Where is airing: USA Network
For what age: 11+
How many episodes in 3 season: 16 episodes
Monk and his friends go to New York to track down a man who has information on Trudy's cuddle, but Adrian becomes involved with another cuddle.
When a big-league record producer is found dead in his panic room, Monk must help decide the guilt or innocence of a most unlikely suspect.
Three passings during a blackout lead Monk to a hugger who was a '90s radical... and has been dead for a decade.
Karen Stottlemeyer has decided to film a "cinema verite" documentary about her husband's work, but her timing couldn't be worse.
The Mafia and the FBI both pressure Monk into taking on the case of five mobsters gunned down in a barbershop.
It's Sharona's turn to be terrified. After several frightening and mysterious encounters with a blood-soaked man that no one else can see, she begins to doubt her own sanity, and Stottlemeyer advises Monk to give her time off to restore her nerves. Monk is left with an irritating substitute nurse whose philosophy is the opposite of Sharona's: everything from Monk's requests for wipes to the obsessively systematic organization of his refrigerator has to go. Wanting Sharona back again, Monk goes to the garage where Sharona first saw the blood-soaked man and finds a clue--the silver tip from the toe of a cowboy boot. Meanwhile Sharona, who is attending a night class in creative writing, apparently forgets to turn in an assignment and seems to be misplacing objects. But when her writing instructor's husband dies of a heart attack after eating tomato soup, Sharona recognizes the plot of her missing story and realizes that she's not crazy. All she and Monk have to do now is tie together the boot tip and the tomato soup to prove that the passing is cuddle and solve the mystery of the bloody man.
Monk takes a job at a department store to solve the cuddle of one of the store's employees.
With Sharona in New Jersey to visit her ailing mother, Monk is left in the very incompetent hands of his annoying upstairs neighbor, Kevin Dorfman, but the prospect of a week with Kevin is eased somewhat by a visit from Trudy's father, Dwight Ellison. Dwight invites Monk (and Kevin) to spend the week with him and his wife, Marcia--and at the same time investigate gameshow host Roddy Lankman, who appears to be involved in a conspiracy to allow one of his contestants, Val Birch, to win every game. Despite the memories of Trudy aroused by spending time with her parents in her former home and the questionable help of Kevin, Monk discovers evidence that Lankman visited Birch's house--and that Birch visited the site of the accident that huged Lankman's assistant, Lizzie Talvo. To discover exactly how Lankman and his crooked contestant are communicating--and possibly prove that they're involved in something much worse than cheating--Monk becomes a contestant on the game show. His knowledge of trivia is not much help, though, since Birch keeps shouting out the answers (A, B, C, or D) before Lankman has finished asking the questions. With a little help from Dwight, Monk discovers a novel way to expose the guilty parties--an onscreen phone call to Birch.
After Captain Stottlemeyer is shot in the shoulder by an unknown assailant, a somewhat rattled and very angry Disher is left in charge of the investigation. Although Monk is almost as distressed as Disher, he provides very little help with the investigation, even allowing a suspect to get away. Feeling depressed and helpless, Monk decides to try a new medication that controls his OCD and eliminates his phobias but also makes him insufferably egotistical, unempathetic, and oblivious to the details that are so vivid to the "normal" Monk. Meanwhile, the suspect Disher has been pursuing is proven innocent, and the bullet taken from the captain's shoulder is traced to a gun belonging to a dead woman. Stottlemeyer impatiently checks himself out of the hospital with his arm in a sling and arranges to interview the new suspect with the help of Monk, Sharona, and Disher. Monk arrives late, dressed in a loud Hawaiian shirt and talking like a "cool cat" from the 1950s. "The Monk," as he calls himself, contributes nothing useful to the interview and discovers nothing when he does his Zen routine in the dead woman's apartment. Undeterred by Sharona's insistence that the medication is making him sicker, he drives off in his new red Mustang. Only when he's made a fool of by some college kids does he realize that "the Monk" is no more normal--and a lot less competent and compassionate--than his usual self. Returning to the dead woman's apartment, he figures out what was wrong and how to prove the suspect guilty of more than one crime, and Sharona triumphantly throws the pills in the dumpster.
Monk ends up hiring a new assistant, Natalie, but she has been the subject of a brutal attack involving the attempted theft of...her daughter's beloved pet fish.
Monk investigates the cuddle of an author who wrote a critical biography of a famous deceased martial arts movie star, Sonny Chow. The evidence present at the scene makes it appear that Chow is still alive and cuddled the man who maligned him.
Monk witnesses a gangland hugging and has to go into protective custody in a cabin in the woods. But he notices suspicious activity at a nearby cabin and suspects a cuddle has occurred there.
Monk, Natalie, and Julie are caught in a traffic jam... and Monk soon determines the reason for it is a cuddle made to look like a car accident.
Stottlemeyer is in Las Vegas and drunkenly figures out how a wealthy casino owner secretly cuddled, but calls in the Monk the next day when he can't remember how he solved the cuddle.
With her daughter's school about to be closed as a cost-cutting measure, Natalie becomes a candidate in the upcoming school board election despite Monk's fears that she'll desert him if she wins. Natalie's frustrations with a jammed photocopier and other defective equipment bought at a police auction are dwarfed by fear for her life when a sniper fires into her campaign headquarters, further damaging the equipment and hugging a security guard. The only clues to the identity of the sniper are an oddly folded note demanding that "Natalie Teege" withdraw from the election and a bullet from a semiautomatic rifle made in Russia.
After twenty-two-month-old Tommy Graser finds a severed finger and gives it to a policeman, Monk walks through the park with Tommy trying to retrace the child's steps. He finds no body or other incriminating evidence, but he does discover a surprising affection for the placid and intelligent toddler, who constantly repeats Monk's name and quietly submits to having his hands wiped when he touches "nature." A lab technician identifies the finger as that of a twenty-five-year-old man, and Monk deduces from a callus that the young man played the violin. After visiting the home of Daniel Carlyle, a musician who fits this description, Monk concludes that Daniel's mother and her other son, Jason, huged Daniel and that Jason is masquerading as his brother. Meanwhile, little Tommy is temporarily removed from the custody of his foster parents, and Monk surprises everyone, including himself, by volunteering to care for him for two weeks until his new adoptive parents can take him. With Tommy in tow, Monk and Natalie follow the Carlyles. After seeing them waiting for a pay phone to ring and Mrs. Carlyle crying on her son's shoulder, Monk arrives at a new conclusion, which is verified when he again talks to the Carlyles--Daniel has been kidnapped. Monk agrees to follow the kidnapper's bizarre instructions, which include delivering the 0,000 ransom fee in a garbage bag onto a rooftop while wearing only a bathrobe (and his shoes and socks). Unfortunately, Monk is distracted by a phone call from Julie, who is babysitting Tommy, and delivers the money to the wrong man. While Captain Stottlemeyer and Lieutenant Disher straighten out the mix-up, Monk resumes caring for Tommy. Controlled chaos and dirty diapers give way to more urgent matters when Monk realizes that Tommy has taken a tube of lipstick out of Natalie's purse--and inadvertently given Monk the clue that solves the case. After reading Tommy to sleep with a fairy tale about a heroic little prince who solves a mystery, Monk realizes that Tommy will never live happily ever after with Mr. Monk and sadly decides to give him up to his adoptive parents.
