Monk: Season Two (2003)
Film:
DVD:

Created by Andy Breckman
Starring Tony Shaloub, Bitty Schram, Ted Levine, Jason Gray-Stanford

Features:

• All sixteen second season episodes
  
• "The Minds Behind Monk" featurette
  
• Character profiles on Disher and Stottlemeyer
  
• Precinct tour with actor Gray-Stanford
  

Released by: Universal.
Rating: NR
Region: 1
Anamorphic: Yes.

My Advice: Hardcore should own; otherwise, rent.

Adrian Monk (Shaloub) was a brilliant police detective who could look at the same crime scene that you did, but pull out an idea or make a connection that you and everybody else missed in broad daylight. It's just his thing. Unfortunately, he was forced to leave the police department after his wife was murdered. The trauma of losing his wife sent him into psychiatric overdrive. He is a walking catalog of phobias and has obsessive compulsive disorder that would make Jack Nicholson from As Good As It Gets throw up his hands and say, "Okay, okay, I give!" With his nurse, Sharona (Schram), he is still assisting the police on a freelance basis, much to the general frustration of his former captain, Stottlemeyer (Levine), who can't live without him.

Tony Shaloub is a huge hit here at the site, and has been for long before this show came out. But there's a reason why we awarded both the TV comedy acting Chazzies last year to Shaloub and Schram--this show is consistently good. Mostly it's high comedy with Shaloub going in fifth gear into la la land while still, even in his most distracted moments, kicking detective ass. However, there are some moments of effective pathos--mostly dealing with Monk's fervent desire to get reinstated and also to remain true to the memory of his wife--and solve the mystery of her death. The fact that you can move from one to the other without getting lost or feeling a little schizo yourself is testament to the fine writing on the show.

This season has its ups and downs. The major down is the fact that they replaced the happening first season's theme song with a horrid little ditty by Randy Newman, who's in full-on "Left Foot, Right Foot" self-parody mode. Ugh, it's atrocious. The ups though are some headway into information regarding Trudy's death, and my personal favorite episode, with John Turturro playing Mycroft to Shaloub's Holmes. Other excellent guest stars include Tim Curry, Danny Trejo, and Amy Sedaris, to name a few.

The features are nice enough for what they are. First up, there's a featurette talking with creator Breckman and Shaloub, who's also an executive producer. They give a bit of insight into what makes the show tick--but clocking in at just over four minutes, it's a shot glass of insight. You've also got character profiles, which we're seeing more of recently, and I guess we should be glad that the studios are figuring out ways to crank out features. In this case, sit the actor down, let them ramble for three or so minutes about their character and their place in the show and then intersperse it with bits from the show. Done. Levine makes a good point about why it's hard to play the straight man (especially for a guy who's played so many freaks). Lastly, there is a very brief, almost non-existent tour of the precinct set with Gray-Stanford.

It's a shame we couldn't get a commentary on this with the cast (especially since Schram has now left said cast). It's also a bit puzzling why they chose to put a single feature on each of the discs. It's not a space issue, since the features were so short. Rationing out the features so they seem like more? No idea.

If you love the show and aren't satisfied with catching the reruns on USA, then the box would be worth your while. However, anybody but the hardcore fan is going to want to wait until we get some more features under our belt before plonking down the coin.