Mr. Monk and Little Monk
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| “Mr. Monk and Little Monk” | |
|---|---|
| Monk episode | |
| Episode no. | Season 4 Episode 8 |
| Guest stars | Grant Rosenmeyer Shane Haboucha |
| Written by | Joe Toplyn |
| Directed by | Robert Singer |
| Production no. | T-2354 |
| Original airdate | August 26, 2005 |
| Episode chronology | |
| ← Previous | Next → |
| "Mr. Monk Goes to a Wedding" | "Mr. Monk and the Secret Santa" |
| List of Monk episodes | |
Mr. Monk and Little Monk is an episode of the USA Network series Monk.
[edit] Plot synopsis
A maid Gladys (Jeannie Epper) is killed when two men break into a house. Her death is an apparent accident, but before she dies she sets off the burglar alarm. Curiously, the men hang around long enough to deface a particular painting with spraypaint. Monk is approached by the homeowner, an old high school friend Sherry Judd (Donna Bullock), who was introduced to Monk's detective skills back in junior high school.
During the course of Monk's investigation he finds that Sherry's ex-husband (Michael Norfleet, played by David Hunt) pays a hefty $20,000 a month alimony check to her, a palmless set of fingerprints he later ties to a pair of men in a biker bar with a detailed layout of the house, and the local art restorer (Sherry takes her painting to be restored) is an old high school sweetheart of Sherry's, James (Brett Cullen) and the two hook up again.
As Monk conducts this investigation, he remembers the investigation he ran back in junior high school that showed the then-younger Sherry (Katelyn Pippy) his skills. Leo (Kevin G. Schmidt), a school bully, steals a cupcake from a bake sale Monk (Grant Rosenmeyer) and Sherry run, and he gets busted by the principal when Sherry turns him in. Soon after, acting on an anonymous tip, the principal searches Sherry's locker after the bake sale proceeds go missing and finds the empty cash container but no cash. Monk is convinced Sherry wouldn't have robbed her own bake sale, and conducts an investigation. After finding several clues (cupcake icing fingerprints on an unused bake sale box, the bully mysteriously helping Sherry with her books after she turns him in, her locker lock being set to an abnormal position) Monk reveals his findings to the principal.
Both reveals coincide at the end of the episode, tied together by the number zero. When the husband was writing the alimony check Monk noted he wrote his zeroes in an odd style that also appeared on the house floorplan on the bikers. Monk eventually deduced that Norfleet had hired the two bikers to deface the painting in a complex plan to escape his alimony payments. Norfleet knew Sherry still held feelings for her high school boyfriend James (she told him about him while they were married) and discovered he was the local (and best) art restorer. So he told the bikers to deface a particular painting that was dear enough to Sherry he knew she would have it restored. He hoped she would realize the restorer was James, their old flame would rekindle (which did, in fact, happen), they would marry and his alimony payments would stop. Norfleet is confident the theory is too silly to hold him on, but upon discovering the bikers have been apprehended and their fingerprints were found all around the house (so they will be willing to deal on revealing their employer for a lesser sentence) he confesses.
The number zero is key to the high school investigation as well, as Monk knew Sherry always reset her lock to 0 after locking it, but when the principal searched her locker her lock was set to another number. He realized that Leo had stolen the cash box some time after stealing the cupcakes (hiding it in a cake box to avoid detection, leaving the creamy fingerprints behind on other boxes), then claimed to help Sherry with her books so he could switch her open lock with his own (to which he knew the combination). The bully returned later, opened her locker, put the empty cash box in, and switched the locks back again (but he forgot to set the lock back to 0, not knowing Sherry's patterns). Sherry is proven innocent, setting up her faith in Monk to come calling on him when Gladys is murdered in the present.
