Monk: Season Eight

Eight seasons is a hell of a run for any show. Look at how many shows get past the Pilot stage and make it to a series order, then look at how many make it to a second season or even a third. Eight is a lot! It’s not the most seasons of a show in television history, but it’s a damned respectable number for a detective comedy series aimed at an older demographic. Through it all series star Tony Shalhoub and his cohorts Traylor Howard, Jason-Gray Standford, Ted Levine, and Bitty Schram (for the first seasons) brought series creator Andy Breckman’s obsessive compulsive detective into our homes. Now for this eighth and final season, it’s time to say goodbye - at least for a little while anyway. 

The marvel of a show like Monk is that it made it this long in a very turbulent television landscape. A nice series with a sense of humor and a measure of wit and intelligence is a bit of a rarity. And then for it to last 124 episodes makes it even more of a gem. Not every episode was the best and some seasons were better than others, but the show as a whole was a grand adventure well worth revisiting. But this eighth season had some work to do. On top of letting Shalhoub’s title character solve some more inventive and clever murder cases, it also had to wrap up a long-running mystery of its own. 

The show’s background story is Monk needing to find the killer of his wife, but it was never a dominating throughline. Episodes would pick up the thread here and there, but it never took over the entire series. But, it’s certainly something that needed resolution and we have that come to bear in the show’s final two episodes. And it’s a fitting conclusion. Fitting but maybe not wholly satisfying for that particular case. The reveal of the killer and their motivations work well to put the case to bed and help end the series, but I have to say that I wish that particular guest actor had a more recurring standing in the series to give some weight to the reveal. Because he was a new never-before-seen guest star, it made him pretty damn obvious. 

But by this point, the series needed to wrap things up - and not just for Mr. Monk. While I wouldn’t call this the best season of the show, I’ll say it’s the nicest. I say that because from the first case Mr. Monk’s Favorite Show onward, you get a feeling that Andy Breckman and the writers' room are doing everything they can to care for these characters we’d come to love for over 100 episodes. This season isn’t just about Monk, but making sure that Traylor Howard’s Natalie, Jason Gray-Stanford’s Randy Disher, and Ted Levine’s Capt. Stottlemeyer all have fitting conclusions for their characters. Hell, Monk’s first helper Bitty Schram’s Sharona returns for a genuinely hilarious and heartfelt episode and even Tim Bagley’s recurring character Harold is given a rewarding and earnest arc. 

And while the cases aren’t necessarily the most elaborate or inventive, I can say every episode of this season is solid. Where so many shows get canceled on cliffhangers or are unceremoniously shuffled off to another network or streamer, Monk got to go out on its own terms. The series ended while it was still good and long before it got stretched into complete mediocrity. Through each episode, Shalhoub delivered one great performance after another. There’s good reason why he was nominated for a Primetime Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series every season! This may have been the end of the show, but not the characters. As we saw with Peacock’s delightful Mr. Monk’s Last Case: A Monk Movie - there’s plenty of life left in our favorite obsessive compulsive detective.

Vital Disc Stats: The Blu-ray 
Kino Lorber Studio Classics delivers their final set of Blu-ray discs for Monk: Season Eight. As with past season releases, this set consists of four Region A BD-50 discs housed in a multi-disc case with identical slipcover artwork. The inside of the insert reveals episode titles, guest stars, and a brief synopsis of the episode’s plot. Each disc loads to a static image main menu with standard navigation options. 

Continuing their excellent run, KLSC brings the final sixteen episodes of Monk to Blu-ray with lovely 1080p 1.78:1 transfers. Details are clean and clear without issue. Facial features, fine lines, set design, and production design details are all sharp without signs of compression artifacts. I have been streaming episodes to help keep ahead of these discs as I worked my way back through the series. Regardless of the streamer, Prime, Peacock, or Netflix, the show always struggled with what looked like gloppy film grain and really had a hard time if the episode in question had a lot of shadows or deep blacks. That’s not an issue on these discs. Film grain looks natural and appealingly cinematic for a television series like this one. Colors are bright and vibrant with lovely primaries and healthy skin tones.

Like the video transfers, each episode is treated to an excellent DTS-HD MA 2.0 audio track. The show has always been dialog-heavy and focused with few big action beats. A full 5.1 track was just never called for. We never struggle to hear what’s going on in each episode. Imaging is respectable for the busier scenes so there is a nice sense of atmosphere even if the moment isn’t big or expansive. Music cues are right on point. All around another solid set of audio mixes for each episode. 

The nice thing as the series went along on DVD releases, the bonus features package became more elaborate. Near as I can tell from looking at the old discs, all of the archival extras return. While we don’t get any new materials to pick through, what’s here is a nice selection of interviews, featurettes, and a video commentary for the final episode. The interviews are a bit fluffy, “what you loved about Monk, what will you miss” etc. The best piece is the Video Commentary. I’m not sure the format works exactly, I think they could have played this audio over the fully restored episode and it would have worked just as well. We don’t necessarily need to see these guys to appreciate what they’re saying but they bring a lot of detail about the finale. 

Blu-ray Disc One

• Interview with Tony Shalhoub (SD 4:03)
• Interview with Traylor Howard (SD 4:37)

Blu-ray Disc Two

• Interview with Jason Gray-Stanford (SD 3:52)
• Interview with Andy Breckman (SD 10:47)

Blu-ray Disc Three 

• Set Tours: The Making of the Final Season with Doug Nabors (SD 18:19)
• Mr. Monk Says Goodbye Featurette (SD 10:00)

Blu-ray Disc Four

• Video Commentary for Mr. Monk and the End (SD 1:26:08) featuring Tony Shalhoub, Andry Breckman, and Randall Zisk 

Monk: Season Eight brings the series to a fitting and satisfying close. Few series get that chance to go out on their terms but also wrap things up where every character feels taken care of. Shalhoub and his cohorts deliver a genuinely nice and entertaining final set of sixteen episodes. But as we now know - this wasn’t the end! Absence makes the heart grow fonder and now we get to look forward to KLSC bringing Mr Monk’s Last Case - A Monk Movie to Blu-ray! So while we await a release date and final specs, we can revisit this great show in beautiful 1080p with great audio one episode at a time. If you’ve made it this far, your Monk collection isn’t complete without it - Recommended.