MovieChat Forums > Monk (2002) Discussion > List of episodes that relied on inaccura...

List of episodes that relied on inaccuracy/had obvious plot hole


As much as I love the show I´ve always known that it has fair share of goofs and sometimes plot holes. It was only after reading severel websites (including this one) that I realized how much of them was and sometimes, the mistake was pretty critical to the overal plot. Without any intention to mock it, I´ll try to list them all. Sorry in advance for the long list. Spoilers obviously:

1. Mr. Monk and the Earthquake(taken from TV.com): "If phone service to Sharona's house was down as a result of the earthquake, how was Rutherford able to stay connected (or call her back), and how was his wife able to redial the number to see who he called? (Contributed by nelamm.)" (However, this is kinda debatable, as the malfunction could simply kick a little later).

2. Mr. Monk Goes to the Circus: It stretches credibillity how murderess was able to passing her recent injury for an older one.

3.Mr. Monk Meets the Playboy(taken from TV.com): As brilliant as the method of murder seems, it is physically impossible. Due to the fact that magnetic field-lines have to be closed, the force of a magnet decreases dramatically with the distance to the magnet. "Strong enough to lift a car" is always referring to the holding-force on contact with the magnet, but no man-made magnet (except maybe a superconducting magnet from high-energy physics) would be able to deliver a force as strong as shown in this episode over the distance of approximately 1m. The magnet in this episode wouldn't even be able to lift a weight of 1 kg at a distance of more than 5 cm.

4. Mr. Monk Gets Married: I remember discussion on these very forums how stupid was the idea of mixing gold with ink, which would vaporize immidiately.

5.Mr. Monk Goes to Jail: This one is just extremely plagued by supposed inaccarucies about the transplantation processess, inner workings of prison, etc.

6.Mr. Monk and the Game Show: It is commonly cited as naive premise that rigged show as this wouldn´t be noticed earlier, given how usually the strict conditions are.

7.Mr. Monk and the Astronaut: The deed should not be possible so shortly before the launch, considering that astronauts are required stay in isolation.

8.Mr. Monk and the Class Reunion:(taken from IMDB)
Kyle Brooks's plan to kill his wife and then utilize the suicide note she wrote in college never would have worked for a number of reasons. First off, paper ages and the note was written over 25 years ago (and any cop who saw that note would have been able to determine the age of the paper). Secondly, we are to assume that the hotel was booked full that night. As a result, there would have been plenty of people that would have heard Dianne screaming, indicating that her death was not a voluntary thing. Lastly, just before Monk, Natalie, Stottlemeyer and Disher burst into their room, as Kyle is about to push Dianne off the balcony, Kyle is not wearing gloves. Yet he comes into contact with Dianne's clothing, leaving fingerprints and DNA behind in the process. The cops would have found these prints, and would have known that Dianne's death wasn't suicide.

Diane says that she attempted suicide 25 years ago from depression over the recent death of her mother. That her suicide note mentions her dog, dinner with specific friends at a favorite restaurant, and her breaking a window, but not her mother seems highly improbable.

9.Mr. Monk and the Really, Really Dead Guy: The presence of FBI is simply not justified.

10. Mr. Monk and His Biggest Fan: Again, I remeber people here discussing how nobody recognized that animal was dead for days by smelling alone.

11. Mr. Monk and the Rapper(taken from TV Tropes):when Extra Large's limo is blown up, the limo driver is seriously injured and hospitalized in the ICU. The real killer then strangles him a few days later before he can give his statement. In reality, sole eyewitnesses to a homicide investigation tend to be put under police protection on the grounds the killer might try to eliminate loose ends. Had this been done to the limo driver, it would've provided a trap to catch the real killer.

12.Mr. Monk Is Up All Night: As I understand from the various notes, cornea transplants have nothing to do with either Retinitis Pigmentosa nor the eye color.

13. Mr. Monk and the Genius: My personal addition. The ending is dependent on fact that murderer somehow switched the tombstones without anyone noticing.

14. Mr. Monk Is Underwater: Again, the climax, not the entire episode, it is that one with Monk and Natalie being trapped in unaccesible ballast tank.

15. Mr. Monk and the Miracle:The entire thing just doesn´t hold up.

16. Mr. Monk and the Foreign Man (From the Tv Tropes Your Mileage May Vary section): Mr. Monk and the Foreign Man" relies on everyone being a complete idiot, even for the character development Monk gets. The crime in question goes like this: restaurant owner Kenneth Nichols drunk dials a friend of his who happens to be on vacation while he's driving. However, said friend left his cell phone at home, so the housekeeper answered. Nichols runs over a visiting Nigerian woman while he's talking, so he then proceeds to drive over to the friend's house and kill the housekeeper to cover up evidence of vehicular manslaughter. Where it becomes an idiot plot is this: ◦ The fact that Nichols runs over a woman in his delivery van, that has the name of his business "Le Poisson Bleu" on it in great big letters at 8:15 PM, while recklessly driving down a busy street (and under the influence of alcohol) and he thinks nobody is going to notice. More so, he thinks the broken headlight is going to be the dead giveaway, as opposed to, say, the words "La Poisson Bleu" written in big ass letters so conspicuous that even a stoned slacker sees them.
◦ That says nothing of the unseen Sergeant Kramer who was in charge of the hit and run investigation and failed to find that the tire tracks were made by a van or the shattered headlight glass left in the street, or failed to realize that there was a gas station nearby with potential witnesses and security cameras.
◦ Plus the fact that Ansara Waingaya steps into the crosswalk the moment the cross street's light turns red, when common sense dictates that you should look both ways before crossing to make sure that traffic on the cross street actually stops, or at the very least, notices you.

17. Mr. Monk and the Dog: Relies on incorrect information that Australian shepherds have no tails at all.

18. Mr. Monk and the End: For some reason, everything Monk has bought is tested, except the wipes.

Well, that was really long. Any additional thoughts?

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Almost every episode from Season 5, and the stupid lawyer episode from Season 8 that hitched on "guilty evidence" when the murderer accuses a thief of being a thief. Because fan service demands Monk always gets the killer, they had to find a way to make him stupid enough to incriminate himself. The Critic episode reverses this and uses an "anti-alibi" much better.

I...drink...your...MILKSHAKE!

I DRINK IT UP!!!

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Oh and I totally forgot!

Mr. Monk Goes to the Theater: Wouldn´t police want to talk with "the doctor" who has proclaimed mudered one dead as the first?

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I would like to rewatch some because I definitely feel you are on to something and I too have noticed "des ex machina" moments.

I think with the foreign man, your last point about her not looking both ways could be seen as she's foreign and doesn't see cars often, but she had been there for a while, so that too isn't a strong reason.

But in Mr. Monk Paints His Masterpiece, if the villain is willing to pay so much for the canvas (currency paper) as paintings, why not pay an outrageous amount for the canvases with an easier lie~ they belonged to my uncle, here's two thousand dollars for the trouble and replacement ~ or something. But if he was on a time limit (flight), it seems it would be simpler to either rob Monk (he was willing to harm Natalie (can't remember if knife or gun)), overpay for the canvases or since he was a part of the Russian Mob, any other member could have been recruited after the death of the first one. And Monk should have known the canvases were outside and in a junkyard and were on the side of the dirty street earlier.

But you're definitely right; some things are a little too convenient / illogical / unlogical.

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"If phone service to Sharona's house was down as a result of the earthquake, how was Rutherford able to stay connected (or call her back), and how was his wife able to redial the number to see who he called?"


Henry may have phoned Sharona prior to the earthquake, however he didn't phone her after the earth quake. Henry was speaking to Christine prior to being killed. The mistake is how the episode was edited together.

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Mr. Monk and the Girl Who Cries Wolf: There was an obvious solution for Sharona to prove that she wasn't going crazy and seeing things. All she had to do was keep a camera with her and snap a picture.

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Mr. Monk and the Sleeping Suspect (Spoilers coming)

Having worked in the postal system for nearly a decade (starting around 2005), the murder plot seemed implausible. Two problems:

First, the boxes were placed inside mail boxes and 'stuck' to the top. I'm not sure how long this had been in effect, but when I started working, packages over 13oz were required to be received by a postal worker. They could not be dropped off in mailboxes. Having said that, I don't remember if the weight was specified, and, since the episode came out in '03, the rules might have been different then.

Second, more implausible: Postal workers do actually check up top in those mailboxes because letters regularly get stuck up there. The plan was dependent on the box not being found early. It would only work if the driver who checked that box didn't look above.

Not sure if either of those make the episode impossible, but they did make it harder for me to swallow.

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Great post.

Mr. Monk and the Genius is an episode that always bothered me. Beginning when they are showing a chess match on TV, come on. The scene in the driveway when he brings them refreshments, I was expecting someone to put a banana in the tail pipe.

Forget about someone not seeing him switch the tombstones, what are the odds of the switched headstone being a woman of the same age and has died at the same time. Plus you would think when they did the autopsy, they would have her medical and dental records to conform it was her. And lastly when they go to exhume the body, they would have a location like row 8, 3rd plot in or something that.

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don't forget to see the show like a tvshow,and not with the critic-eyes of a detective!:)

the tombstone switch,for example, is awesome and cinematically persuasive (i dont know if in english exists this word,sorrry i'm italian) and i think,also, that episode was really good.

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12.Mr. Monk Is Up All Night: As I understand from the various notes, cornea transplants have nothing to do with either Retinitis Pigmentosa nor the eye color.


First, thanks for posting this thread!

I'm a software engineer, not any kind of eye professional, but I spotted this double error immediately, and had a hard time focussing on the plot because of the distraction. Retinitis pigmentosa is (as the name implies) a disease of the retina, which is inside the eyeball at the very back. A corneal transplant replaces the cornea, which is on the outside of the eyeball at the very front. So it's about like, oh, fixing a brain aneurysm by getting a nose job. They should have used a condition of the cornea instead, probably a serious injury of some sort.

And even though the iris (the part of the eye that's blue, brown, etc.) is at the front, it's not part of the cornea either. At least they acknowledged (somewhere in the DVD features?) that the eye-color change wasn't realistic. In which case why not just -- don't do it?

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Good posts. But I still love this show! I never thought too deeply about some of the implausible situations.

There's one scene though that jumped out for me. I think it was Monk and the Treasure Map.. Monk was helping Dr. Kroger's son Troy and his friends locate a buried treasure. Actually they lied and said it was for extra credit for a book report. They thought it was buried cash from a bank robbery.
Monk was acting in his usual quirky Monk way. The doctor's son thanks him for his help and says that he's just like his father said, not just the odd behavior stuff.

A big NO NO! Monk was his father's patient and it would have been totally unethical for him to discuss a patient with his family (or anyone else). There are even a few instances when Dr. Kroger says that he "can't discuss" a patient, like the times Monk had arguments with his rival for the Doc's affection, Harold Krenshaw.

Also, Troy and his friends appear at Monk's home to ask for his help. How did they know where he lived? It was a serious breech of his privacy. Dr. Kroger was upset with Monk for showing up at HIS home and told Monk it was inappropriate.
As OCD as Monk was, you think he would've asked Dr. Kroger how his son knew so much about him! Of course at the time Monk was preoccupied with winning the "favorite patient" award he was competing for with Harold Krenshaw.

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