Randy Disher

Did you catch last night's episode of "Monk"? The buffoonish Randy Disher demonstrated his worth as a police officer by protecting three young boys from a pair of gunmen in the woods. This was without a firearm on his person. He waited for the gunmen to pass, then using a piece of wood, he knocked one of them out, grabbed his shotgun, and trained it on the other fella. Randy for the win!

I've always felt that the writers went overboard in portraying Randy as an incompetent buffoon. Moments like this demonstrate how useful he is as a police officer.

It's also great that both he and Monk noticed a vital clue -- namely, how one of the gunmen would twist peanut shells open instead of opening them along the seam. I remember one previous episode in which he solved this mystery at the same time that Monk did. And of course, one of his shining moments was when he and Monk needed evidence to put a bad guy away, and Randy was the one who realized that they could get his fingerprint off of a truck's ignition key.

Loving it.