I can't explain why, but I really get angry at the bad guys on Monk. On the latest episode, Mr. Monk and the Dog, the bad guy (played by Wallace Langham of CSI:Las Vegas fame) really got my blood boiling. After he tried to run Monk and the dog over, I was ready to take batting practice on his knee caps (Tanya Harding taught me well! ).

From watching previous episodes I knew that Monk still has a handgun in his house. When the bad guy broke into his house to kill the dog, Monk surprised him by turning on the light. I was kind of hoping he had his pistol and was going to administer a little street justice! In California if someone breaks into your house they are fair game! Unfortunately Monk just talked him into giving him the knife. I was shocked that Monk then laid the knife down on the coffee table, within easy reach of the bad guy and then turned his back on the bad guy! That just wasn't a smart thing to do!

I think that it's probably because they are EVIL ....so it kind of sets the tone for them being unlikeable. Now on Monk it's always pretty black and white. Bad guys do bad things because they are selfish, greedy or just plain mean. But sometimes you get a loveable "bad guy" ....one who is charming or has a complete rationalization for why they did something evil. If you ever see one of those guys you can be pretty sure your watching Law and Order where McCoy has a moral quandry over how hard he should prosecute someone.....cause that ain't a Monk episode Biff!

But I agree ...Monk needs to have better survival instincts then to turn his back on someone when there's a weapon in reach. Natalie would scold him....Sharona would cold cock the bad guy......only Monk would let someone into his house brandishing a weapon then disarm him with a rendition of "here's what happened"

I don't think we're supposed to like the bad guys. For one thing, they are bad guys. But more importantly, I think it's for the sake of entertainment value. The more unlikable the bad guy is, the more important it is to us for Adrian to beat him.

It's basically like the WWE without spandex.

Yeah, he probably shouldn't have turned his back on the guy, but I think that was supposed to be to show us that he truly felt that the guy wasn't all that evil. In the real world, no one with any survival instincts would have done that, and in fact, if that guy had broken into my home to try to kill my dogs- or even if he just broke in without the intent to kill anything- then I'd probably have done my level best to maim or kill him without giving him a chance to explain. If he broke into my house, in my opinion, he's pretty much insane anyway. But I think that's pretty much the law everywhere, that if someone breaks into your home, you are well within your rights to shoot them, hit them or do whatever you have to to protect yourself and your property.

I don't know if you'd call her lovable, but at the very least, I thought she was likable- Wendy Mass in Red Headed Stranger. I felt a lot more sympathy for the killer than for the 'victim' in that episode. As far as I'm concerned, Sonny Cross was the original killer in that one.

I'd have felt a lot more sympathy for her if she hadn't deliberately tried to frame Willie Nelson for her crime. She didn't have to pick him out of the line up. That was just cold.

Other than that I think I've only felt sympathetic towards Leyla's mother in "Mr. Monk Falls in Love" and for a lot less reason Jack Leverett (Greg Grunberg) in "Mr. Monk and the Actor". Sure, he killed a couple of people, but the first one was an accident and the second one wasn't planned either. He was so confused when he was confronted with two Monks that I just felt a little sorry for him. I also felt some sympathy for the Trudy look alike who killed Zach Ellinghouse accidentally and, of course, Natalie killed that guy in her first episode. That was justifiable homicide.

All very excellent examples. Yeah, definitely, Natalie is by far the most sympathetic killer on the series, ever! But yeah, Jack Leverette, you had to feel pretty bad for the guy, handcuffed to a car while two Monks argued over whether to kill him or not, then used the gun to try to fix a sticker and fought over the gun. He knew from experience that people can accidentally get shot when they are fighting over a gun.

Leyla's mother, yes, she comes in a close second to Natalie, but only because we didn't know her, and the guy she killed wasn't posing an immediate threat to anyone. But I still would have probably killed him myself.

The fake Trudy, I feel bad for, because it was an accident, and she felt so horrible for the way it affected Adrian to see her dressed as his dead wife. Besides, she was the same actress that plays Trudy, so it's kind of hard to have any hard feelings for her.

Wendy Mass- I guess she could have just chosen someone else in the lineup, so they wouldn't have a case against Willie Nelson. Willie seemed to take it well. I wonder if Adrian got a contact high from standing too close to Willie Nelson?
ADRIAN: Thanks for playing that song for Trudy.
WILLIE: My pleasure. So what now?
ADRIAN:... I think I want nachoes. And donuts. Oh, and ice cream!

Great job ladies on expanding on what I thought was a silly/frivilous line of reasoning on my part......I knew I could count on you both to back up my play! It's great to have someone in your life that no matter what kind of ridiculous hypothesis you speculate can find examples to prove your point!

Now I know that probably wasn't your intent....but let me have my benign delusion about your motives.

Hey Wolf, Happy Belated Birthday, you crazy old Scorpio you!

That's why God created the Glock 17!

And Rottweilers, for those of us who aren't comfortable having a gun in their home.

If it was just me and my husband, it wouldn't worry me so much, but a Rottweiler will recognize your teenager trying to sneak in after curfew while a gun won't.

Oddly enough, I don't have a Rottweiler either. But no one knows what I have in here and most people are afraid to find out.

Liv I'm afraid and I don't live anywhere near you!

Biff thx for the belated birthday message....the good news is that I'm always open to recieve cash bday presents pretty much 365 days of the year .....so it's never too late to pay homage to the "old crazy guy"

Cash? What's that? Don't you have a PayPal account like everyone else?

No Glock, No Rottweiler????? Where do you live Disneyland? Now you're making me feel guilty about my Doberman, shotguns, handguns and semi-automatic rifles.

I have also noticed, how unsympathetic the villians mostly are in Monk. It is definitely not the purpose, that we could identify to them, but to Monk, who is the hero of the show, and to Leland, Randy, Natalie and Sharona. The most unpleasent guy/gal is usually the murderer, so the quilty one is not always a butler....
I like, when the most interesting person in the serie is the good guy, because I feel myself uncomfortable, if the bad guy is likeable. I feel Dexter extremely confusing serie, and don´t want to watch it.

Natalie is really a killer, but that fact isn´t mentioned after Red Herring. It surely was a situation, that she has no choice. But I think, that you are not allowed to kill someone in Finland, if this person breaks to your home. If someone is threaten your life, you have right to defend yourself, even kill this person, but you go to court. Oe woman kill a man, who tried to rape her and I think, that she went to jail because of that, but i am not sure now. So you can defend yourself, but you are not safe from a judgment because of that.

I felt sorry for Leyla´s mother, when Monk catched her and took to a police. I hope, that she didn´t get a hard punishment. Of course Monk is a man of justice and he hadn´t a choice, but still I hoped, that the murderer would have been someone else. She is an expectation for the law of bad guys are not nice guys -law.....But the writers had to make the relationship between Leyla and Monk to end somehow, and they made it that way.

Monk seemed to be really confident, that the intruder doesn´t kill him.He was really calm with him. Maybe he was so, because there was the dog´s life on stage. It has happened often, that he is very capable to defend himself and his friends, when it is needed. As in Your Service and in Stays in Bed. We should not forget, that he is a trained policeman. So he knew, how to use guns, how to defend oneself and how to act with a armed villian. He is a really monkish hero.

No, but good guess. I live in the Left Armpit of Hell, though if you put that on a postcard to me, it probably won't get delivered. We used to be known as The Land Of You Can't Get It Here, but since internet shopping has become available, we had to consider a name change.

Seriously, though, I live in central Mississippi, on the outskirts of a rather small, rural town. We have a few murders here and there, but they almost always happen down town or in the streets surrounding it, an area of about 1.5 square miles. Out in the more rural areas like where I live, usually the most common crimes (in order of severity) are someone poisoning your dog, stealing your tools or gas from your car, or stealing vegetables from your garden.

I like the town my grandmother lives in, about 10 or 15 minutes from here. It consists of a church and three or four houses, which works out to about 8 maybe 9 people.

But you shouldn't feel guilty! Dogs are great to have, even if they are for protection, and unless you are a felon, there's nothing wrong with you owning a gun. Beside, most people here own guns, I'm really the odd one. There are probably more guns here than people, and when I was in school, it was a requirement for us to learn how to safely carry, clean and shoot a gun. We were tested for accuracy on the football field using BB guns. I was pretty good. I still have my hunter's safety patch.

Maybe that's why there is so little violent crime here, come to think of it.

Adrianna, you need to move to the US. In fact, you should move to the south-eastern region of the US. 'He needed killing,' is said to be an arguable defense, here. Plus we have this kind of vine here called kudzu (originally from Korea) that grows really fast and thick and covers large portions of land unbelievably fast, it makes for an excellent place to hide a body. Most people won't go into it, and if they do, it's so hard to move through it that they'd have to have a really, REALLY good reason to do it, like if their favorite hunting dog went in and got tangled up in it.



Leyla's mother- I agree. I honestly think she should have been given an award, and maybe in her home country she would have. That was a perfect example of the 'He needed killing' defense. Too bad she killed him in San Francisco and not Mississippi.

We don´t have checks in Finland, but I promise to send you one, as soon as we get them. But it won´t happen soon.....and I don´t have dollars either, so I will send you all Penquin dollars I have!




I live in Finland, and I don´t have either rifles, rottweilers or dobermans, only two wild cats!

You need attack rats!!

My daughter put our smallest dwarf rat on my drawing table to get a little exercise, but instead of staying there, she ran across the table and made a flying leap for me, landed on my chest and ran up to my collar so she could hide in my shirt. It was so unexpected that when my daughter could pick herself up off the floor and stop laughing enough to breathe, she said the look on my face was priceless. She said I looked like I should be screaming, "Attack rat!! It's going for my throat!!"

This same little rat, if she gets startled badly enough will run up my arm and run really fast laps around my neck, like a little black and white blurry necklace.

Penguin dollars are acceptable.....as long as they're not counterfit!

Thank you for an invitation.

In fact it is very unusual in Finland, that someone gets killed, when someone break in to some house. Usually thieves try to find empty homes or summer cottages. But I don´t really had exact information about that...and we have anyway quite mild punishments comparing to USA....But I am not so worried about thieves..Finland is not a very dangerous country in this respect. But it is still quite violence. It is only more usual, that violence is between family members or friends...we are shy people, so we beat, rape and kill only people we know...




Your rat sounds a lively little animal.

I had once a rat. It was grey and very cute. It wasn´t aggressive at all. It came to say hello to me, when I came home like a dog. But it destroyed a lot of textiles. It´s name was Eddie.

You only hurt the ones you love. Willie Nelson is a wise, wise man.




She is. I'm guessing that Eddie wasn't a real pet rat, but one that was more or less feral? Or at least one that didn't live in a cage?

Yes, rats are very hard on textiles. One that we had years ago pulled my curtains through the wire of her cage and ate them, and my current rats chew through rat hammocks so fast that I finally made a really big box full of them so I would be able to put the sewing machine away for a while. Thank goodness it really doesn't take a lot of time or skill to sew a simple pocket hammock. I have been a little envious of them, lately, because I think if I could make one human sized, it would be very cozy and warm. And I wouldn't chew holes in it.

It is cute when they hear something while they are sleeping and they poke their heads out through the holes though. I guess the reason they do it is because they like having windows. My rats are not Mac fans, I guess.

Sorry, Geek humor. I've just discovered Big Bang Theory. Sheldon is like a cross between my bother and my son.

Completely agree. Also, didn't like at the end when Leland mentioned the insinuating circumstances of the case (where she might be let off). Hello.. she murdered someone and tried to frame an innocent person. Regardless of the circumstances, you don't just forget those crimes because you feel sorry for someone.

And it's possible the jury did see it that way in the end. I imagine she did get a reasonable stiff sentence--perhaps 75-100 years--but with the possiblility for parole in a quicker amount of time than for a more cold-blooded killer, and one that would probably have been granted at her first request since it would be quite clear to the parole board she's no longer a threat to anyone else.

Also, because of her disability (she was still legally blind). It would cost more to adequately house her and meet her special needs, she would be at greater risk among the other inmates because she wouldn't be as likely to see an attack coming and would have a harder time defending herself till the guard were able to get there to break it up, and because in spite of the law and that she still killed someone and tried to frame an innocent man, her circumstances and reasons are such that A judge, jury and parole board could sympathize with and since, as you said, she had never done anything illegal before, had the limited ability to kill anyone else and had no reason to ever do it again, there seems little reason to keep her in prison, at least compared to a woman with a history of criminal behavior, who killed someone with very little reason, and who very possibly might kill again, and who wouldn't require special treatment and/or housing. I imagine that the warden and guards wouldn't be thrilled about the idea of the regular inmates having access to her cane so they might be able to use it as a weapon, but at the same time, they can't very well take it away from her and put her in with the general population. They might instead find it much more practical to fit her with an ankle bracelet and keep her under house arrest, or not allow her to go further than the corner grocery store and have someone come by and check up on her every day or so to ensure that she is meeting the requirements of her sentence.