The third cup

Hi neighbors.

Pour some coffee, use cream and sugar if you want. Sit back and perk up your ears because I want to get some things off my chest.

As someone once said, "just because you're paranoid, doesn't mean some one isn't out to get you."

Taking that another step, just because I sometimes forget some things, doesn't mean I can't remember any things. And, just because I need glasses to read, doesn't mean I can't see the writing on the wall.

Another quote from that famous stooge Curly, "it's a coinspeeracy I tells ya."(sic)

What, I'm sure you are asking yourselves, has got Nancy in such a stir? Has she tried switching to de-caf again?

No. I'm talking about the great Monk series conspiracy to drive its viewing audience into as deep a psychosis as its main character displays.

I know there are some Monk fans right here in Nevada because they have called me.

Why do I think the show is trying to drive us crazy?

First point: on the television guide at Yahoo, and on the cable television guide, (I'd like these labeled as exhibits number one and two) this is listed as the end of the second season. Excuse me? How can this be only the second season?

The first season had the good theme song and only ran for one summer as a replacement show. The real second season started the next summer with a new theme song and a new opening (which I'll rant loudly about later on.)

Then it was sold to USA. And the former first and second season started replaying there the first of the year as a show new to USA, but I maintain it included the second season's shows. Those shows were on all last spring and summer. You can tell these shows because only the new theme music is played.

Then the third season started this January. I guess enough people complained about the new theme music because there was even a show making fun of the new theme song. This "batch" of shows had the old theme music playing in the background during the show, although the new theme song plays at the beginning.

Calling it the second season may refer to it being the first batch of shows exclusive to USA. I don't know -- it's just wrong to call it the "second" season when we viewers all know it to be the third series of shows.

That concludes my first point.

My second point proving that the Monk series is trying to drive us all nuts is the "teasers" shown at the show's opening.

In the first season, Monk was selecting his jacket in the morning, and he would shut the wardrobe door. But he did not "shut" it, he simply pushed it to.

Did it latch securely?

We will never know because he didn't touch it to make certain. The obsessive compulsive Monk we know and love could not have done that. He would have had to know the door shut completely. There is no way he would have trusted that door to have been shut and he would have had to come all the way back into the room to check it. (Let's mark this as exhibit three please.)

In the real second season, the opening is of him walking and he is on top of a hill and mis-steps. Not a trip, no, nothing that obvious. This conspiracy involves subtle audience manipulations. Not only are we left gasping that he could have fallen down and rolled down a potentially endless hill into oblivion; but we never get to go back and see what he stumbles over. We can't pick it up, pack it down, or throw it off the road. And the real kicker is -- Monk would have!

(Exhibit four.)

The show Monk goes into great detail to depict an obsessive compulsive personality. It does this with compassion although admittedly with tongue firmly in cheek. So why do the producers (one of whom is "Monk") take such apparent glee in driving their empathic audience crazy?

Perhaps it's a new form of shock therapy?

Or more likely it's just another one of life's veritables with no real intent.

Or, it could be a conspiracy to help we of the compulsive obsessive bent to recognize our own foibles.

I'll have to continue watching to see what these tricksters come up with next, and to keep track of what they decided to call it.

Until the next time friends remember; once something catches your attention, you have to keep watching to see what about it was so interesting in the first place.