You are totally correct, altho there were some parts of S2 which were good.
S1 was great.
Yep.
Particularly when shooting winter scenes, with the requisite winter clothing.
I quit watching when they started playing up the OCD and only returned for the finale. Which, to me, seemed hastily cobbled together.
The finale made me furious ! I’m going to spoiler this just in case someone still hasn’t seen it.
It turns out that the solution to Trudy’s murder was in the Christmas present that she had given Adrian right before she was killed and that he never opened! He spent the whole series trying to find her killer and the answer all along was in that wrapped box sitting on the shelf. 
That was a cruel writer’s trick. Did they think viewers would admire the clever irony? I sure didn’t! 
I had forgotten about that bit. Monk, both the show and the character, deserved much better.
The ghost of Trudy must have been furious! “I left you the solution! It’s right there! Goddammit!”
Though Happy Birthday Mr Monk, Mr Monk and the Foreign Man, Mr Monk and Sharona were pretty good, and Mr Monk’s Favorite Show and Mr Monk and the Voodoo Curse were fun. The rest? meh.
One of the biggest problems with later Monk for me was the loss of Sharona and the addition of Natalie and her daughter, who were both awful.
Trudy wasn’t as pure as the driven snow like we were led to believe, was she?
I don’t remember that much, but your question is intriguing.
Trivia: The outdoor setting for MASH (I think it was Simi Valley??) later became a Paint Ball Battleground.
Well, that’s what they told us. And, yes. I won. 
For me, if there’s a Monk episode on, I’ll watch.
(On weekends, COZI TV is the Monk ‘n’ Columbo channel.)
I agree about later Monk episodes, but now I’m wondering, which other shows are there, where the worst episodes are better than what’s currently on… Seinfeld (stayed strong… except the finale), Dick Van Dyke (if I can ignore the sexism and Ritchie, but those were always there).
Oh, I’ve got a show to think about: Roseanne. I always loved her standup (“The day I do housework is the day Sears comes out with a riding vacuum cleaner.”), and the show started out as a great blue collar family.
But near the end (HOW many dozens of seasons was that?) there were major changes/reboots, crazy ones!, and then the star got (rightfully) cancelled, and they soldiered on without her…
I was a casual watcher but…
As long as the item was established long before that episode (I don’t remember if it was)… I think that was a great resolution.
There are a couple of recent threads which touch on this.
I dunno about Westworld. I think it got less popular as it went on, or at least that’s what the viewership numbers say. The ratings fell pretty significantly every season till the end when it was only retaining something like 20% of the first seasons viewers. That’s a pretty steep drop.
I mean, I think nearly everyone agrees that Westworld is in the Mount Rushmore of tv shows that started out great and ended up terrible, but if we’re talking about shows getting worse as they become more popular, I’m not sure that applies to Westworld.
I preferred Natalie to Sharona. Natalie got Mr. Monk out of his shell more.
I don’t remember ever seeing “Square Pegs” but I certainly heard good things about it.
By all accounts, the set was horribly infested with drugs, and that’s the real reason the show only lasted one season.
Square Pegs was great fun
The Jefferesons is one of my favorite shows. However, at the end they got into a lot of fantasy sequences and outlandish situations. I prefer the earlier ones.
Fox Ranch, Malibu State Park
Nah, it was mostly Malibu canyon. I’ve hiked in the area, and you can recognize the location.
Right.
Very much so. I was surprised when a several years later Sarah Jessica Parker came out as a sexpot (in LA Story?).
Good catch that I posted in the “TV Shows That Hold Up” thread.
It was fun to see that I defended Monk there, too.