Mr. Monk Gets A New Shrink - Production

Production

The idea of hiding the crucial piece of evidence in a vacuum bag had been on the writing table for years at the time that Mr. Monk Gets a New Shrink was written. The problem was, they couldn't get a realistic idea on how to use it. One idea had actually been to have a killer hack up his victim, place the dismembered limbs into a self-cleaning oven one at a time, then vacuum out the remains and have the bag filled with the victim. This, however, seemed very gruesome. Other ideas had included hiding something valuable in the bag and even having the killer stalk Monk while trying to recover it.

After some time, they decided that the best method of featuring a vacuum bag was to do the job with a cleaning lady, vacuuming up evidence of a drug ring trafficking heroin into the United States. Whereas cleaning ladies had already been the murder victims of several previous episodes, here it seemed absolutely necessary. Unfortunately, having a cleaning lady as the victim meant that they needed a main character to work with in order to give some personal involvement and reason for Monk to commit himself to the case. Monk was ruled out mostly because he doesn't have a cleaning lady, and if he did, she would never be good enough for him. It was eventually decided that the cleaning lady would end up being Dr. Kroger's cleaning lady. The idea of having Teresa Mueller work for Dr. Kroger was successful, because the writers had been looking to have an episode where Stanley Kamel was more a special guest star than a secondary character.

This led to further complications. For a few days, it was thought that Monk and Dr. Kroger would work to solve the case, but upon realizing that Monk would not be able to go back to a clinical detachment with Dr. Kroger, they eliminated this idea. So instead, Dr. Kroger does appear in more scenes than he normally does, but he stays out of the investigation scenes. As a result, Monk and Dr. Kroger do not break into Francis Merrigan's office to snoop around, though that would have been the typical thing to do if someone else were there. Rather, they simply peer through the sliding glass door that opens from Merrigan's office into the courtyard.

Another big challenge that came up in production was who Monk's new shrink would be. Several ideas included a woman, someone too strict or too nice, someone driven crazy by Monk's compulsions, and even a bout of scream therapy. The eventual decision came from writer Jonathan Collier, who suggested a one-armed psychiatrist. Tony Shalhoub liked the idea, but required that they recruit an actual one-armed actor to play Dr. Sorenson. The Screen Actors Guild actually had several actors waiting to audition, and the part was given to Rick Curry.