check_tcp question

Hello,

I am trying to implement the check_tcp command to monitor if a specific
port is closed on a host, and not open. This page
https://www.monitoring-plugins.org/doc/man/check_tcp.html has a few options
which I've tried, with zero success, including:

-r and -M and -e

Basically, if the check can not connect to the port, that is the intended
result. I am getting socket timeouts when I try the following from the
nagios box itself to the host:

./check_tcp -H $HOST -p 8079 -r crit
CRITICAL - Socket timeout after 10 seconds
./check_tcp -H $HOST -p 8079 -e "CRITICAL - Socket timeout after 10 seconds"
CRITICAL - Socket timeout after 10 seconds
./check_tcp -H $HOST -p 8079 -M crit

Can you put me in the right direction for getting this to work?

Thank you,

Brandon