy mayor, Dennis Gammill. While waiting at the cemetary, Stottlemeyer visits the grave of Darren Leveroni, a high-school valedictorian killed five years ago by a hit-and-run driver just a few blocks from his house. Of all Stottlemeyer's cold cases, it is the one that has affected him the most deeply. When one of the gravediggers asks him if the Leveroni homicide was his case, Stottlemeyer touches the gravestone and corrects him gently, "it still is."

Stottlemeyer drops by Monk's apartment to inform him that the medical examiner has determined that Miles Holling was in fact suffocated. Monk figures that Karen has kicked him out of the house - as Leland didn't eat at home and there's a receipt from a burger restaurant nearby. Monk offers him room, and Stottlemeyer is lonely enough to accept. The two men immediately start to clash, but both of them are resolved to make it work, for the sake of their friendship. That night, Monk notices that the killer could only have gotten in through the main room door, as one must have a valid ID to enter. He figures that perhaps there's someone on staff who might be hiding something. Stottlemeyer mentions the Leveroni hit-and-run, and the fact that he always thought someone would come forward and confess (he points out that "the urge to confess" is "a cop's best friend"). Monk quickly drives Stottlemeyer crazy with his obsessive-compulsive antics.

The next day, at Karen's house, Sharona informs Karen about how her husband is staying at Monk's apartment and they're driving each other crazy. Karen hands Sharona her documentary on Miles Holling, saying that Leland has to watch it.

Meanwhile, Stottlemeyer tells Randy about the misfortunes of the previous night as they head to Hiram Holling's house. Stottlemeyer declines Randy's offer to stay with him, noting that Monk thinks he owes him since he was there when Trudy died. When they talk to Hiram, the 83 year old boy mentions that someone was sending threatening phone calls to Miles at all hours of the day and night.

Later that day, Monk comes back to find Stottlemeyer there. Stottlemeyer mentions what he and Randy have learned by talking to Hiram. They've checked the phone records and have only been able to trace the phone calls back to the train station. Monk hands Karen's videotape to Stottlemeyer. Stottlemeyer has placed the phone records plus the employment records from the nursing home on the coffee table. Monk notices something interesting on the timecards - the day of the murder, a security guard by the name of George Rowe checked in and misspelled his name.

Between his marital troubles, the failure to solve the Leveroni homicide, and the fact that "my hippie wife's a better cop than I am," Stottlemeyer is in a deep funk and has no more confidence in his abilities as a detective. He mentions this to Monk as they head to George Rowe's house. Noting that it looks messy inside, they figure that there was a fight in the house recently, and have probable cause to head in. Monk leaps onto one of Rowe's tables when he realizes that one of the man's snakes is missing, and also notices that the feeding schedule only goes up until the end of the previous week. Meanwhile, Stottlemeyer mentions to Monk that he's found the dead body of George Rowe. He's been beaten to death and someone has stolen his security card.

Monk figures that the killer had to be a stranger who'd never been to the house, as the man broke three panels on the door while trying to find where the lock was. Monk's obsessive all-night cleaning eventually drives Stottlemeyer to sleep in his office, where Randy discovers him the next morning. Randy mentions his theory that a serial killer is stalking world record holders, noting an Italian man who made the world's biggest ball of yarn and who was killed several years ago. Stottlemeyer then irritably and sarcastically tells Disher that they might as well warn "the fat twins on the motorcycles" and "the guy with a beard of bees," and tells Randy to get rid of the book.

Meanwhile, Monk and Stottlemeyer are probably the most mismatched roommates in history, and they are soon at each other's throats. After only two days together, Stottlemeyer goes berserk and declares that Monk's late wife, Trudy, deserves to be made a saint by the Vatican, for putting up with Adrian's impossible standards. He begins packing his clothes, declaring that Monk is the world's best marriage counselor: two days with him, and no husband in California would ever complain about his spouse again. He declares that he is going home, to beg his wife's forgiveness and do whatever it takes for her take him back. Monk diffidently reminds him that he must first watch Karen's documentary.

They settle down and watch Miles Holling: The Human Time Machine, Karen's (incredibly bad) documentary on Miles Holling. We see a scene from 1998 where Karen interviews Miles, then 110 years old. Then they get to another scene, at Malden's bicentennial celebration. The Mayor mentions on the tape that one of the highlights of the celebrations is that they are going to bury a time capsule, with copies of the local paper, letters from his staff and family for future generations, and a copy of Miles's autobiography. The mayor then proposes to Miles an offer - if he's still in office in five years, and Miles is still alive in five years, they'll dig up the time capsule and add another chapter to his story. Miles accepts the deal. Watching the tape, Stottlemeyer notices that Gammill chauferred Miles to the events in a rental car. Factoring in the Mayor's offer to Miles about digging up the time capsule, he tells Monk that he's solved the case.

Here's What Happened
Monk and Stottlemeyer go to Malden to talk to Dennis Gammill, and Stottlemeyer tells him about how on December 10, 1998, the day the time capsule was buried, he was driving a rental car. Having seen the tape, Stottlemeyer noticed the tags and thought it was suspicious that Gammill was driving a rental car in the town he's lived in for more than five years, instead of his normal car, a sky-blue Oldsmobile Cutlass sedan. Stottlemeyer mentions then why they are asking these questions: there was a witness to the hit-and-run that killed Darren Leveroni who said he saw a Cutlass sedan of the same color as Gammill's car leaving the scene. Stottlemeyer also points out that he requested a list of registered owners from the DMV that went through Malden's office but without Gammill's name on it. Suspiciously, not too long after the hit-and-run, Gammill joined Alcoholics Anonymous.

Gammill tells them that they have no proof, and gives them a mocking goodbye. Monk and Stottlemeyer leave, disappointed, but as they leave, Monk catches up to Stottlemeyer and grabs his shoulder. They quickly double back to the mayor's office. Monk asks Dennis about his right wrist, and Stottlemeyer rolls back Gammill's sleeve to reveal that there is a snake bite on it. He remembers that there was a snake loose when George Rowe was killed, and the snake bite proves that Gammill has been to Rowe's house. Monk accuses Gammill of both the hit-and-run and Rowe's murder, and asks the Mayor for permission to dig up the time capsule. Gammill is once again reluctant, but the mayor, inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt, goes ahead and gives them their warrant.

As the time capsule is dug up, Monk explains to Gammill that they're going to find the proof that he killed George Rowe to get his security pass, so he could sneak into the nursing home and kill Miles Holling. Monk explains that after the hit-and-run, when Gammill sobered up and realized what he had done, he got rid of his car (hence the rental car), but was so wracked with guilt that he wrote a confession and dropped it into the time capsule, along with all the other letters. But he wasn't expecting the mayor's pledge to dig up the capsule in five years, so he had to make sure Miles didn't see his 115th birthday. At first he tried to scare the old man to death by sending late night phone calls and death threats, but that didn't work, leaving Gammill with no choice but to kill him.

They dig up the personal notes, and find Gammill's note. Stottlemeyer reads the note, in which Gammill says that on December 2, 1998, he killed Darren Leveroni with his car, and prays to God for forgiveness. Disher arrests Gammill on site. Among the letters, meanwhile, Sharona also finds a love letter Karen wrote to Leland, though she didn't mean for him to ever see it. Leland has gained a new appreciation for the importance of his wife's work, while she is touched that he saw, and enjoyed, her movie. They reconcile lovingly, and Stottlemeyer and Monk are equally glad to be rid of each other.

Throughout the episode, Stottlemeyer has been baffled by Monk's insistence on having the coffee table in his study askew, when everything else in his apartment has to be perfectly straight. In the tag, the explanation is given: when Adrian and Trudy lived there, she would often pull the table in to put her feet up, so he could rest his head in her lap.

Additional trivia

 * The exchange between Monk and Stottlemeyer, when Monk wants to know what time Stottlemeyer will be home so he can fix dinner, is a tribute to a particular scene from Neil Simon's celebrated stage play The Odd Couple, which the episode as a whole is a parody of.
 * This episode marks the last "live" appearance of Stellina Ruisch as Trudy Monk; her pictures continue to be seen in Monk's apartment until Melora Hardin replaced Ruisch in Season 3.
 * Bill Erwin, who plays Miles Hollings' son, Hiram, is actually four years older than Patrick Cranshaw, the actor who played Miles.
 * The method where one of the characters solves both a new case as well as a previously cold case in one sweep was later reused in the series finale two parter, "Mr. Monk and the End", and was also used in several other episodes, including "Mr. Monk Goes to a Wedding", "Mr. Monk Buys a House", and "Mr. Monk and the Genius". This method is also utilized in the novel Mr. Monk and the Dirty Cop, published by Lee Goldberg in 2009.
 * George Rowe's pet snakes were named "Larry, Moe, and Curly", which were the names of The Three Stooges.