Monk - Season 1 (2002)

The quality of the show's slipping, but I deeply, deeply love Monk. He's a mentally ill character we're actually supposed to admire, even though we're clearly intended to pity him as well. Adrian Monk has Obsessive-Compulsive Cleanliness Disorder. No one disputes this. He has regular old Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, too. No controversy there, either. However, what they don't talk about is his clear Social Anxiety Disorder. He doesn't like people. Being outside his home causes him stress--not to the extent that it causes his agoraphobic brother, Ambrose, stress, but still. (Ambrose is the always-wonderful John Turturro.) While the current season is not as good, it does feature my favorite episode thus far, which is currently on--"Mr. Monk and the Garbage Strike." There's a garbage strike in San Francisco (go figure), and Monk totally loses it. This culminates in the funniest moment of the entire series to date. You see, a city in mid-garbage strike is not a clean and happy city. Which means it's not a happy Monk. (He starts shipping his shrink his garbage in the mail.) Monk steals a truck from the garbage company and starts taking out the trash all by himself. For the entire city. He figures he'll steal the trucks and dump 'em in the bay. He also informs us that he's solved the case. It was obviously Alice Cooper, who killed the victim to steal his antique chair. Captain Stottlemeyer (Ted Levine, also known as Jame Gumb from Silence of the Lambs) takes him to a cleanroom, and Monk solves the case. The thing is, I miss Sharona. She was a nurse. She'd studied mental illness. She knows that Monk can't really help some of how he's acting, though I will say he doesn't try even so much as I do. And I don't try enough. With everyone else, it's clear that they want him to just be normal all of a sudden. The only time Sharona really comes across that way is the time Monk is unsympathetic to her phobia, and she's right--that's not okay of him. He needs to, well, suck it up. I'm not as bad off as Monk. I never will be, thank Gods. However, I like watching him because I'll never be that bad off. It's soothing.