TV-Reviewed

Friday was Adrian Monk’s 50th birthday and he last thing he wanted was a birthday party, especially a surprise party. He foiled one attempt at the police station when the captain and all of the officers were set for a surprise. It was kind of cute, but I felt a little bad for Natalie who was powerless in getting Adrian to just go along with the party-goers and enjoy the day.

We would later find out that the reason Monk has disliked surprise parties was because of a bad birthday party when he was a kid. Cowboy Hank was brought in for the party’s entertainment and as soon as he left, all of Adrian’s “friends” left too. Adrian realized that they were just there to see Cowboy Hank and not him.

Natalie’s reaction to Adrian’s telling of the story was terrific. She didn’t pull any punches when she told him that his story was pathetic. Adrian’s days of being coddled by those around him are certainly over. Adrian has to get over his problems and move on.

Tony Shalhoub as Adrian Monk, Traylor Howard as Natalie Teeger

The case Adrian was asked to help with involved the death of a patent lawyer and a maintenance man. Although I liked the majority of the episode, it got off to a really bad start with the way the maintenance man was killed. It was really poorly done. The man wouldn’t have fallen into the track shredder/compactor in the fashion that he did. The crew used the wrong setup for making this believable.

That being said, the mystery as to who was responsible for the deaths and why they did it was above average, even if it wasn’t much of a surprise. I still think that the highlight of this episode was the extent to which Natalie had to go in order to surprise Adrian for his birthday. The car chase was quite believable. The only real clue that it was staged was the fact that the captain’s voice didn’t sound right over the phone. I was off and I knew something was up. However, I really enjoyed seeing this play out. It no doubt fooled a lot of people.

Although PSYCH is done for a few months, USA is going to finish out Monk through the year. I love this decision, especially with Sharona (Bitty Schram) coming back for an episode. I really miss Sharona. Natalie is wonderful, but the writers have done a poor job of giving Natalie storylines.

Rating: 8.2