Entertainment

JAIL BIRD

STILL crazy after all these years, “Monk” finishes up its sixth season with a big, fat finale that is a little o’ “The Fugitive” (OK, a lot o’ “The Fugitive”), and even more of the stuff that continues to make “Monk” such a hoot.

The hoots come, of course, via Tony Shalhoub’s obsessive-compulsive portrayal of his obsessive-compulsive character, Monk. If you tuned in last week to Part One of this two-part finale, you know that Monk’s been caught, if not red-handed, at least orange-handed, with the smoking gun he seemingly used to kill the six-fingered man who killed his wife. Six fingers are tougher to spot than one arm when you’re looking for your wife’s murderer – so it’s a good thing Monk is so meticulous!

Monk escaped from the paddy wagon that was bringing him to jail, and for good reason. For one thing, there is a huge amount of germs in jail, half the inmates’ numbers are uneven and one of the sheriff’s department guys driving Monk had a cold. What’s an orange-robed obsessive-compulsive accused murderer to do? Run through a lot of “Fugitive” backwoods and brambles back to assistant Natalie, that’s what.

But then they left us hanging with the terrible shooting death of Monk by his best pal, Captain Leland Stottlemeyer (Ted Levine). Maybe.

Well, that’s where they left us last week and tomorrow night’s finale doesn’t disappoint – keeping the action and the comedy going, somehow simultaneously.

Bringing in primo bad guy Scott Glenn (“The Right Stuff”) to play the Tommy Lee Jones part as the nasty badass county sheriff was sheer genius. But, the real question here is whether that badass sheriff is just a nasty guy – or is he a nasty guy with a reason to be so relentlessly pursuing Monk?

One of the scenes that should have you, if not laughing out loud, then certainly smiling out loud, is the one in which Randy (Jason Gray-Stanford) plays the original song he’s written for Monk’s funeral. It’s bad enough to raise the dead. Everyone in the cast seems to have thrown off any lethargy they might have developed playing the characters over these past seasons and all come out with all guns blazing (so to speak).

“Monk”
Tomorrow night at 9 on USA