Monk: is This Really the Finale?

Last week marked the end of an era. Tony Shalhoub dusted his character's quirky OCD crime-solving skills across my television screen for a final episode as the infamous San Francisco detective Adrian Monk, after a highly successful run of 8 seasons.

Here's what happened.

Cast as a former detective with the San Francisco PD now working privately, Shalhoub's Mr. Monk was a murder-solving machine.

Along with wipe-producing assistant Natalie Teeger, played by Traylor Howard, Adrian continued as a consultant for the police department, lining up clues in neat little rows to crack bizarre and seemingly unsolvable murders in a way that only Mr. Monk could.

Ted Levine (who played serial killer Buffalo Bill in Silence of the Lambs) gave continued stellar performance as Captain Leland Stottlemeyer, Adrian Monk's former partner and later boss at SFPD. Although eventually forced to take the detective's badge when his obsessive-compulsive disorder continued to escalate, Captain Stottlemeyer remained Monk's friend, tolerating his oddball antics as the means to an end in order to hear 'I solved the case'.

So how did the show wrap up?

Adrian was unknowingly getting closer to cracking the murder of his wife, Trudy, 12 years before - the only unsolved case in his career. The murderer hired someone to kill Monk before that could happen, yet even while given 3 days to live after being poisoned, Adrian Monk trudged on, determined to clean up that last case and avenge Trudy's death.

The two-part finale was a cliff-hanger as we watched Monk slowly succumb to the fatal poisoning attempt, but you had to grin as he opened the pills he was given and carefully separated the tiny beads of medication into neat little piles according to color, before ingesting it. Of course Monk did eventually solve the case, which had a number of surprising twists, and the series finale came to a close.

What now? Here's the thing.

Bumbling Lieutenant Randy Disher (played by Jason Gray-Stanford) took a job as police chief in New Jersey after revealing he'd been having a secret long-distance romance with Adrian's former assistant, Sharona Fleming. Natalie's daughter, Julie, is headed off to college, while hints were dropped that Natalie may soon be tying the knot with a Navy officer beau. And ever-patient Dr Bell is probably taking a well-deserved vacation, far away from personality disorders.

Adrian? He's finally free after seeing justice served in Trudy's murder, and is now happily tagging along after a surprise new character that was introduced into his life.

I watched that final episode with mixed emotions, wanting to know what really happened to Trudy, yet not ready to accept the finality of it all.

It was a blessing.
And a curse.

Source:
http://www.usanetwork.com/series/monk/index.html