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Was "Monk" inspired by a 1990 Dan Aykroyd movie?

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    Posted: 08 Jun 2012 at 6:02pm
For some time now, I have been watching two back-to-back reruns of the show "Monk" every Friday night on a local indie station. I can't really say I "like" the show, but I like to watch it, if that makes any sense. I often find it to be incredibly annoying. Not just the annoying idiot of a main character, but the way they often veer off into a kind of PC schmaltz-iness, not to mention some huge plot holes, etc.
 
But I digress.
 
The other day I had the TV on & this movie came on that for some reason I decided to give a look-see. It was called "Loose Cannons" & starred Dan Aykroyd, Gene Hackman & Dom DeLuise.
 
The plot revolved around a group of Nazis trying to get back an incriminating film that Dom DeLuise had purchased from someone, which clearly showed some "Kurt Waldheim" type politician as a young Nazi officer attending the ritual suicide of Adolf Hitler & delivering the coup de grace shot to the head inside the bunker at the end of WWII.
 
Anyway, in trying to get the film back, this group of Nazis killed a guy & Gene Hackman's character was the Washington DC PD detective assigned to the case.
 
They paired him up with another detective played by Dan Aykroyd & here's where the "Monk" similarities begin.
 
Or as Monk would say.... "Here's how it happened".
 
Aykroyd's character was a former detective on medical leave, who had suffered a traumatic experience that caused a personality disorder similar to the TV "Monk" & just like the TV Monk, he was relieved of duty as a cop. Aykroyd's personality disorder was that he would slip into multiple personalities without warning, whereas TV's Monk had severe OCD, but the basic premise is the same.
 
Here's the "funny" part... for his rehabilitaion, Aykroyd was sent to a monastary to be cared for by a brotherhood of MONKS. AAMOF, when you first see him, he's wearing MONK's robes.
 
THEN.... when he's back on duty & they him get to the crime scene, Aykroyd begins using his uncanny powers of observation to analyze miniscule, arcane bits of evidence that nobody else noticed... JUST LIKE MONK.
 
It was also stressed several times during the movie that Aykroyd's character was considered to be EXTREMELY ANNOYING to other people.... just like the TV Monk.
 
When you add those things up, it seems to indicate that the TV show MONK was almost certainly "inspired" by this movie.
 
1.) Aykroyd played a guy with a personality disorder brought on by a traumatic experience.
 
2.) TV's Monk - ditto.
 
3.) Aykroyd's character had become a monk.
 
4.) The TV Monk's name was Monk.
 
5.) Aykroyd's character posessed uncanny powers of observation which allowed him to unravel a crime scene with great accuracy.
 
6.) TV's Monk - ditto.
 
7.) Aykroyd's character annoyed everyone.
 
8.) TV's Monk - ditto.
 
Case solved.
 
It's a jungle out there.
 
 
 
 
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Thor Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 09 Jun 2012 at 4:01pm
I watched an episode of Monk last night.  First time ever.  It was OK, I guess.  Reminded me of shows like Murder She Wrote, Barnaby Jones and Matlock---simple plot, pat resolution.  Stuff for seniors (though without the attraction of a "senior" star).
 
FYI, it was an episode in which Monk has a suspicious suicide to solve, but doesn't seem particularly interested due to the happy pills he's on.
 
 
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Jimbo Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 09 Jun 2012 at 9:42pm
Yep. That's one of the same two I watched last night. They show two back-to-back episodes on Friday nights. 
 
That one was the last episode with "Sharona", as his assitant.
 
In one of the bone-headedest moves in the history of TV, Bitty Schram, the actreess who played Monk's nurse/assistant "Sharona Flemming", left the show after 2½ seasons over a contract dispute & was immediately replaced by a new gal in the very next episode, who went on to hold down the part for the next 5½ seasons while Schram did basically diddly squat in terms of acting work.
 
Really shot herself in the foot.
 
Monk is one of those shows that can be either really good, or pretty bad, depending upon the particular episode.
 
I watch it mainly because everything else on during that particular time slot sucks.
 
Love the theme song, though.
 
Randy Newman was the prefect guy to write & perform it.
 
And it wasn't the original one, either.
 
They only started using it around the beginning of the third season. Previoulsy they had an instrumental acoustic guitar ditty which they sometimes still incorporated into an occasional show after the new one.
 
There was one episode with Sarah Silverman in which they made joking references about how the fans hated the new theme song. The episode involved Monk going undercover on the set of a detective show about a guy who was very similar to him & as with the "real" show, they changed the theme song.
 
 
 
 
 
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote PaWolf Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 09 Jun 2012 at 10:26pm
Wow...forgot all about that terrible movie.
~~~
We would watch 'Monk' now and then - used to watch it when it first came on.
In the beginning, wasn't there a different theme song - maybe like a Leon Redbone cut? 
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Jimbo Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 09 Jun 2012 at 10:47pm
Originally posted by PaWolf PaWolf wrote:

In the beginning, wasn't there a different theme song - maybe like a Leon Redbone cut? 
 
Yeah, it was different, but it wasn't Redbone.
 
It was an acoustic guitar solo piece by Jeff Beal.
 
In the vid, it ends @ :50, but for some reason the person who posted it saw fit to run it thru twice. If you cut it off at :50, you'll have heard the entire thing.
 
Catchy little tune but I like the Randy Newman song better.
 
 
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote sharonite Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 14 Jun 2012 at 5:50am
Not sure about the Aykroydian connections, but there's no doubt in my mind that "Monk" is simply a continuation of the "quirky non-police individual helps police solve crimes" trope that existed long before it (Murder She Wrote, Diagnosis Murder, Father Dowling Mysteries, etc.) and continues today (The Mentalist, Psych, etc.).

As for the content of the show itself, it was just okay.  Tony Shalhoub is a fantastic actor and did a great job portraying the maddening idiosyncrasies of the lead character (who, believe it or not, was originally intended to be played by Michael Richards) while still keeping him likable overall.  Unfortunately though, the plot lines were often ridiculously far-fetched; later episodes became too reliant on a guest-star-of-the-week format; the scenes in which Monk dreams of his dead wife were eye-rollingly maudlin; and, as previously stated, the abrupt replacement of Bitty "Suzanne Somers" Schram with Traylor "Priscilla Barnes" Howard threw the chemistry of the cast out of balance for quite a while.

Overall, it was a good show if you just wanted to turn your brain off for a bit and get a chuckle or two at Monk's expense, and not so much a good show if you were after a tightly-plotted whodunit.
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Vindicated Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 14 Jul 2012 at 9:25pm
I agree with the Op in the sense that Monk is one of those shows I really don't like but end up watching any way. I'm also one of those people who think the show really started to wobble in when Sharonna left. You could put up with Monk's annoying traits because she would call him up on them and was a critical counter (the straightman) to his insanity for the show. However Natalie seemed more like an enabler to Monk's behavior and believed the whole world revolved around her daughter's middle school. ("I don't care if another victim is going to be die, we're all going to my daughter's 7th grade play practice. Afterward we're all going to chase rainbows in my Subaru"). 

The show lost its balance and slid into some surburban fantasy where no real crime happened and everyone was upper class, cocooned into the safe little worlds. It was almost as we finally slid into Monk's OCD view of the world when Sharonna left. At least with Cabot Cove it made sense that everyone was ambitious upper class yuppies. But this is the San Francisco-Oakland metro era. There are should be some real crime, poverty, and sketchiness in their world. 

The final part of the show that irritates me is the police. So apparently in Monk's world there are only 2 working detectives in the entire western US and northern Mexico? Also, if he's such a dumb novice, why is Randy the second highest detective in Homicide? Barney was a deputy in a small, quiet town, However I can image there are a couple thousand better officers in the SFPD. 

Finally did it seem at the end Monk became more of an A-hole? It seemed that he became more insulting and felt superior to those he felt were beneath him or had weaknesses he didn't? 

PS- There is one thing I believe Monk is good for. I can picture Monk at the end of an episode defeating Dr.House. Despite being mentally messed up by House through most of the episode I can see Monk making one observation or thought that screws up House's logic\plans and sends him into raving fit.
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote MrTim Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 14 Jul 2012 at 11:11pm
Now that is an episode I'd like to see....  Wink
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