In the episode, "Mr. Monk and the Panic Room", Monk had to secretly hide the monkey, Darwin, in his apartment, so the police would not take him away because he supposedly was the main suspect for the murder. However, Sharona later offers Monk to help clean the mess in his apartment from what the monkey left, but Monk screams that he doesn't need help because he has 17 maids on the scene.

Question

Since when does Monk use odd numbers like 17 when he has always been about even numbers like 10 or 100?

Anyone remember this episode.

I thought the same thing! I don't know why they chose that number... You'd think someone would have caught it. Maybe thats all the maids he could find, but he would have asked for 16 in stead of 17. Maybe it was so dirty and all he cared about was to make sure everything he chewed or peed on got disinfected. I can't remember what season the epi was from, maybe it was before they started to amplify his even number quirk? Maybe it was late in the day and the writters just wanted to go home.

It was the second episode of the third season. And really, the 17 maids thing is very minor in contrast to how many other things in this episode didn't make a lot of sense, like why they didn't do a powder test on the chimp's hands, or why anyone would think that a chimp would not only fire the gun more than once, but would actually be holding the thing when the cops got into the room. I could believe a chimp could fire a gun once, and maybe even hit someone by accident, but not fire it several times in quick succession, and hit what would have obviously been a moving target several times, and then still be holding the gun when the cops got there. The noise of the gun would have been equally traumatizing for him as seeing the man he saw as his parent get killed. If he was going to panic everytime he saw a bald headed man, I would think he'd do the same everytime he saw anything that resembled a gun.

The episode had it's funny moments, and I can like it for those, even if I'm not very fond of people keeping primates as pets, and even with the plot holes in it. Just that I guess the things that I mentioned above stood out so much more to me that the fact that he hired 17 maids didn't seem like much worth noting. Maybe the 17 were all he could get on short notice, or maybe he couldn't fit more than 17 into his apartment without them getting in each other's way. Maybe he didn't care if it was in uneven number when compared to the amount of destruction left behind by Darwin.

I think maybe is the number of people that he can hire at that time.

Maybe he just want his house clean ASAP ?

Maybe sharona recruit then only let him know ?

So he has no choice ? Maybe ?

I wondered the same thing the first time I saw that, and every other time since then for that matter. You would think someone would have caught that.

I don't know if I would consider it a mistake. I can see a couple scenarios where Monk would bring in 17 maids.

First, he calls to hire maids, and the guys asks how many he wants. He says "all of them."

Secondly, Monk has demonstrated on a couple different occasions that all his phobias and compulsions are not equal. For example, he jumps on a table even though he is afraid of heights because he is more afraid of snakes.

Perhaps his compulsive need to have a clean apartment trumped his need for even numbers.

It may have been a hyperbole (sp), an exaderation, he has odd numbers in other senerios as well, 3 of things mainly. The one he uses, the backup and the backup for the backup. That one is not one of my favorites. although 2 of my many favorite lines come from that show. "Jail goo!" and "This is worse than jail goo!"