Monk is a crime investigation comedy/drama that was one of our favorite shows.  It ran for eight seasons, though we only really fully watched the first five.  We did watch the series finale as well as a few other episodes from the later seasons, but found that the show was not as enjoyable to watch anymore.

Monk was about a detective named Adrian Monk who was trying to get reinstated to the police force and solve the murder of his late wife.  He was not like most of the other cops, as he had a debilitating case of OCD, which caused him to obsess over even the most miniscule of things.  It was a really good show, but halfway through season three it underwent a major change in cast, as the actress playing his nurse Sharona left and he got a new assistant named Natalie.  At the end of the show, Monk did solve Trudy's murder, and it gave him some much needed closure and the ability to move on with his life.

One of the best parts of the show were the scenes with the Captain and Randy.  Randy was our favorite character and we always enjoyed his scenes.  It was a shame that his character was dumbed down many times for comic relief purposes, but other than that he was a very likable character.  Even though we did not really enjoy the later seasons, we were happy to see that he was focused on more and had some interesting episodes.

We used to feel that we were supposed to feel bad for Monk and not laugh at his disabilities, as became the norm in the later seasons.  He had a disability, and it shouldn't always have been played for laughs.  Another annoying thing was when they recast Trudy and made her a recurring character.  She was dead and should only have been in flashbacks, in our opinion.  When Adrian began seeing and talking to her, that did not mean he was getting better.  We also didn't like how in order for the series finale to work, they had to rewrite a lot of the history that had been built up surrounding Trudy's murder throughout the entire show.  Also, the episodes really never built upon each other, which was kind of annoying since no real character development could happen that way.

The show went wrong when Sharona left.  The whole group dynamic changed and there was really no purpose to Natalie's character.  They made her too much like Sharona (a single mom to a pre-teen), and it didn't seem to us that she ever developed into an interesting character of her own right.

Monk acting in the play, when Shaona got a job at a lamp store, the entire marriage counseling episode, The Randy Disher Project, whenever Randy was shown to be a competent cop, Randy's first car chase, all of Randy and Sharona's scenes in the episode that she came back (we still can't believe that they got together after she had been written off the show!), and Randy's wallet model girlfriend.

Randy is our favorite character because he was so cute and funny.  We would have been perfectly happy with the show if it was renamed Disher and was just about him.  There's just something about him that we really enjoyed.  We also really liked Sharona and thought that the show really lost a lot when she left.  Compared to her over the top personality, Natalie was just boring.  Monk was also a good character in the early seasons.  He had a certain sadness about him that we thought was endearing.