Mr. Monk and the Astronaut

"Mr. Monk and the Astronaut" is the fourteenth episode of the fourth season of Monk, and is the 59th episode overall. It was filmed on location at Edwards Air Force Base.
Plot synopsis
It's a few days before Steven Wagner (Jeffery Donovan) is due to set off into space from Edwards Air Force Base. He travels to the house of his girlfriend Joanne Raphelson (Brianna Brown). The reason he is there, he says, is to look at the draft of Raphelson's new book Between The Sheets: The Joanne Raphelson Story, in which Wagner is the subject of the fifth chapter. Raphelson is due to submit this draft to a publishing company in New York City later that week.
Wagner is a national hero, best known for an incident four years earlier in which he ditched the space shuttle in the Gulf of Mexico when the landing gear didn't open up for landing at the Kennedy Space Center. He plans on running for public office, which he'll treat like any other office, as "failure is not an option". While with Raphelson, he offers her his specialty drink, a Spacewalk, with its unique combination of an olive, an onion and a cherry. As he prepares the two Spacewalks, he drugs Raphelson's drink. She passes out on the couch. Wagner then sets off into space.
About a week later, when Raphelson's housekeeper checks up on the house, she discovers Raphelson hanged from the ceiling of her living room by a noose.
Adrian Monk and Natalie Teeger are called in to investigate. Although Raphelson was found hanged from the ceiling of her living room, Monk, Captain Stottlemeyer and Lieutenant Disher locate several discrepancies, including the insufficient height of the stool she supposedly stood on, clues that indicate she was murdered. Monk also notices the remains of the Spacewalks, but doesn't think much of it at the scene. Wagner's name appears in Raphelson's phone records before her time of death, and so the four go to talk to him.
Wagner, who is married, admits to his wife (Natasha Pavlovich) and to Monk to having dated Raphelson. He also doesn't act surprised to hear that Raphelson is dead. He says that Raphelson suffered from extreme depression, and would frequently call him when she needed to speak to someone. Monk notices that Wagner is drinking the same drink as was found at the scene of the crime, and Nicole Wagner identifies it as a Spacewalk, her husband's signature drink. Monk is convinced that Wagner killed Raphelson, but his alibi appears to be securely vacuum-sealed and airtight: he was in space at the time of the murder. However, Monk tells Wagner about how he was reading about the flight, and how it said that they almost had to cancel the liftoff because he was running late.
Monk and Natalie meanwhile receive a call from the publishing company that was going to receive Raphelson's next draft. They have discovered that Between the Sheets had many bombshells in it like which one of her boyfriends beat her up five years ago. Someone caused her to wake up in the hospital. And Wagner is planning on running for public office. If Between the Sheets went public, Wagner's career could be ruined.
Meanwhile, Monk and Wagner are both invited to speak at Julie Teeger's (Emmy Clarke) school career day. At the end of his exciting speech on being an astronaut, which includes his story of the crash landing in the Gulf of Mexico, Wagner hands out laser pointers to all the kids, and they use them to harass Monk while he is speaking his far more boring speech on homicide investigations. Wagner confronts Monk outside of the classroom and says he will never solve the case because he is a "flincher." Natalie is now convinced of his guilt as well, since the way he spoke sounded like a confession.
Monk and Natalie return to Raphelson's home to look for more clues. Monk notices that there is a missing doll from Raphelson's extensive collection on the wall, as well as four holes drilled in the wall in the kitchen. Before he can think about these things very much, they notice Wagner sneaking around outside the house. He says he came to pick flowers, but Monk is sure he was looking for something.
Across the street, Raphelson's neighbor Darrel Cain (Eric Allan Kramer) is yelling at his two children, Benny (Michael Belcher) and Donna (Ariel Winter) for having left the garage door open again. He notices the celebrity Wagner and runs across the street with his kids to get an autograph. When Wagner notices that Donna Cain is holding a doll, he invites the family to come see the test flight of a new fighter jet at Paxton Air Force Base. Natalie gets Wagner to bring her and Monk along as well. At the base, garage doors seem to be opening for no reason, and with that Monk solves the case.
Here's What Happened
Five years ago, Steve Wagner beat Joanne Raphelson up and hospitalized her. Between the Sheets, Joanne's story, mentioned this, and if it were ever published, Wagner's chances of entering Congress would be ruined. He had to kill her before the book ever was published.
Wagner drugged Raphelson enough to knock her out for a couple of days. Then he installed a garage door opener in the kitchen using a kit he had brought along. He tied a noose around her neck, and attached the other end to the garage door opener. He then took the remote for the opener away from the house, taped down the button and stuffed it inside a doll he took from her doll collection, and mailed the doll back to her on two-day shipping. This would guarantee that Wagner was up in space when Raphelson was eventually strangled. When the mailman brought the package to the house, it set off the garage door opener, which strangled Raphelson to death. After he returned from space, Wagner went back to the house and dismantled the killing machine, and moved her body into the other room, and he realized something: the doll was missing, having been taken by Darrel Cain across the street. That was the doll his daughter Donna was holding on to when Darrel and his children ran across the street to meet Wagner because they saw him talking to Monk and Natalie. It also explains why Darrel kept yelling at his son Benny for opening the garage door: the opener was still inside the doll and was setting off the garage door every time it went near it.
Donna Cain runs up to her father crying that Wagner stole her doll, and Monk realizes he must act quickly because Wagner will try to eject the doll from his plane during his test flight, and then the evidence will be lost forever. The garage door opener has his fingerprints on it. By the time they find Wagner, he is already in his jet and preparing to take off. Monk runs in front of Wagner's F-22 Raptor jet, putting himself in grave danger to stop Wagner's escape. Stottlemeyer and Disher, called by Natalie, show up and along with the Air Force, stop Wagner and arrest him.
Mr. Monk and the Actor
In the season 5 premiere Mr. Monk and the Actor, a subplot involves actor David Ruskin, played by Stanley Tucci, following Monk around in order to portray him in a new film that is based upon the events of Mr. Monk and the Astronaut. The new film is known as The Killer Astronaut. Upon first hearing of these plans, Disher becomes excited because he believes he'll be played by Brad Pitt.
However, just like with any Hollywood film, one will immediately notice a lot of discrepancies. The following are a list of changes made to the first scene at Raphelson's house:
*Disher's gender is changed from male to female.
*The female Disher is seen having a romance with Stottlemeyer. When this portion of the scene is being filmed, the real Captain Stottlemeyer, who is watching the production of the scene with the real Lieutenant Disher, simply says, "That didn't happen."
*Natalie's height is altered by two inches. She is 5'5' in the real episode, and is two inches taller in this film.
*Some of the dialogue is altered significantly. For instance, dialogue between Monk and Stottlemeyer at the police station in the episode is moved to the section at the crime scene.
Although it seems like the film will be released, Monk later reveals to Dr. Kroger that The Killer Astronaut was cancelled because of Ruskin's occasionally dangerous style of method-acting, which comes to light when he (still wearing his Monk costume) holds Jack Leverett at gunpoint in a car dealership showroom under the belief (due to both his completely adopting Monk's persona and misinterpreting the police finding the person who killed the woman that they were investigating in the episode as being the one who murdered Trudy).
In the one scene of The Killer Astronaut that is seen being filmed, Carrie Chason is the actress portraying Natalie, Andrea Bogart is the actress who portrays the female Disher, and Peter Weller is the actor portraying Stottlemeyer.
Stanley Tucci won an Emmy award for his performance as David Ruskin in the episode. Peter Weller, the actor portraying Stottlemeyer in the film, later went on to direct the season 5 episode "Mr. Monk, Private Eye," which guest starred his cousin Fred Weller.

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