MR. MONK AND THE TWO ASSISTANTS

Obsessive-compulsive TV detective Adrian Monk gets double-teamed by past and present assistants into investigating a murder the LAPD think they’ve solved.

Before single mom Natalie Teeger took on the job of shielding Monk from the germ-laden, disorderly world around him, the neurotic crime-solver relied on his former nurse, Sharona Fleming, till she left him hoping to reunite with her ex-husband Trevor. Now Trevor’s in jail in L.A., charged with bashing his employer Ellen Cole with a lamp and stealing her jewelry, and Sharona’s back in San Francisco angling for her old position. Once Natalie decides that her only hope of job security is for Trevor to ride off into the sunset with Sharona, the two assistants bundle Monk off to meet with Lt. Sam Dozier, who investigated for the LAPD. Although hampered by the gas mask he wears to survive L.A.’s smog and the attitude he cops when Dozier introduces him to cocky mystery writer Ian Ludlow, Monk soon decides that the case of the lesbian Cole, her lover Sally Jenkins and her lover’s lover, sperm donor Christian Bayliss, isn’t as simple as Dozier assumes. Still, it takes a second murder, a break-in at a local firehouse and some fancy orthodontics before Monk triumphs.

TV veteran Goldberg (Mr. Monk and the Blue Flu, 2007, etc.) enlightens viewers about the shift from sassy brunette assistant to perky blonde, but leaves plenty of other loose ends.