monk

What was on TV? Mon, Jan 31, 2005

It's senior skip day in Everwood! Plus a salary dispute on Monk, and what if 24 were a whole lot gayer?

Grace MacLaine

31 Jan 2025 — 4 min read

20 years ago...even the best fall down sometimes...even the wrong words seem to rhyme...let's see what was on TV.

8:00 Monk (recorded)

3x12 "Mr. Monk vs. the Cobra"

Available on Peacock

One of the biggest TV stories of the summer of 2004 involved two actors on CSI calling in sick to work just as their contracts were up for renegotiation. So the studio fired them, and then rehired them. It was a whole thing.

Monk's Betty Schram tried the same tactic, but things did not go her way. Fans were pissed, Matt Zoller Seitz and Alan Sepinwall were flooded with letters over at the New Jersey Star-Ledger. So the show had a tough job to do, selling fans on Schram's replacement, Traylor Howard as Natalie.

Ironically, Natalie's main storyline involves asserting her right to be paid more, that is, to be reimbursed for her expenses (you spend a lot on baby wipes and the like when your client has OCD). The storyline sits uneasily in light of what I know was going on behind the scenes. But this is the first episode of Monk I've seen, I have no loyalty to Schram. And seeing Natalie demand, her boss' trauma be damned, makes me like her. But seriously, they should have just given Betty Schram a raise.

9:00 24 on Fox

4x07 "Day 4: 1:00 PM - 2:00 PM" (record Everwood on the WB)

Available on Hulu

I would like to go on the record with my prediction that poor Logan Marshall-Green is gay, and that's why he's being so secretive even under horrific torture. He won't give up his boyfriend!

Honestly, I would watch a whole show about this poor kid's day. Logan Marshall-Green is very good in one of his first-ever roles, and he's got me writing fanfiction. Imagine, you go to college and rebel against your dad at some protests, meet another cute boy, and discover some things about yourself. Then your Dad is kidnapped. Then shit gets super real, you are TORTURED, your dad AUTHORIZES it, and you have to decide where your loyalties lie! You betray your dirtbag Dad, go on the run, get radicalized, and hopefully get laid a few times. That's the plot of a super fun conspiracy thriller or romantic suspense novel, depending on how you want to play it.

10:00 Everwood (recorded)

3x13 "The Perfect Day"

Available for free on Prime

It's senior skip day in Everwood, so it's time for the show to do its own version of 24 and show us a day in the life of these people, complete with time stamps and everything. But instead of misery and torture, we just get a bunch of two-hander dialogue scenes. It's Everwood's most stagey and theatrical episode to date, and I loved it.

With a title like "The Perfect Day," I was expecting a lot of frictionless fun. But this episode is the opposite of that. This episode is jam-packed with rich dialogue scenes in which the residents of Everwood express their feelings, unload their baggage, and process their trauma. Jake and Nina, Nina and Dr. Brown, Dr. Bwon and Amanda, Dr. Abbott and Edna, Bright and Ephram, Ephram and Amy, Amy and Hannah, they all hash it out. And they're all very mature and condierate and adult about it, which can be the death of conflict and intrigue, but this episode is riveting and moving and perfect.

Late Night

Tonight was Letterman's first show after Johnny Carson died. I can't find any footage, but according to Bill Carter's book The War for Late Night, Dave Letterman came out, did a standard joke-filled monologue, and then revealed that every joke he'd told had been submitted by Johnny Carson. This was a way of paying tribute to the man and his talent (every joke had gotten a laugh). But it also revealed that Carson had been submitting jokes to The Late Show for years. So in death, it was revealed that Carson had in fact chosen a side in the great Jay vs. Dave debate.

There is footage of the Peter LaSally (Johnny and Dave's longtime producer) interview and the Doc Severinsen performance that made up the rest of the episode. I really loved the Severinsen performance. He played Johnny's favorite song, a mournful jazzy tune, and it was gorgeous.