Mr. Monk’s Last Case: A Monk Movie thankfully brought back one of my favorite things about the Monk show. One of the best TV procedurals of its generation, Monk ran for eight seasons and delivered hundreds of cases in which Mr. Monk would defy all odds and solve the most difficult cases. Mr. Monk’s Last Case’s ending even teased that Adrian will now work on cold cases that no police detective could solve, although it’s unclear whether Monk 2 will happen.

The Mr. Monk’s Last Case: A Monk Movie cast featured a lot of familiar faces and delivered a nostalgic reunion. The movie was set in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic and explored its impact on Adrian. The film also revisited Molly, Trudy’s daughter, who was now about to get married. Sadly, Molly’s fiancé was killed just before the wedding. Both Adrian and Molly knew who did it and needed to prove how they did it.

Mr. Monk’s Last Case Continued Monk’s Killer Reveal Trope

Monk was more about “how” than “who.”

Mr. Monk’s Last Case: A Monk Movie makes it clear right from the start that Griffin was murdered by Rick Eden, a billionaire whose involvement in the death of his business partner was being investigated by Molly’s husband. The Monk movie even shows that Rick Eden killed his parent and made it seem like it was an accident. Between the flashback sequence and the conversation between Eden and Griffin short before the latter’s death, I knew exactly who the killer was a few minutes into the film. Mr. Monk’s Last Case was about proving how he did it.

This is something the best Monk episodes would do – reveal at the start who the killer was and have Adrian do everything in his power to prove how they did it. One of Mr. Monk’s catchphrases was “I don’t know how he did it, but he’s the guy,” a concept that set the tone for the original show. Monk was often not a whodunit but rather a show about Adrian Monk not letting guilty people get away with it just because they were smart. I’m glad that the Monk movie did not overlook such an important detail about the show.

Monk’s Killer Identity Reveals Made It Different From Other Procedurals

Monk was not a traditional whodunit.

By focusing on how they did it rather than who did it, Monk set itself apart from other crime shows from the same era. While Monk was not the first TV procedural to often reveal the killer’s identity in the first few minutes of the episode, the series used this trick very well. Adrian dreamed of becoming a police detective again and did not always have a lot of courage or confidence. However, whenever it came to facing the killer and proving they were guilty, Adrian never backed down.

I always liked it when the character who was clearly guilty challenged Adrian by saying “You have no proof.” Mr. Monk could see details, patterns, and clues no one else could, which is why it was always so satisfying seeing him prove how the killer did it. Some episodes of Monk were indeed in the whodunit format, but I always preferred the ones where proving something was more important than finding who had done it. Mr. Monk’s Last Case: A Monk Movie continued this tradition by having Adrian expose Rick Eden only at the end, even though he was obviously the killer.