Adrian Monk - Personality

Personality

"Monk is a living legend. Quick, brilliant, analytical... an encyclopedic knowledge of a dozen unconventional and assorted subjects, from door locks to horticulture to architecture to human psychology."

In the script for the pilot episode, "Mr. Monk and the Candidate," Monk is described as being "a modern day Sherlock Holmes", only "nuts." In the introductory scene of the episode, he is examining the scene of Nicole Vasques' murder, and picks up several important clues, but frequently interrupts himself to wonder aloud whether he left his stove on when he left the house that morning. In the season 6 episode "Mr. Monk and the Daredevil", Monk mentions that he has 312 phobias. The strongest of these phobias are: germs (mysophobia), dentists (odontophobia), sharp or pointed objects (aichmophobia), milk (lactophobia), vomiting (emetophobia), death and dead things (necrophobia), snakes (ophidiophobia), crowds (ochlophobia), heights (acrophobia), fear (phobophobia), mushrooms (mycophobia), and small spaces (claustrophobia), as Monk also mentions in the season 2 episode "Mr. Monk and the Very Very Old Man". In addition, new phobias develop at seemingly random intervals, such as a temporary fear of blankets at the end of the season 5 episode "Mr. Monk Gets a New Shrink". Though it is impossible to determine his strongest phobia, there does appear to be some form of hierarchy between them: in the series finale "Mr. Monk and the End", it is made clear that his fear of vomiting is greater than his fear of death. Due to his overpowering fear of germs, Monk refuses to touch door handles and other common objects with his bare hands, avoids contact with anything dirty, and always uses sanitary wipes after human contact, including basic handshakes. He is also unable to eat food that other people have touched, as shown in the season 7 episode "Mr. Monk Falls in Love" when he and Leyla Zlatavich go out to a Zemenian restaurant.

Monk's phobias and anxiety disorders make him depend on personal assistants, who drive him around, do his shopping, and always carry a supply of wipes for his use, as shown in episodes like "Mr. Monk Meets the Playboy", "Mr. Monk Goes to the Carnival", etc. They also take an active role in organizing his consultancy work, and sometimes investigate cases themselves. His first assistant, Sharona Fleming (Bitty Schram), is a single mother and practical nurse by profession, hired by the police department to help Monk recover from the three-year catatonic state he lapsed into after Trudy's death. After several years of loyal service, Sharona leaves the show in season 3 to return to New Jersey and remarry her ex-husband Trevor. After her abrupt departure, Monk has a chance meeting with Natalie Teeger (Traylor Howard), whom he hires as his new assistant starting in "Mr. Monk and the Red Herring".

Monk carries out futile and endless attempts to make the world "balanced." Monk is fixated with symmetry, going so far as to always cut his pancakes into squares. He strongly prefers familiarity and rigorous structure in his activities. Monk only drinks Sierra Springs water throughout seasons 1-5 and a fictional brand (Summit Creek) throughout seasons 6-8. In fact, in the season 2 episode "Mr. Monk Goes to Mexico", Monk goes without drinking for several days because he cannot find any Sierra Springs. Monk also has great difficulty in standard social situations, so much so that he goes so far as to write down common small talk phrases on note cards in an attempt to successfully socialize. While his obsessive attention to minute detail cripples him socially, it makes him a gifted detective and profiler. He has a photographic memory, and can reconstruct entire crimes based on little more than scraps of detail that seem unimportant to his colleagues. His trademark method of examining a crime scene, which Sharona used to call his "Zen Sherlock Holmes thing," is to wander seemingly aimlessly around a crime scene, occasionally holding up his hands, as though framing a shot for a photograph. Shalhoub explained in an interview that Monk does this because it "isolates and cuts the crime scene into slices" and causes Monk to look at parts of the crime scene instead of the whole.

Monk's delicate mental condition means that his ability to function can be severely impaired by a variety of factors. One example comes in the form of the season 5 episode "Mr. Monk and the Garbage Strike", where the smell of garbage prevents Monk from being able to easily identify the person who killed sanitation union boss Jimmy Cusack. When Monk temporarily is blinded, Monk initially thinks that he might never regain his eyesight. Another example: when entering a chaotic murder scene in the episode "Mr. Monk Meets Dale the Whale", his first impulse is to straighten the lamps, though he is frequently able to hold off his fixations when examining bodies or collecting evidence. Even though Monk's mental state in the series is said to be a result of his wife's death, he shows signs of OCD in flashbacks dating back to childhood. To deal with his OCD and phobias, Monk visits a psychiatrist (Dr. Charles Kroger in the first six seasons or Dr. Neven Bell in the last two seasons) weekly, and at several points, daily.

Over the course of the show (roughly 8 years), Monk overcomes many of his phobias and some aspects of his OCD. Though he hasn't been cured of many of them, if any at all, he has been able to put them in the back of his mind when involved in case work. Possibly due to this alone, Monk is reinstated as detective first class by Stottlemeyer in the season 8 episode "Mr. Monk and the Badge". Though he is very excited about his reinstatement initially, Monk realizes that becoming a detective again didn't mean that he would be happier. In a session with Dr. Bell, Monk realizes he was always happy as a private detective and consultant to the SFPD as his own boss. After overcoming his fear of heights and singlehandedly capturing a killer window-washer, Monk turns in his badge. In the series finale, he learns that he, in fact, has a stepdaughter. The knowledge and events of the episode lead to positive changes in his personality.