Mr. Monk and the Panic Room
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| “Mr. Monk and the Panic Room” | |
|---|---|
| Monk episode | |
| Episode no. | Season 3 Episode 2 |
| Guest stars | Carmen Electra |
| Written by | Andy Breckman |
| Directed by | Jerry Levine |
| Production no. | T-2102 |
| Original airdate | June 24, 2004 |
| Episode chronology | |
| ← Previous | Next → |
| "Mr. Monk Takes Manhattan" | "Mr. Monk and the Blackout" |
| List of Monk episodes | |
"Mr. Monk and the Panic Room" is the 31st episode of the USA Network series Monk and the second episode in the 3rd season.
[edit] Plot Synopsis
The episode starts out in the home of record producer named Ian Blackburn who is married to the performer Chloe (Played by guest star Carmen Electra). An alarm goes off, and the man takes his pet chimpanzee to a panic room, a security room that can be opened and closed only from the inside and that has enough supplies for a person to hide in for a week. When the police arrive, they use a welding torch to cut a hole in the door and find Blackburn dead in the panic room. His pet chimp, Darwin, is standing over him with a gun.
Adrian Monk is called in. He looks around the house and can't come up with a theory. Captain Leland Stottlemeyer shows Monk the panic room. Inside, Monk hits the locking mechanism and is trapped inside. Although Stottlemeyer is able to talk to Monk through the hole in the door, Monk panics and screams for help. He yells for someone to open the door because he is running out of air. Stottlemeyer tries to explain to Monk that the release button is right in front of him. After Monk continues panicking, Stottlemeyer reaches inside and presses the unlocking button. When Monk exits the panic room, he and Sharona Fleming learn that Animal Control is going to take Darwin to put him to sleep.
First, though, Darwin is taken to the police station, where Stottlemeyer attempts to have him pull the trigger of an unloaded gun. He locks himself in the interrogation room with Darwin and tells everyone else to leave them alone. Stottlemeyer puts on a hat and plays the cymbals to antagonize Darwin into pulling the trigger. Lieutenant Randy Disher realizes that he gave Stottlemeyer the wrong gun; the captain accidentally was given a loaded weapon. When he tries to warn Stottlemeyer, he is told to go away. In the observation room for the interrogation chamber (on the other side of the two way mirror), Disher knocks on the window to get Stottlemeyer to listen to him. Seconds later, the window is shattered by a bullet. The fact that Darwin was able to fire the gun convinces Stottlemeyer that the chimp was the murderer. He says that Darwin will have to be put to sleep.
Sharona and Monk speak to the man who built and installed the panic room, Kurt Wolff. He doesn't give Monk any enlightening information. Later, Monk and Sharona talk to Blackburn's wife, Chloe.
In the middle of the night, Sharona kidnaps Darwin and lies to Stottlemeyer when he questions her about it. He says that there is surveillance video of her car leaving the Animal Control building. She admits to kidnapping Darwin but refuses to tells Stottlemeyer where she has hidden him. Lt. Disher puts her in handcuffs, but when Benjy walks into the room, Stottlemeyer tells him they were just playing around and orders Disher to take the handcuffs off. Sharona is brought to the station.
Monk walks into his apartment and finds Darwin in it, tearing it apart. He is throwing plates and hanging from lamps. Monk calls Doctor Charles Kroger, who arrives shortly thereafter. He congratulates Monk for handling the situation as well as he is. When the landlord comes in, Darwin begins jumping around excitedly. When the bald landlord puts on his hat, Darwin calms down. Monk realizes that he was excited when the bald Animal Control worker was putting him into a cage, and that Darwin is afraid of bald men because the killer was bald. This makes him smile because he has solved the case.
He deduces that Kurt Wolff fell in love with Chloe and built a secret entrance to the panic room. On the night of the murder, he set off the alarm only to go off inside the house and waited for Blackburn to go into the panic room. He had planned to shoot the man in the head and make it look like a suicide. But unexpectedly, Darwin attacked him and he ended up shooting Blackburn four times, twice of those in the back. Realizing that his suicide idea wouldn't work, Wolff gives the gun to Darwin, locks the panic room door, and leaves through the secret entrance. He then makes the house appear to have been burglarized so that the alarm would go off and the police would come. This would give the Blackburn a reason to be locked in the panic room.
Wolff is arrested and the episode ends with Darwin being put into the San Francisco Zoo. Monk and Sharona are given lifetime passes to visit.
