Recap / Monk S7E16 "Mr. Monk Fights City Hall"

Directed by Chuck Parker

Written by Tom Scharpling, Josh Siegal and Dylan Morgan

Wanting to build a new kids' playground, the city gets ready to tear down the parking garage where Trudy Monk died. But Adrian blocks the demolition by chaining himself up in the garage. Councilwoman Eileen Hill (Tamlyn Tomita) agrees to postpone the project until the council takes another vote on the matter.

Monk is anticipating the vote so much that he only quickly scans the scene of two German tourists found stabbed to death. However, he does determine they were killed to take their camera, indicating that the two saw (or may have seen) something that someone wants to keep quiet. When Monk and Natalie arrive, they find that Harold Krenshaw (Tim Bagley), now a councilman, is thinking of changing his vote just to spite Adrian. But Hill goes missing, putting the vote in doubt (it would tie 3-3 without Hill).

Hill was last seen talking to a hotdog vendor, George Gionopolis (Jon Polito), something about city regulations concerning food vendors. George is a very credible suspect who denies harming Hill but suggests that if he did, he would have disposed of her body where no one could find her. However, George passes a polygraph.

In a session with Dr. Bell (Héctor Elizondo), Adrian gets the idea of finding a proxy for Hill and encouraging that proxy to vote against the playground. Adrian convinces Maria Schechter (Kali Rocha), Hill's secretary, to become Hill's proxy and vote in her place. While trying to butter her up, Adrian learns that Maria got the job by answering a flier. Apparently the only qualification was passing a drug test.

Maria is torn, but figures she can vote the way Hill wanted if she had access to the councilor's journal, which Monk states the police did not find anywhere like her office or apartment. When Maria asks if the police checked Hill's other apartment, it is revealed that the councilwoman had a love nest. There, Natalie finds a positive pregnancy test, which seems to mean that Hill was pregnant. Unfortunately, she's dead: her body turns up floating at the pier. However, when the autopsy on the councilwoman is performed, it is revealed that she was not pregnant. So what was a positive pregnancy test doing at the love nest?

At the council session, Maria votes against the playground. The council takes a recess, during which Adrian offers to buy drinks for everyone at the bar to celebrate the vote, even Maria, who reminds him that she can't drink due to her pregnancy. Remembering something said earlier, Adrian pieces the whole thing together: Paul Crawford (Tim Conlon), a reporter, was having an extramarital affair with Hill. She was, as Adrian puts it, his "sex lover."

Hill wanted Paul to leave his wife, so she lied about being pregnant. Hill obtained a positive pregnancy test by hiring the incompetent Maria. By using Maria's drug test urine sample, Hill turned a pregnancy test positive, and used it to blackmail Paul into leaving his wife. So Paul strangled Hill with one of his ties, made by Chalmers of London, and then dumped her body at the pier, killing the tourists to avoid the risk that they saw him dump the body.

During his explanation, Adrian makes it a point to call Maria an idiot several times with a few different synonyms. Maria's so insulted she decides to change her vote. And she can, because, as Councilman Krenshaw points out, the meeting hasn't been officially adjourned yet.

With the 4-3 confirmation vote, the demolition of the parking garage can now go ahead, and while Monk is of course dejected, it is at least decided that the playground will be named the Trudy Monk Memorial Playground.

This episode contains examples of the following tropes:

• Actor Allusion: Jon Polito's character laughing as he repeats "homicide" after Stottlemeyer introduces himself as a homicide detective. Polito played homicide detective Steve Crosetti on that series.
• Air Quotes: One of the hotdog vendors says they're legally required to put quotation marks around the word "meat" when describing the hotdogs. Later on, when Adrian buys Maria a hotdog, he tells the vendor it's been a real "pleasure."
• Alliterative Name: The Hot Dog Czar, George Gionopolis.
• Attempted Homewrecker: Eileen Hill had hired a pregnant woman while claiming to give her a drug test during the process, in order to show a positive pregnancy test to Paul Crawford so that he would leave his wife.
• Baby Trap: Councilwoman Hill did this convince her boyfriend Paul Crawford to leave his wife for her. She hired her extremely incompetent assistant just to steal her pregnant urine for a pregnancy test. This plan of hers REALLY backfires on her...
• Berserk Button: The impending demolition of the parking garage where Trudy died is what pushes Adrian to defy City Hall.
• Bittersweet Ending: Monk was able to solve the case of Councilor Hill's death. But it comes at the Pyrrhic Victory of losing favor with the council, who decide to tear down the parking garage. However, the council have decided to have the playground named after Trudy Monk.
• Call-Back: Harold is evidently no longer seeing Dr. Climan for hypnotherapy and is looking for a new psychiatrist.
• Conviction by Contradiction: Lampshaded. When Dispatch reporter Paul Crawford, whom Adrian is accusing of murdering Hill, questions the validity of how he phrased a sentence as evidence (he had been asked by Disher if Hill had been drinking, and he said, "She wouldn't be drinking now," implying that he thought she was pregnant, which it turns out she wasn't). This episode even provides the page quote.
• A Deadly Affair: Paul Crawford was cheating on his wife with Councilwoman Hill, and ended up murdering Hill when she effectively threatened to ruin his marriage. Or rather, all the money his marriage provides.
• Didn't Think This Through:
  • Monk chains himself to a pillar in the parking garage in protest of it being torn down. When the foreman asks for the key, Monk tosses it into the sewer. He only realizes his error when the demolition of the garage is postponed and Natalie asks for the key to unchain him
  • It never occurred to Hill that Paul might take drastic action to avoid news of her "pregnancy" reaching his wife.
• Disposing of a Body:
  • Discussed by George as a hypothetical, later shown in Adrian's reconstruction of what happened.
  • It's revealed Paul killed the tourists because he couldn't risk them having seen him do this with Eileen.
• Ditzy Secretary: Maria. She is many things, but "intelligent" isn't one of them. Justified, as Councilor Hill only hired her to use her pregnant urine sample (obtained under the guise of a "drug test") in her ploy to Baby Trap Crawford.
• Driving Question: Who killed Trudy Monk, and why? The parking garage might have evidence. On the other hand, as Dr. Bell points out, Adrian has been to the parking garage several times in the eleven years since Trudy died. If there was any evidence Adrian overlooked, it's doubtful he'd find it now.
• Enraged by Idiocy: Maria Schecter is so unyieldingly stupid that Monk calls talking to her torture.
• Idiot Ball:
  • When Monk figures out who murdered Councilwoman Eileen Hill, he refers to her as “a well-educated professional woman”. Apparently, she wasn’t smart enough to realize her ploy to convince her boyfriend Paul Crawford she was pregnant could backfire.
  • Paul himself could also apply for this himself. So, you've strangled your lover with a very distinct type of imported necktie. The best idea is to leave it around your victim's neck while hiding her body. Not, y'know, throwing it in a trash can somewhere...
• Gold Digger: The reason Paul was so willing to kill Hill when he thought she was pregnant. He is married to the daughter of a billionaire, and knew if Hill went through with her Baby Trap, he'd lose access to all that money.
• GPS Evidence: Hill was strangled with a necktie made in the UK that has to be specifically ordered as they aren't available in the US.
• It's All About Me: Monk is at his worst in this episode. He's willing to go above and beyond to save the parking garage his wife was murdered in by claiming that there is some evidence in the parking garage he missed, even though tearing it down would provide for the environment and a park for citizens. His therapy session with Dr. Bell, however, confirms he's lying and admits he knows there is no new evidence. The truth is Monk just doesn't want to lose the parking garage because it was the last place she was alive. Worse is that he cares more about the vote to demolish the parking garage than Councilwoman Hill being killed and devotes most of his time trying to bribe her assistant Maria into helping him. The cherry on top is how he tries to twist the issue about for Maria, trying to frame the parking garage as a suitable substitute for the playground it will be torn down for.
• Laser-Guided Karma: Monk loses the parking garage once he rudely and selfishly insults Maria several times as he solves the case, resulting in her changing her vote to spite him. As sad as it is to see Monk at the end of the episode, given how Monk only cared for himself and the parking garage over innocent people's lives throughout the episode, it's hard to say he didn't deserve it.
• Leave No Witnesses: The German tourists were killed because Paul feared they saw him dispose of Eileen's body. It's not revealed if they actually did, but it's certainly too late to ask them now.
• Line-of-Sight Alias: Asked by Harold about his new therapist, Adrian comes up with a pseudo-name for Dr. Bell: Dr. Door. Harold realizes this and hypothesizes that if Adrian had instead looked at a fire alarm, he would've given his new shrink's name as Dr. Bell. Cue Natalie giving a Spit Take.
• Mystery Meat: Disher asks if the hotdogs are made of beef or pork. George replies "meat" with air quotes.
• Never One Murder: Not only does Paul Crawford strangle his girlfriend Eileen Hill, he stabs two German tourists to death and stole their camera because they may have witnessed him dumping Eileen’s body off of a pier.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Monk would've gotten his cake (solving the case) and eaten it too (saving the parking garage) if only he had worded Maria's, well... unintelligence a bit more tactfully. Since Maria is an honorary member of the city council, Monk falls out of favor with her when he insults her brainlessness in order to make a point that the late Councilor Hill only hired Maria in order to get pregnant urine samples, rather than any supposed skills as a secretary.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: Ultimately, the council compromises; while they do end up voting on the park thanks to Monk being a jerk towards Maria, they name the park for Trudy, knowing how much it would mean for Adrian. It's a way to keep her memory alive, which was the real issue for her bereaved husband.
• Sarcasm Mode: After paying for a hotdog for Maria, Monk says it's been a "pleasure" with air quotes. And he makes sure that the vendor understands this is sarcasm.
• The Secret of Long Pork Pies: George says if he did kill Eileen Hill, he'd dispose of her body "where no-one could find it", implying he'd grind her up as the "meat" in his hotdogs. Randy, who is eating one of them, doesn't seem to get the implication.
• Sickening Slaughterhouse: George's Hot Dog warehouse isn't a slaughterhouse, but it certainly is disgusting enough to qualify. Workers are constantly smoking, one reuses hotdogs that have fallen to the ground, George approves the use of a bag of sausages with a smell that makes him physically gag, and the meat isn't even beef or pork, just "meat". George says he and his workers hated Hill because she wanted them to implement basic health measures such as putting lids on the condiment trays, changing the hotdog water every other day, and putting "meat" in quotation marks.
• Spit Take: Natalie's reaction when Harold unintentionally guesses correctly that Adrian's new therapist was named "Dr. Bell".
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: As pointed out by Dr. Bell, there is no new evidence in the parking garage Monk is determined to save. As Monk has examined it for hours on end many times in the last eleven years, if there was any evidence he overlooked, it's doubtful he'd find it now. In the end he is forced to admit the truth: he's been lying the whole time and is fully aware there is no evidence in the parking garage.
• Unusual Hiring Practices: Monk finds out that Eileen Hill hired her secretary Maria Schechter by leaving flyers for the job at a Lamaze class (where they would be seen by pregnant women), and having the candidate who showed up give a urine sample, claiming it was for a drug test. It turns out the real purpose was to get a positive pregnancy test to show Crawford, in order to convince him to leave his wife; instead, he murdered her.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Quite a few people call out Monk for his obsession with the parking garage because the city needs a park, and he's investigated it multiple times over the past decade. There is no new evidence. He admits in therapy that he knows they're right; the real reason is that the parking garage is the last place where Trudy was seen alive, and he believes that keeping it intact keeps her memory alive. Dr. Bell encourages Adrian that he doesn't need the parking garage to keep Trudy close to him.