Mr. Monk Gets Jury Duty
Encyclopedia
"Mr. Monk Gets Jury Duty" is the sixteenth and final episode of the fourth season
of Monk
, and is the 61st episode overall.
and Lieutenant Disher finally capture Miguel Escobar (Carlos Gómez
), a drug lord who is the most wanted man in the United States. The arrest gains plenty of publicity for Stottlemeyer and Disher. However, they are soon encountered by FBI Special Agent Lapides (Michael Weaver), who has a letter for them from the United States Attorney General
. He needs them to transfer Escobar over to the federal government. Stottlemeyer is reluctant, mentioning to Lapides that they managed to nail him on a local homicide, but Lapides points out that Escobar was also trafficking drugs into seven states. The federal appeal has been filed, so the feds will get to try him first. Stottlemeyer and Disher are to babysit Escobar until the extradition hearing, and drop him off at the local courthouse.
Elsewhere, Monk
receives the news that he has been selected for jury duty
. Although Monk protests that he works alone, Natalie
thinks it will be good for him to work as a team. After an unsympathetic judge (Clyde Kusatsu
) dismisses Monk's plea that he couldn't share a toilet with eleven other people, Monk finds himself sitting in on the case of a young man named Robert Perry, (Edo Walker) accused of stabbing a guy named Karl Pillemer (Blake Silver) in the thigh, and then stealing the money he is carrying.
The other jurors are convinced of the accused's guilt, and all vote guilty, but Monk is the lone holdout. He's observed that the stab wound and the hole in the victim's jeans show that Pillemer was sitting, not standing (as he had claimed), when attacked. The wound, Monk figures, was self-inflicted and the knife placed in Perry's hand while he was sleeping so he could pocket the money himself. Several of the jury members change their vote, but Monk is distracted by a dog sniffing around a dumpster outside the window. Monk manages to call to Natalie, who is bringing him his lunch, to call Stottlemeyer and tell him there's a body in the dumpster. Disher finds the body of a woman with no I.D. but wearing orthopedic shoes, and Monk remembers her as a woman sitting in the assembly room when the jurors were being selected.
The following day, Monk shows the jurors the towel that Pillemer used to stem the bleeding from his thigh wound. The blood pattern is consistent with the towel having been neatly folded, even though he claimed to have picked it up off the floor. The other jurors are convinced, except for Juror No. 12, Pat (Emmanuelle Vaugier
), who changes her vote to guilty before leaving for the bathroom. Monk finds traces of lime on Juror No. 12's jacket, just as was used on the dumpster to hide the body.
However, none of the jurors, not even Monk, know that #12 is actually Miguel Escobar's girlfriend, and today is the day that Stottlemeyer and Disher will be transferring Escobar to the feds at the courthouse lobby.
Monk asks the other juror's to help him catch her out. When she returns, they all switch their votes to guilty, even Monk, to see her reaction. She reacts by producing a gun, knocking the bailiff unconscious and leaving the jurors bound and gagged to their chairs. She draws the blind down, but leaves it uneven, which disturbs Monk.
Meanwhile, Escobar has been transferred over to the feds and as he is about to get on the courthouse elevator, his girlfriend comes over and quickly shoots the guards (to no effect, as they are wearing bulletproof vests). They then make their way up the elevator to the garbage chute.
Natalie, passing outside, sees the uneven blind at the jury room window and knows something must be wrong. She frees Monk and they phone Stottlemeyer. When Escobar and his lover come down the chute, they land in the garbage dumpster, and open the side door, only to run into Stottlemeyer and Disher and an assortment of waiting cops, who quickly take them back into custody.
Later, we see Monk introducing Natalie to the rest of his jurors.
was cast in the role of Miguel Escobar, a wanted fugitive who was caught early in the episode. The jury included, in order of juror number, Bonita Friedericy
, David Ackert
, Carlease Burke, Wings Hauser
, Bryan Coffee, Kimi Reichenberg
, Benito Martinez
, unknown, Van Epperson
, Kevin Bernsten, Tony Shalhoub
, and Emmanuelle Vaugier
. Many of these guests would later go on to have larger roles in other shows, including Friedericy on Chuck
and Vaugier on Covert Affairs
.
This is writer Peter Wolk's second episode, after writing season three's
"Mr. Monk Gets Fired" (3.04). Wolk, who previously worked as a criminal defense attorney, had also written courtroom episodes for the shows The Defenders and Fighting the Odds. The story was written by Wolk, along with Andy Breckman
, Tom Scharpling
, David Breckman, Joe Toplyn, Dan Dratch, and Hy Conrad over a week in 2005 in Summit, New Jersey. It is director Andrei Belgrader's fourth, after directing "Mr. Monk Gets Fired" (3.04), "Mr. Monk and the Kid" (3.16), and "Mr. Monk Gets Drunk" (4.05). The episode was filmed in Los Angeles, apart from the opening Chinatown chase scene, as Stottlemeyer and Disher chase Escobar up Jackson Street, which was shot on-location in November 2005 in San Francisco. Because of the opportunity to film on-location, the opening scene was re-written.
The jury subplot heavily parodies the classic film 12 Angry Men. These include a single initial "not guilty" vote and the same type of blade used to commit both crimes. Many jurors are parallels of those in 12 Angry Men, including Patel (David Ackert
) and Juror #11 (George Voskovec
), who are immigrants proud to be in America; Mr. Cobb (Wings Hauser
) and Juror #3 (Lee J. Cobb
), who are each antagonists and the last to vote "not guilty" (interestingly, both the Monk character and the 12 Angry Men actor are both named Mr. Cobb); the sports fan juror (Kevin Bernsten) and Juror #7 (Jack Warden
), who both make various baseball references; and Monk analogues Juror #8 (Henry Fonda
), the lone initial "not guilty" votes. Additionally, the panning shot of the jury room was inspired by an identical shot toward the end of 12 Angry Men. Wolk wrote that the writing team watched the films 12 Angry Men and Jury Duty
over the course of production.
Monk (season 4)
The fourth season of Monk originally aired in the United States on USA Network from July 8, 2005 to March 17, 2006. It consisted of 16 episodes. Tony Shalhoub, Traylor Howard, Ted Levine, and Jason Gray-Stanford reprised their roles as the main characters. A DVD of the season was released on...
of Monk
Monk (TV series)
Monk is an American comedy-drama detective mystery television series created by Andy Breckman and starring Tony Shalhoub as the titular character, Adrian Monk. It originally ran from 2002 to 2009 and is primarily a mystery series, although it has dark and comic touches.The series debuted on July...
, and is the 61st episode overall.
Plot synopsis
After a long and dangerous chase through the streets of San Francisco, Captain StottlemeyerLeland Stottlemeyer
Captain Leland Francis Stottlemeyer is a fictional police officer played by Ted Levine on the American crime drama Monk. He is Captain of the San Francisco Police Department 's Homicide Detail, and a longtime friend of Adrian Monk from their days on the force together where he served as Monk's...
and Lieutenant Disher finally capture Miguel Escobar (Carlos Gómez
Carlos Gómez (actor)
Carlos Gomez is an American actor.-Biography:Carlos was born in New York, the son of Cora Gomez. He is a versatile character actor who has starred in both film and the small screen since the late 1980s. His first part in a film came in the form of a dancer looking to make it big in "Dance to Win "...
), a drug lord who is the most wanted man in the United States. The arrest gains plenty of publicity for Stottlemeyer and Disher. However, they are soon encountered by FBI Special Agent Lapides (Michael Weaver), who has a letter for them from the United States Attorney General
Attorney General
In most common law jurisdictions, the attorney general, or attorney-general, is the main legal advisor to the government, and in some jurisdictions he or she may also have executive responsibility for law enforcement or responsibility for public prosecutions.The term is used to refer to any person...
. He needs them to transfer Escobar over to the federal government. Stottlemeyer is reluctant, mentioning to Lapides that they managed to nail him on a local homicide, but Lapides points out that Escobar was also trafficking drugs into seven states. The federal appeal has been filed, so the feds will get to try him first. Stottlemeyer and Disher are to babysit Escobar until the extradition hearing, and drop him off at the local courthouse.
Elsewhere, Monk
Adrian Monk
Adrian Monk is a fictional character portrayed by Tony Shalhoub and the protagonist of the USA Network television series Monk. He is a renowned former homicide detective for the San Francisco Police Department...
receives the news that he has been selected for jury duty
Jury duty
Jury duty is service as a juror in a legal proceeding. When a person is called for jury duty in the United States, that service is usually not optional: one must attend or face strict penalties. Employers are not allowed to fire an employee simply for being called to jury duty...
. Although Monk protests that he works alone, Natalie
Natalie Teeger
Natalie J. Teeger is a fictional character on the American crime drama Monk. She becomes Adrian Monk's personal assistant midway through the third season of the show...
thinks it will be good for him to work as a team. After an unsympathetic judge (Clyde Kusatsu
Clyde Kusatsu
Clyde Kusatsu is a U.S. actor.Kusatsu was born and raised in Honolulu, Hawaii, where he attended ʻIolani School. Kusatsu began acting in Honolulu summer stock, and after studying theatre at Northwestern University, started to make his mark on the small screen in the mid-1970s...
) dismisses Monk's plea that he couldn't share a toilet with eleven other people, Monk finds himself sitting in on the case of a young man named Robert Perry, (Edo Walker) accused of stabbing a guy named Karl Pillemer (Blake Silver) in the thigh, and then stealing the money he is carrying.
The other jurors are convinced of the accused's guilt, and all vote guilty, but Monk is the lone holdout. He's observed that the stab wound and the hole in the victim's jeans show that Pillemer was sitting, not standing (as he had claimed), when attacked. The wound, Monk figures, was self-inflicted and the knife placed in Perry's hand while he was sleeping so he could pocket the money himself. Several of the jury members change their vote, but Monk is distracted by a dog sniffing around a dumpster outside the window. Monk manages to call to Natalie, who is bringing him his lunch, to call Stottlemeyer and tell him there's a body in the dumpster. Disher finds the body of a woman with no I.D. but wearing orthopedic shoes, and Monk remembers her as a woman sitting in the assembly room when the jurors were being selected.
The following day, Monk shows the jurors the towel that Pillemer used to stem the bleeding from his thigh wound. The blood pattern is consistent with the towel having been neatly folded, even though he claimed to have picked it up off the floor. The other jurors are convinced, except for Juror No. 12, Pat (Emmanuelle Vaugier
Emmanuelle Vaugier
Emmanuelle Vaugier is a Canadian film actress, singer, songwriter and television actress who has had recurring roles as Detective Jessica Angell on CSI: NY, Mia on Two and a Half Men, Dr. Helen Bryce on Smallville, and FBI Special Agent Emma Barnes on Human Target...
), who changes her vote to guilty before leaving for the bathroom. Monk finds traces of lime on Juror No. 12's jacket, just as was used on the dumpster to hide the body.
Here's What Happened
Monk figures that Juror No. 12 killed the old woman so as to get on a jury with the victim's identity. She's changed her vote because she wanted to delay the verdict and stay in the jury room.However, none of the jurors, not even Monk, know that #12 is actually Miguel Escobar's girlfriend, and today is the day that Stottlemeyer and Disher will be transferring Escobar to the feds at the courthouse lobby.
Monk asks the other juror's to help him catch her out. When she returns, they all switch their votes to guilty, even Monk, to see her reaction. She reacts by producing a gun, knocking the bailiff unconscious and leaving the jurors bound and gagged to their chairs. She draws the blind down, but leaves it uneven, which disturbs Monk.
Meanwhile, Escobar has been transferred over to the feds and as he is about to get on the courthouse elevator, his girlfriend comes over and quickly shoots the guards (to no effect, as they are wearing bulletproof vests). They then make their way up the elevator to the garbage chute.
Natalie, passing outside, sees the uneven blind at the jury room window and knows something must be wrong. She frees Monk and they phone Stottlemeyer. When Escobar and his lover come down the chute, they land in the garbage dumpster, and open the side door, only to run into Stottlemeyer and Disher and an assortment of waiting cops, who quickly take them back into custody.
Later, we see Monk introducing Natalie to the rest of his jurors.
Production
The episode contains one of the largest guest casts in the show's history; this is in part due to the casting of an entire jury. Carlos GómezCarlos Gómez
Carlos Argelis Gómez Pena, nicknamed "Go-Go", is a Major League Baseball outfielder for the Milwaukee Brewers.-Minor leagues:...
was cast in the role of Miguel Escobar, a wanted fugitive who was caught early in the episode. The jury included, in order of juror number, Bonita Friedericy
Bonita Friedericy
Bonita Friedericy is an American actress. She currently can be seen in the television series Chuck as NSA Director Diane Beckman. She has also appeared on Malcolm in the Middle, Veronica Mars, Star Trek: Enterprise, Bones, The Nine, The West Wing, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation and in the film...
, David Ackert
David Ackert
David Ackert is an entrepreneur and business development expert. He is the founder of The Ackert Advisory which has provided business development coaching and training for service firms since the late 90s....
, Carlease Burke, Wings Hauser
Wings Hauser
Wings Hauser is an American actor, director and film writer.-Life and career:Hauser was born Gerald Dwight Hauser in Hollywood, California, the son of Geraldine and Academy Award-winning director and producer Dwight Hauser...
, Bryan Coffee, Kimi Reichenberg
Kimi Reichenberg
Kimi Reichenberg is an American actress. She has appeared in the movie Crazy/Beautiful. She has also guest starred in Mr. Monk, Watching Ellie, NYPD Blue, Curb Your Enthusiasm and The Online Gamer Series.-External links:...
, Benito Martinez
Benito Martinez (actor)
Benito Martinez is an American actor most known for his role as police captain David Aceveda in FX Networks' acclaimed crime drama The Shield...
, unknown, Van Epperson
Van Epperson
Van Epperson is an American actor, director, screenwriter, script doctor, acting teacher, and public speaker.-Filmography:* Growing Pains** episode Happy Halloween: Part 2 ... as Truman Capote* Dear John...
, Kevin Bernsten, Tony Shalhoub
Tony Shalhoub
Anthony Marcus "Tony" Shalhoub is an American actor of Lebanese descent. His television work includes the roles of Antonio Scarpacci on Wings and sleuth Adrian Monk on the TV series Monk. He has won three Emmy Awards and a Golden Globe for his work in Monk...
, and Emmanuelle Vaugier
Emmanuelle Vaugier
Emmanuelle Vaugier is a Canadian film actress, singer, songwriter and television actress who has had recurring roles as Detective Jessica Angell on CSI: NY, Mia on Two and a Half Men, Dr. Helen Bryce on Smallville, and FBI Special Agent Emma Barnes on Human Target...
. Many of these guests would later go on to have larger roles in other shows, including Friedericy on Chuck
Chuck (TV series)
Chuck is an action-comedy/spy-drama television program from the United States created by Josh Schwartz and Chris Fedak. The series is about an "average computer-whiz-next-door" named Chuck, played by Zachary Levi, who receives an encoded e-mail from an old college friend now working for the Central...
and Vaugier on Covert Affairs
Covert Affairs
Covert Affairs is a USA Network television series starring Piper Perabo and Christopher Gorham. The one-hour drama premiered on Tuesday, July 13, 2010. The show concluded its first season on September 14, 2010 and was renewed for a second season on August 19, 2010. The second season began airing on...
.
This is writer Peter Wolk's second episode, after writing season three's
Monk (season 3)
The third season of Monk originally aired in the United States on USA Network from June 18, 2004 to March 4, 2005. It consisted of 16 episodes. Tony Shalhoub, Ted Levine, and Jason Gray-Stanford reprised their roles as the main characters, and Traylor Howard joined the cast. Bitty Schram left...
"Mr. Monk Gets Fired" (3.04). Wolk, who previously worked as a criminal defense attorney, had also written courtroom episodes for the shows The Defenders and Fighting the Odds. The story was written by Wolk, along with Andy Breckman
Andy Breckman
Andy Breckman is a television and film writer and a radio personality. He is the co-creator and executive producer of the Emmy Award-winning television series Monk on the USA Network, and is co-host of WFMU radio's long-running conceptual comedy program Seven Second Delay...
, Tom Scharpling
Tom Scharpling
Tom Scharpling is an American radio host, comedian, television writer, producer and music video director. He is best known for hosting the weekly freeform radio call-in comedy program The Best Show on WFMU and for acting as a writer/executive producer for the TV show Monk.Scharpling is also noted...
, David Breckman, Joe Toplyn, Dan Dratch, and Hy Conrad over a week in 2005 in Summit, New Jersey. It is director Andrei Belgrader's fourth, after directing "Mr. Monk Gets Fired" (3.04), "Mr. Monk and the Kid" (3.16), and "Mr. Monk Gets Drunk" (4.05). The episode was filmed in Los Angeles, apart from the opening Chinatown chase scene, as Stottlemeyer and Disher chase Escobar up Jackson Street, which was shot on-location in November 2005 in San Francisco. Because of the opportunity to film on-location, the opening scene was re-written.
The jury subplot heavily parodies the classic film 12 Angry Men. These include a single initial "not guilty" vote and the same type of blade used to commit both crimes. Many jurors are parallels of those in 12 Angry Men, including Patel (David Ackert
David Ackert
David Ackert is an entrepreneur and business development expert. He is the founder of The Ackert Advisory which has provided business development coaching and training for service firms since the late 90s....
) and Juror #11 (George Voskovec
Jirí Voskovec
Jiří Voskovec was a Czech-American actor, playwright, dramatist, director, translator, and poet...
), who are immigrants proud to be in America; Mr. Cobb (Wings Hauser
Wings Hauser
Wings Hauser is an American actor, director and film writer.-Life and career:Hauser was born Gerald Dwight Hauser in Hollywood, California, the son of Geraldine and Academy Award-winning director and producer Dwight Hauser...
) and Juror #3 (Lee J. Cobb
Lee J. Cobb
Lee J. Cobb was an American actor. He is best known for his performance in 12 Angry Men his Academy Award-nominated performance in On the Waterfront and one of his last films, The Exorcist...
), who are each antagonists and the last to vote "not guilty" (interestingly, both the Monk character and the 12 Angry Men actor are both named Mr. Cobb); the sports fan juror (Kevin Bernsten) and Juror #7 (Jack Warden
Jack Warden
Jack Warden was an American character actor.-Early life:Warden was born John Warden Lebzelter in Newark, New Jersey, the son of Laura M. and John Warden Lebzelter, who was an engineer and technician. He was of Irish and Pennsylvania Dutch ancestry...
), who both make various baseball references; and Monk analogues Juror #8 (Henry Fonda
Henry Fonda
Henry Jaynes Fonda was an American film and stage actor.Fonda made his mark early as a Broadway actor. He also appeared in 1938 in plays performed in White Plains, New York, with Joan Tompkins...
), the lone initial "not guilty" votes. Additionally, the panning shot of the jury room was inspired by an identical shot toward the end of 12 Angry Men. Wolk wrote that the writing team watched the films 12 Angry Men and Jury Duty
Jury Duty (film)
Jury Duty is a 1995 comedy film directed by John Fortenberry and starring Pauly Shore, Tia Carrere, Stanley Tucci, Brian Doyle-Murray, Shelley Winters, and Abe Vigoda.The film was Billie Bird's last screen appearance.- Plot:...
over the course of production.
Reception
Adam Finley of TVsquad.com called the episode "decent," but later went on to say "[Monk's] interaction between the rest of the jurors was hysterical."External links
- Mr. Monk Gets Jury Duty on the official USA NetworkUSA NetworkUSA Network is an American cable television channel launched in 1971. Once a minor player in basic cable, the network has steadily gained popularity because of breakout hits like Monk, Psych, Burn Notice, Royal Pains, Covert Affairs, White Collar, Monday Night RAW, Suits, and reruns of the various...
website