Monk (television series)

Monk was a TV series, which ended in 2009.
Nathan Lamm, 11 Augustus 2009, and Željko Heimer, 11 Augustus 2009

In the last season of Monk, the episode Mr. Monk Falls in Love concerns a fictional Eastern European country called Zemenia. The flag is clearly based on Croatia's, but in its arms the checkers are blue and white, the "zoo" is green and blue, and the stripes are green-white-blue. Below the shield is are corn ears and a scroll with the year 1522.
See the bottom of this page on USA Network for a photo from the Monk series.
Nathan Lamm and Željko Heimer, 11 Augustus 2009

Twice, a vertically hanging flag is shown, once hanging from the hoist and once hanging from the fly. Apparently both are acceptable, as long as the obverse is shown. This would suggest the reverse has a mirror image of the charge, which is also consistent with the fabric used, that clearly has only a single ply.
The first vertical flag we're shown appears to have a light coloured border of some sort.
Peter Hans van den Muijzenberg, 7 December 2011

Design

Since the tricolour and coat of arms are such clear plagiarism of the Croatian national flag (probably a vector drawing for the printing of the Croatian flag was simply recoloured), I wonder whether the scroll and corn ears are also taken readily from some easily obtainable vector graphic coat of arms — vaguely similar to the wreath from the Socialist Yugoslavia coat of arms. I guess it would have been too much work for the "designer" to change it just so much…

I believe it is a shame on the series producer to have hired such an uninventive crew that can not even design a mock up country flag properly!
Željko Heimer, 11 Augustus 2009

I think it's a nice design, actually – the ripoff is so blatant that it's amusing, and while the color scheme's not an improvement I do sort of like the addition of the wreath element on bottom – it counterbalances the crown. The "actual" Croatia could replicate this, maybe with a wattle or something similar.
Eugene Ipavec, 10 Augustus 2010

Implications

I believe that this would be punishable by law in Croatia, and I believe that such an obvious disfiguration of the Croatian national symbols, Croatian embassy in US should have at least protested! Even though US have very liberal laws regarding what you can do with a flag of your choice, I believe that the international diplomatic conventions, in theory at least, provide protection over such desecration of foreign national flags. Not that I think anyone would do much about it…
Željko Heimer, 11 Augustus 2009

This YouTube posting reports about this episode «causing some controversy amongst Croatian viewers», as predicted by Željko.
António Martins, 22 October 2011

Monk (television series)

Introduction

Zemenia

Design

Implications