User:Kevinbrogers/Sandbox/Monk articles/Mr. Monk and His Biggest Fan

"Mr. Monk and His Biggest Fan" is the first episode of the sixth season of Monk, and the 77th episode overall.

Plot
At her house in the suburbs, Marci Maven (Sarah Silverman) is doing work on her fansite devoted to Adrian Monk. We see her open to a photo of Monk with Natalie from the episode "Mr. Monk and the Actor." She proceeds to photoshop her own head onto Natalie's body while reformatting the home page.

Across the street, John Ringel (John Mese) and his brother Brian (Martin Taylor) come back from a jog, and look for Debbie, John's wife. Ringel mentions that she should be out back doing gardening, and when they go into the shed, they find her on the floor, mauled to death by a dog. Marci receives a knock at the door, and two police officers and Ringel are waiting on the porch. The cops ask Marci if she has a dog named Otto, whom Ringel accuses of killing his wife. They ask to see Otto as they will have to take him in. Marci obliges, and she shows them Otto, or, more exactly, his grave.

A short time later, Natalie approaches Monk and suggests that he participate in the San Francisco Police Department's Bachelor Auction, on the grounds that it might help improve his odds of getting reinstated. Monk reluctantly agrees, as Natalie promises to bid for him. Marci shows up at the door trying to see Monk. However, Natalie is able to shoo Marci away, noting that the last time she came to Monk, she tried to drive him all the way to Corpus Christi.

At the Bachelor Auction, Captain Stottlemeyer is up for the bid. Many of the women in the crowd bid for him, but he ends up being won by Linda Fusco, his realtor girlfriend. When Lieutenant Disher goes up for bidding, he is won by another woman whose 9 year old son wants to be a cop. At last, it's Monk's turn. He goes up on stage, but no one is bidding for him... until Marci shows up and starts bidding for him. Suddenly there is a bidding match between Natalie and Marci, and Marci utlimately ends up winning Monk for six hours of her time.

When Monk and Natalie show up at Marci's house the next day, they are unsettled at Marci's obsession with Monk. For instance, she offers them square cookies, and her house is full of odds-and-ends that Monk has thrown out. She's even got a diorama depicting the carjacking scene from the episode "Mr. Monk and the Three Pies" (which depicts Natalie as a troll doll), and is writing a song about Monk on her guitar (she even performs an excerpt of it). Midway through performing her new piece, Monk interrupts, eager to check out the case.

Marci mentions to Monk that her dog Otto died three days before Debbie Ringel had been attacked, but the police have done impressions and found that the bite marks of Otto's teeth match the wounds on the body. Talking with Stottlemeyer on the phone, Monk learns that Animal Control warned Marci about Otto's aggressive behavior twice and Stottlemeyer suggests that Marci had her dog euthanized to avoid manslaughter charges.

Monk, Natalie and Marci head across the street to Ringel's house, and look inside his shed. Monk notices the first hole in the official police story - why did Debbie never grab any of the tools in the shed to defend herself? He also finds a bit of a dead tulip on a shovel. Just then, Ringel comes out and he is quick to confront Marci about her being on his property. She warns him that if he did in fact kill his wife, he's in big trouble. Natalie and Monk are quick to pull Marci away from Ringel before things get ugly. As they are leaving, however, Monk notices that the piece of dead tulip seems to come from a flowerbed on the other side of the fence from Ringel's lawn. He notes that although the cops say Otto dug the hole under the fence, it's odd that he didn't kick up any dirt while digging from Ringel's end, suggesting that Ringel might have dug it himself.

Returning to Marci's house, Monk is convinced that perhaps Marci is not crazy about Ringel killing his wife and framing her dog. He asks her some questions about Otto's movements over the past few weeks, and learns that Otto had died of kidney failure. Asked about any unusual happenings, Marci remembers that two weeks prior to the murder, Otto vanished for an entire day, and then turned up around 6:00 PM that evening covered in woodchips, and it took her several hours to brush him off. Examining the woodchips in the brush that she used, Monk concludes that Otto was in a lumberyard at some point.

The three start checking out lumberyards all over the city, but these leads all turn up empty. Marci impresses Monk with her crisp officiousness. Marci offers to work as Monk's assistant for free, and Monk, always looking for a bargain, briefly considers Marci's offer. Natalie, offended, decides to leave and give Monk a chance to see what working with Marci would really be like.

Finally, as night falls, Monk and Marci come upon the last lumberyard on their list. Monk spots a photo and realizes that it happens to be John Ringel's lumberyard. Very ditzy, Marci admits that she forgot that Ringel owned a lumberyard. Monk rings the bell at the desk for service, and when Ringel shows up, he is infuriated at Marci, and having had enough of them, he decides to call his lawyer and then the police.

While he is doing that, Monk notices some interesting objects around the front desk, including a tub of spackling paste and one of plaster mold. Marci also finds some strands of Otto's hair and some scratch marks on a chair. With this, Monk solves the case. After being pressured by Marci to say his famous phrase that he uses to begin summations, he says "Here's what happened."

Here's What Happened
Two weeks earlier, on the day Otto vanished, Ringel abducted him, wrestled him into the back of his van, and drove Otto to his lumberyard. Once there, Ringel drugged Otto and made an impression of his teeth with the plaster mold, with which he built a lethal weapon: a pair of pruning shears with dog's teeth.

Ringel then waited for a day when Debbie was alone to commit the murder. That day, Ringel snuck into the shed, and bludgeoned her with a brick, and then used the pruning shears to create lots of "bite marks" on the body. With perfect bite marks, everyone would assume that Otto had been the killer, but Ringel had made a big mistake - Otto had died three days earlier.

Marci tries to get Monk to repeat the summation, but just then, Ringel shows up, pointing a Walther PPK handgun at them. Monk throws a bucket of nails at Ringel to momentarily stall him while he and Marci escape into the main storage warehouse, and Ringel opens fire on them as they flee.

Meanwhile, Stottlemeyer is out having dinner with Linda, when he sees Linda taking a bite out of a strawberry. He suddenly remembers something and pulls out the case file on Debbie Ringel, and notes that all of the bite marks are upside down. He quickly calls Randy, who is playing Timber (still playing it, having had to do it with his bidder's child due to him not wanting to be a cop), asking him to meet him at Ringel's lumberyard.

At the lumberyard, Ringel has cornered Monk and Marci. Marci finds that one of Ringel's bullets has hit her in the shoulder. She comes out to try to convince Ringel to surrender, but Ringel takes her hostage and calls for Monk to come out. Monk obliges, and Ringels starts walking them out of the place at gunpoint. Just as they are leaving, Natalie, Stottlemeyer and Disher show up. A shootout ensues between Ringel, Stottlemeyer and Disher, while Monk, Natalie and Marci make their escape. Disher methodically uses his newfound Timber skills to choose which wood plank to use. He pushes it, hitting Ringel in the head, revealing his location and allowing them to arrest him.

Later, Monk receives a box from Marci, containing all of the things she received from him. She's been so unsettled by the incident at the lumberyard that she decides to move on from Monk and turn her obsessive attention to actor F. Murray Abraham. When Natalie finds the troll doll, she makes a point to imitate Monk and Marci's exchange while chasing Monk around his apartment.

Additional facts

 * Marci refers to several of Monk's past cases by the actual episode titles, including "Mr. Monk and the Three Pies," "Mr. Monk and the Panic Room," and "Mr. Monk and the Astronaut."
 * Marci last appeared in Season 2's "Mr. Monk and the TV Star." Between the making of that episode and this one, Sarah Silverman's career took off, with the production of her own show. In an interview, Andy Breckman said that there was some doubt among the producers about whether Silverman would be willing to do another guest appearance, but it turned out she was happy to do so.
 * This is Linda Fusco's first appearance in the series since "Mr. Monk, Private Eye." During the episode, she asks Stottlemeyer if it takes killing someone to get his attention, which foreshadows the episode "Mr. Monk and the Bad Girlfriend", where Linda does commit murder.
 * Ironically, Tony Shalhoub and F. Murray Abraham appeared together in the 2001 horror film Thirteen Ghosts, Shalhoub playing the nephew of Abraham's character.
 * Sarah Silverman was nominated for an Emmy for her performance as Marci Maven in this episode.
 * The likely charges that would be filed against Ringel would include - one count of first degree murder (for his wife), two counts of attempted murder (one each for Monk and Marci), one count of assault with a deadly weapon (when one of his bullets goes through Marci's shoulder), and two counts of assault with intent to kill (when he fires on Stottlemeyer and Disher).

Goofs

 * The diorama seen depicts "Mr. Monk and the Three Pies." Some innacuracies are present in this diorama (for instance, Natalie is depicted in the diorama, yet the actual episode aired during the time when Sharona Fleming was Monk's assistant, and Marci didn't meet Monk until the following episode).
 * The basic plot of this episode is that Otto mauled Debbie Ringel to death. According to Stottlemeyer, Otto's bite marks match those on the victim. This leads him to think that Marci put down her dog after the mauling and then buried him before the police arrived, to avoid manslaughter charges. The medical examiner who did the cast impressions of the dead (and buried) dog's jaw should have been able to tell that Otto had been dead, buried and decomposing for three days and not (at most) a couple of hours, and could also have noted that Otto had died of kidney failure, and had not been euthanized.
 * Despite Marci giving up her obsession with Monk in this episode, she seems to have returned to being a fan of him in "Mr. Monk's 100th Case." When interviewed by James Novak (Eric McCormack) for an In Focus documentary on Monk, Marci shows him both a real photo from this episode and also shows the photoshopped picture.