temporary monk/sharona madness

When I first got into this show when it aired, I was about 16. I was already a big fan of both Tony Shalhoub and Bitty Schram, and was interested to see them play together. It was very beautiful, of course, clearly a labor of love, and I could overlook some of the silliness of Monk because they were she such a good team. Their relationship was the heart of the show. But Sharona is the real heart of Monk's life, and I'm still not over the fact that they didn't end up together.

No shade to Randy, he's 20/10 a cutie and a hottie and deserves to be happy. Maybe with a girl he'd had a chance to develop a real on-screen relationship with?

I think it was the circus episode where Sharona is terrified of elephants that made me really think about it-- I first noticed in the carnival episode how Sharona looks down and away when he mentions Trudy, and that her face is sad. it's a very good and subtle acting choice on Bitty's part but it says what Sharona is feeling.

Here is this man, this brilliant, damaged man, whom she has brought back to life because for some mystical reason, he heard her when she woke him out of his sleep trying to follow Trudy to the grave. That's not what a nurse's function is-- so yes, she performed the clinical aspects of the job for him (which it honestly seems were minimal given that he never took medication or was physically incapable of caring for himself) but it would be silly to say there was some kind of clinical reason for how she called him back from the underworld and he heard her.

Bear in mind that Sharona was an emergency room nurse before she worked with Monk. Stottlemeyer is the one that saw her and something made him decide that she would be good for Monk. I added something about that in my last fic where Monk asks Stottlemeyer why Sharona and all the captain can do is say, "I saw an angel in that ER that night and I knew if you wanted to live she'd be your best chance."

Now that's just my fluff and was never really explained in the show, but there's no objective reason why Monk ignored everyone else but heard Sharona.

So here is this man; this brilliant, damaged man who so obviously loves Sharona so much, but with the mess of his illness in place he can never express it fully or offer her the support she offers him. At the time of the show, it can't be a partnership of equals (even if Sharona told her mother that Monk is her partner, not her boss). He is much too preoccupied with solving the problem of Trudy's murder to be able to fully express anything concerning Sharona, even as his body language and his eyes and even his words indicate it.

That's why it comes out of him the way it does-- "I can't do this without her" because he doesn't have words to express how vital she is to him. And he doesn't have the capacity at the time, even if he recognizes it somewhere in his consciousness, to understand what effect he's having on Sharona.

Monk does tell the coma guy he recognizes that Sharona is lonely, and more importantly, that he recognizes he is jealous-- that he doesn't want Trevor to take Sharona away from him.

Even more important, though, is that we so rarely hear or see Sharona react to all of this. It's all down to the physical acting when it comes to hearing about Trudy (and though she grieves his loss with him you can see it hurts her to hear about it all the time when she's right there next to him). Sharona never complains about it. She yells at him sometimes about not doing what he needs to, but she never complains about always, always being second place to a memory.

And Monk never notices that she never complains about it.

And Sharona never complains that Monk doesn't notice.

She just let him make his home in her. She made him part of her family because he needed it, and he was so unwell at the time that he couldn't recognize it.

So to my original point about the circus episode really being eye opening about Sharona's feelings: she had the right to be angry, but the sheer hurt that Bitty Schram infused that performance with was so heartbreaking. Sharona is more than angry; she's devastated that he could be so callous to her when she is on call for him 24/7 with no reward beyond not enough money. She cries more than once in this episode. The personal aspect of their relationship is challenged in this episode and it's an indicator of an emotional intimacy beyond employer/employee. That intimacy is written into the show anyway, but it's at this point that we really see what it is in practice.

Sharona legitimately walks away from him. She finishes the day with him when it happens and she walks away from him. A bonus funny moment: when Sharona says she'd marry the Elephant Man before she'd marry Monk, he looks back at her like "we'll just see who you marry, won't we?" as he leaves. Also, marriage is an interesting topic to bring up between employer and employee.

And Monk, being both a man and an anxious person, has taken for granted that Sharona understood his feelings for her and never expressed them. This is why he's so upset that she won't talk to him. He does love her and care about her, but there's so much mess in the way from his mental health that he doesn't remember to show her the empathy that would prove that love. And if there's anyone on earth who has the right to expect some empathy from Adrian Monk, it's Sharona Fleming. It would also be major progress for him.

When she's on the phone with him, those expensive and perfectly-matched tulips in front of her with that blank card, that's more function of their personal relationship, because she takes the time to explain to him that he can't just say the word "sorry" and everything be okay. I don't know employers who send their employees expensive, perfectly-matched flowers. Even with the blank card, because he lacks the words to express himself, it means a lot.

And he has to learn that it isn't what Sharona was afraid of, it's that she was afraid at all, and he scorned her for it, which she never does to him. Dr. Kroger was right to tell him he had to figure it out for himself, so that in the kitchen when he does start to get it, he makes another step forward in progress, and that is always good.

Because eventually he has to be shown that he can do this without her, however much he doesn't want to. Tony Shalhoub made sure to show in season 8 when Sharona came back that he was never really over her leaving him.