From what I remember, the host usually paused, looking down at the card on the podium, before picking it up, usually saying something like “Here’s the $6000 question…” He could just then glance at the answer before picking the card up, and raise it in his hand accordingly.
It only seems that way because the Monk season is split in two, look for new episodes starting in January. I expect USA will do the same thing if they take the extension option on The 4400.
Did she actually say this, or was it just implied? (I also missed the first 30 seconds or so.) The two-cheater theory (heh) seems just a little too implausible. Perhaps she just had some other, unnamed dirt on him?
God, I hope they rerun this one in the next Monkathon. (There’s one tomorrow, but I don’t think this one is included!)
There had to be two cheaters:
- The assistant caught her boss cheating.
- The guy who was shown on the show learned about the plot when the assistant’s car crashed. The assistant told him about it, and he put her confession onto his phone answering machine to use for blackmail purposes.
So the guy shown cheating could not have been cheating prior to the car crash.
It was a major plot hole.
I don’t think it was a plot hole at all.
Fortunately, I haven’t deleted from my Tivo yet. When the assistant was confronting him (in the very first scene of the episode), she asked him why he did it. He said, “Have you ever been in debt, Lizzie? I mean really in debt? It changes everything.” So he was cheating in order to pay off someone he owed.
She caught him, and was going to turn him in. When the fisherman guy became a witness to the murder, he started blackmailing the host to keep cheating, but now with him.
The host could have been at the guy’s cabin to work out the cheat system, but I just assumed that the guy would want to blackmail him in person and not over the phone or something like that.
Well, it’s odd that the first guy the host was helping would let him off the hook so gracefully. Maybe the host gave him some cock and bull story about not wanting to draw suspicion with a prolonged run, or the person he was helping was a personal friend, and they were just splitting the money. Hrm.
That makes sense. It also makes sense that the host was at the cheater’s house because the cheater didn’t want to blackmail him over the phone, and Monk was simply wrong in guessing that they were working out a new system. It just seems odd that neither possibility was mentioned as part of the plot development, at least not that I can remember.
It’s also possible that they did work out a new system. Maybe since the assistant found out he was cheating, the host came up with a new methos harder to catch. Remeber, no one was suspicious until the idiot went on the show, so any previous cheaters no one even thought were cheaters.
Oh, yeah, I think the season finale looks very funny. The nurse that Sharona got for him two weeks ago mentioned that he should be medicated, so maybe it comes from that.
It’s always a short season during the summer, but it should be back in January. I think the finale of The Dead Zone is Sunday. They both stop in time for the regular network shows to start, and then they’ll be back.
Hmm. That makes sense, bouv – that he had a subtle cheating system set up, and he split the reward with the contestants. They had no need to blackmail him, since they got $$ and were complicit in the cheating – if they exposed him, they’d lose their cash, too. The cheating would be more subtle – he selected which contestants were smart enough, good enough actors, etc., to carry it off without arousing suspicion.
The assistant caught it, but no one else had. He killed her, the jerk shows up, and blackmails him. Whether he uses the same system is sort of irrelevant – there might have been a more subtle system in use with the other contestants (who had more brains), and this was something obvious enough that blackmailing-stupido could figure out.
Frankly, I thought this plot had lots of holes. For instance, when Monk goes on the show and figures out the system, and starts to answer questions before they’re asked, the host guy surely understands that Monk has figured the system, and should either hold the card in the wrong place, or hold the card in a non-corner (like, middle of the bottom) so that the cheating isn’t so obvious.
We did crack up at the woman contestant’s wail after the other two have been answering questions before they’re asked: “This is harder than it looks at home.”
I’m not sure I get the objection. The host only managed to ask, what, two or three questions that way? It probably took all of them for it to sink in the host’s mind that Monk had figured out the system. Besides, even if he did have time to deliberately try to screw up Monk, how would that help his blackmailer?
Referring to an earlier post, you really don’t need to watch “Monk” for the mystery aspect. Most of the solutions are out of “Encyclopedia Brown”. The show’s appeal is Tony Shaloub’s hilarious, yet sympathetic portrayal IMO of a person with OCD.
I was curious as to why the “Game Show” episode had none of the regular supporting cast, not even Bitty Schram (Sharona).
I think part of it was to show his ‘other life’ with Trudy and her family. That side of Monk didn’t have Captain Stottlemeyer or Sharona in it.