I’ve been catching Monk episodes in syndication casually for years. A while back I got a list of the episodes and started checking them off as I saw them. The station has now cycled through the first six years of the series over two times since I started doing this, and it seems there’s a handful of episodes that aren’t being shown.
For example, Season Two they haven’t shown “Mr. Monk Goes to the Ballgame” and Season Three they haven’t shown “Mr. Monk Gets Stuck in Traffic” or “Mr. Monk and the Kid.”
Is this just happenstance, or is there a legal problem or something? Given the nature of the show I have a hard time believing that there is excess violence/sex/bad language that keeps it off broadcast tv, but what else could be the trouble?
I don’t know about Monk in particular, but there are two main reasons why certain shows don’t make it. First is too much gratuitous violence, sex, blasphemy etc. That’s basically an aesthetic choice. The second reason is music. If you don’t have the proper broadcast rights, you can’t rerun episodes. The poster child for this is WKPR in Cinncinati.
I don’t remember the Ballgame episode, but is the baseball team a generic franchise or the “real” San Francisco Giants? If it is the latter, then they probably don’t want to pay MLB licensing fees for using their logos and such in reruns.
If “Mr. Monk and the Kid” is the one with a little kid with OCD just like Adrian, then the reason might be because that particular episode really isn’t very good. Monk doesn’t like kids in most of the episodes, or at least he’s not interested in them. All of a sudden he likes this ONE kid because that kid likes to have things even? Nope, I didn’t buy it. Toddlers, even toddlers who like to have their socks pulled up evenly, are noisy and chaotic and very, very messy. Monk is NOT going to want to be around one, let alone think of adopting one.
The writers screwed up on that episode, and it should only be shown and watched in the interests of completion.
I liked a lot of episodes of Monk, but the writing was not consistent.
There’s a few early MASH episodes that don’t get aired.
I’ve heard Alan Alda talk about one in S1 where they were looking for gold. The cast was upset because they feared the show would become a silly sitcom.
I’ve never actually seen that episode aired. They must not repeat it. Also there were a few episodes where Hawkeyes womanizing would be offensive today. His attitude towards women in the early seasons was very sexist.
If they pulled that one from syndication it’s been recently. I haven’t watched MASH in several years but used to all the time. I’ve seen that episode many times in reruns.
IIRC, it was a fictitious team and not the Giants. They didn’t pay MLB licensing fees for that one. There was also an episode in season 7, “Mr. Monk Makes the Playoffs,” in which Monk attends a playoff football game, which is not the Superbowl, nor does it involve any actual NFL teams. So, licensing fees should not be an obstacle to rerunning these episodes.
I don’t know the specifics about the “Monk” eps, but I doubt they’ve been pulled from syndication. I’ve looked at several “Monk” websites, and none mentioned syndication pulls. But. . .
Some other series that have eps that have been pulled from syndication:
“The Munsters” episode “Herman’s Peace Offensive” TV Land said something to the effec that it was “not up to their standards” or something like that.
“The Firehouse Quintet” from “Emergency!” According to TV Land, “This is one of our most-asked questions, but the copy we have is not broadcast quality,” whatever that meant.
And my favorite:
“Bored, She Hung Herself” from “Hawaii Five-O.” It aired once, and was pulled not only from syndication, but from the DVD package!