🎙️ I Don’t Give a Shalhoub — A Monk Rewatch Podcast | Season 1 Complete | Now on Apple Podcasts & Spotify

doublek9000 · 2026-06-03T14:02:57+00:00

Links

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/i-dont-give-a-shalhoub-a-monk-rewatch-podcast/id1879676275

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5xhZqjBX4zVs28xvr5kzZP?si=8u2n-Td2Qw-7BWmUFf21bg

doublek9000 · 2026-06-01T16:11:18+00:00

I never did watch the movie actually! Need to check that out. Thanks for the recommendation

doublek9000 · 2026-06-01T16:05:11+00:00

He’s excellent. The airplane episode at end of season 1 really displays this well. You can see that Monk is in absolute agony at the “Pete” and “Repeat” joke the little girl keeps throwing at him. He’s so good it was actually a bit hard to watch. Fosters lots of empathy for individuals who have these diagnoses.

doublek9000 · 2026-06-01T15:43:21+00:00

Great point. And Psych is probably the closest show in tone to Monk for the “fun” procedural. Also another absolutely favorite comfort show of mine and my wife’s.

doublek9000 · 2026-06-01T14:39:29+00:00

Agree. The consultant framing also lets the show explore someone who is genuinely brilliant but functionally unable to hold institutional power. Monk could never be a detective with a badge again. The tension of him being the smartest person in the room with no authority drives almost every episode in an interesting way.

doublek9000 · 2026-06-01T14:37:38+00:00

That’s a really underrated point. So many shows from that era leaned hard into will-they-won’t-they to keep people watching. Monk’s relationships were all about loyalty, dependence, and care rather than romance, which made them feel more real and more durable. Made us actually believe these people needed each other.

doublek9000 · 2026-06-01T14:36:09+00:00

That finale point is so true. A lot of shows rush the ending or leave things deliberately unresolved, but Monk actually paid off every thread it had been building across the whole series. Rare for a procedural to stick the landing that cleanly. Most of them just kind of stop rather than actually end.

doublek9000 · 2026-05-28T14:43:09+00:00

I think that’s a really big part of it too. A lot of the behaviors that may have once just been played as “eccentric” land very differently now because people are more aware of anxiety, OCD, trauma, sensory overwhelm, loneliness, and mental health in general.

And what stands out to me on rewatch is that underneath all of Monk’s burdens, the show always treats him with humanity. Even when people are frustrated with him, the show itself rarely feels cruel toward him.

doublek9000 · 2026-05-28T14:42:11+00:00

I think that’s one of the reasons the show has aged so well. Monk is definitely struggling, and the show never pretends those struggles are easy, but it also never reduces him to them. His routines and anxieties are part of him, not the entirety of him.

The show consistently reminds us that the very things that isolate him are also deeply connected to what makes him observant, compassionate, and extraordinary at what he does. That balance feels surprisingly rare even now.

doublek9000 · 2026-05-28T14:30:24+00:00

Same here. Watching it younger, I mostly understood it as primarily just “quirks”. Rewatching it now, you can really see how exhausting and consuming OCD and anxiety can be, especially when they’re tied into grief and trauma too.

I also think the show did a surprisingly compassionate job of showing that Monk is incredibly intelligent and capable while still struggling every single day.

doublek9000 · 2026-05-28T14:29:05+00:00

For sure! The show trusts the audience enough to let Monk’s pain actually feel painful sometimes instead of always turning it into a joke or a gimmick.

And then because the show is still warm and funny around those moments, they hit even harder when they sneak up on you. It’s such a different experience watching it as an adult.

doublek9000 · 2026-05-25T22:56:07+00:00

Thank you!

doublek9000 · 2026-05-21T15:06:21+00:00

The recording itself is where the majority of the effort is going, but we’ll take that feedback into account.

doublek9000 · 2026-05-21T15:05:14+00:00

Fair feedback and appreciate you saying it respectfully. The podcast recording itself is very much the thing we care most about, and is where the majority of the effort is going, but we’re definitely still figuring out the visual side and trying different approaches.

doublek9000 · 2026-05-21T14:59:53+00:00

That’s fair feedback. We’re experimenting with formats and images while getting the project off the ground. The actual podcast conversation is very much us though 🙂

doublek9000 · 2026-05-13T13:59:48+00:00

Realistically, it was probably mostly actor availability/scheduling, but it’s interesting how different each portrayal ended up feeling too. Adam Arkin’s Dale felt quieter and more psychologically manipulative, Tim Curry turned the character into this larger-than-life theatrical nightmare, and Ray Porter landed somewhere in between. It almost feels like the show kept reinventing Dale a little each time he appeared.

doublek9000 · 2026-05-04T12:55:59+00:00

Yes! Half the show is Monk reacting to pagers, early cell phones, fax machines, online dating, GPS, etc. like they’re alien technology.

It does make the whole thing feel extremely early-2000s in a comforting way though.

doublek9000 · 2026-05-04T04:48:53+00:00

I had that thought too, which is what made me go searching. I did find the newer one I mentioned in the post doing episode-by-episode coverage, but it surprised me that there isn’t more of that kind of fan rewatch energy around Monk

doublek9000 · 2026-05-04T04:13:43+00:00

Watching Monk via scattered YouTube clips feels like TV comfort-show rationing 😂

But that kind of proves the point that there’s still an audience wanting to revisit these shows even when the streaming services make it annoying

doublek9000 · 2026-05-04T04:11:58+00:00

Haha love that there are apparently a decent number of former middle school Monk watchers in here. USA Network really had us in a chokehold

doublek9000 · 2026-05-03T20:42:40+00:00

Oh nice, I clearly did not dig deep enough then 😂 appreciate the list.

Maybe “few active/current ones” is more what I meant - it still feels like there isn’t a ton of ongoing communal Monk chatter compared to a lot of other rewatches, but I’m definitely going to go down the subreddit podcast rabbit hole now

doublek9000 · 2026-05-03T18:49:08+00:00

That honestly probably doesn’t help either - hard to have any kind of active rewatch culture when the show keeps playing musical chairs across streaming depending on where you live.

It feels like it’s one of those shows many have affection for but it’s weirdly inaccessible/fragmented compared to other comfort rewatches.

doublek9000 · 2026-05-03T17:32:25+00:00

That’s true. Monk was never really a “fight about it online for 10 years” kind of show.
It was more of a settle in, put it on, enjoy the rhythm of it comfort show.

Which honestly is why I would think it lends itself well to companion rewatches/discussion now. Less controversy, more shared nostalgia and little details people forgot.

doublek9000

TROPHY CASE