Mr. Monk Goes Back to School

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“Mr. Monk Goes Back to School”

Monk episode

Episode no.

Season 2
Episode 1

Written by

David Breckman &
Rick Kronberg

Directed by

Randy Zisk

Guest stars

Andrew McCarthy
Rosalind Chao
David Rasche
Bob Brewer

Production no.

T-1401

Original airdate

June 20, 2003

Episode chronology
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"Mr. Monk and the Airplane"	"Mr. Monk Goes to Mexico"

List of Monk episodes

Mr. Monk Goes Back to School is the 13th episode in the popular USA Network T.V. series Monk. The episode was the first in the second season. The episode guest stars Andrew McCarthy as science teacher Derek Philby.

[edit] Plot Synopsis

English teacher Beth Landow is pregnant and her lover Derek Philby does not want to leave his wife. Beth threatens to bring their affair out into the open. He promises to tell his wife, but the next day, Beth plummets from the clock tower of the private school where Beth and Derek teach to her death falling onto the top of a car, whose car alarm begins to wail, drawing the attention of students who were taking the SATs. Derek is proctoring the SATs at the time and his presence in the classroom can be confirmed by the students in the room. The private school was where Trudy went and the headmaster was one of Trudy's old friends. She believes there is more to it than meets the eye. The police are happy to rule Beth's death as a suicide, but evidence convinces Monk otherwise. Monk zeroes in on Derek Philby, a popular science teacher, who just accepted the job of headmaster at another private school in Marin County north of San Francisco because Monk sees the imprint of a wedding ring in Derek's wallet, which tells Monk that Philby was cheating on his wife. Monk deduces that Philby was having an affair with Beth, which would have ruined his marriage and credibility and possibly costing him the post as the headmaster in Marin County, thus giving Philby a motive. However Philby has an airtight alibi: he was proctoring SATs at the time.

Monk shows his obsessive compulsive behavior in a chess game with Sharona before going to the private school where Beth died. Later Monk volunteers as a substitute teacher where he behaves in a ridiculously protracted obsessive compulsive writing and rewriting his name on the board leading to a student creating an incident in which Monk accidentally becomes the enemy of a gym teacher - the boy's father (David Rasche). The gym teacher bullies Shirona and Monk and threatens violence but Monk doesn't understand what the bully is saying. Later, while talking with some students in the cafeteria, Monk learns that Philby showed no surprise at Beth's death. In fact Philby's can barely disguise his smugness when Monk questions him. Like most suspects who have covered their tracks he thinks Monk is a joke, which he learns to his dismay otherwise. Monk also wonders why Philby left his car alarm on, but left his car unlocked.

That night the groundskeeper is killed, apparently in an accident, while trying to light the fireplace while having accidentally left the gas on. Monk thinks otherwise, and that he was also murdered -- by Philby. He confronts him with the knowledge that Beth was pregnant and that he was the father. Unfortunately there is no proof because she was cremated.

Monk then tells Philby that the police will search every square inch of the campus to find Beth Landow's glasses which were missing. Everyone knows she wore glasses but when the body was found the glasses were nowhere near the body. The parking lot where she fell was open and the shattered glasses must have been nearby but nobody found them.

That night Philby is ambushed by the police and Monk while leaving the clock tower with Beth's glasses. At that point, Monk tells Philby that he knows that Philby was the killer. Philby says there is no proof. Monk says that the proof is in your hands, i.e. Beth's glasses. Philby insists that he just found the glasses at the clock tower where she supposedly jumped. Monk says that he had found the glasses earlier that day and put them back where he found them. Monk says that only Beth's killer would have known to look for the glasses by the actual clock, so Philby must have been the killer. Monk indicates what happened. He says Philby killed Beth atop the clock tower probably with a rebar or crowbar, took her dead body to near the clock gears, then placed the body on the minute hand (then horizontal, as it was 08:15). Gravity did the rest, with the body slipping off the minute hand at 08:25 during the examination so that Philby could not have pushed the body from the tower at that time. He made sure to place his car with the doors unlocked right where he knew the body would land to establish his alibi.

Philby also killed the groundskeeper when he tried to blackmail him. He saw the body on the clock tower just before it fell. Philby used his science know how to do it. He open the gas line to the groundskeeper's house and placed an open matchbook by the door. The second he opened the door the door metal plate struck the matches creating a spark with set off the gas in a fiery explosion.