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*BadassMustache: Grows one temporarily in "Mr. Monk and the Miracle." Monk and Natalie are dumbstruck by it. Stottlemeyer orders him to shave it off with a razor at the end.
*BlackWidow: Randy investigated one when he lived in Philadelphia. Comes back to haunt him in "Mr. Monk Goes to a Wedding".
*BoringButPractical: Although he lacks Monk's ability to solve impossible cases, he is very efficient when it comes to managing ordinary homicides. Stottlemeyer mentions this in ''Mr. Monk and the Blue Flu'', a tie-in novel to the series. His gift is getting people to open up to him.
*BunnyEarsLawyer: To a lesser extent.
*ButtMonkey
*BrickJoke: In "Mr. Monk Goes to the Dentist," Stottlemeyer suggests that the reason Randy doesn't want to go to the dentist until his scheduled appointment despite a toothache is because he wants to save up his sick days for days when he isn't feeling sick. In "Mr. Monk Goes to a Rock Concert," Stottlemeyer catches Randy playing sick at the rock concert.
*CluelessDeputy:
*CrouchingMoronHiddenBadass: His continued employment as a police lieutenant often mystifies; in "Mr. Monk and the Three Julies" he seriously considers the possibility of [[Film/{{Terminator}} a robot assassin from the future murdering women named Julie Teeger]]. Yet [[BigDamnHeroes he has his moments]], especially in "Mr. Monk Gets Married" and "Mr. Monk Gets Cabin Fever" [[spoiler:(even though the latter example is ''[[NiceJobBreakingItHero his own damn fault]]'')]]. Though Randy is often a {{Cloudcuckoolander}}, he becomes scarily efficient, competent, and down-to-Earth when he needs to be, such as whenever Stottlemeyer is disabled.
*ADayInTheLimeLight: Randy gets a number of episodes where he gets a chance to have more screen time - "Mr. Monk Goes to the Dentist" and "Mr. Monk Visits a Farm" for examples.
*DesignatedDriver: Randy is Designated Drunk in "Mr. Monk Is The Best Man".
* EgocentricTeamNaming: Randy Disher's garage rock band was called "The Randy Disher Project". The etymology explained in "Mr. Monk and the Secret Santa" around the band's name: "Well, my name's Randy Disher, and then... Project."
*BlackWidow: Randy investigated one when he lived in Philadelphia. Comes back to haunt him in "Mr. Monk Goes to a Wedding".
*BoringButPractical: Although he lacks Monk's ability to solve impossible cases, he is very efficient when it comes to managing ordinary homicides. Stottlemeyer mentions this in ''Mr. Monk and the Blue Flu'', a tie-in novel to the series. His gift is getting people to open up to him.
*BunnyEarsLawyer: To a lesser extent.
*ButtMonkey
*BrickJoke: In "Mr. Monk Goes to the Dentist," Stottlemeyer suggests that the reason Randy doesn't want to go to the dentist until his scheduled appointment despite a toothache is because he wants to save up his sick days for days when he isn't feeling sick. In "Mr. Monk Goes to a Rock Concert," Stottlemeyer catches Randy playing sick at the rock concert.
*CluelessDeputy:
*CrouchingMoronHiddenBadass: His continued employment as a police lieutenant often mystifies; in "Mr. Monk and the Three Julies" he seriously considers the possibility of [[Film/{{Terminator}} a robot assassin from the future murdering women named Julie Teeger]]. Yet [[BigDamnHeroes he has his moments]], especially in "Mr. Monk Gets Married" and "Mr. Monk Gets Cabin Fever" [[spoiler:(even though the latter example is ''[[NiceJobBreakingItHero his own damn fault]]'')]]. Though Randy is often a {{Cloudcuckoolander}}, he becomes scarily efficient, competent, and down-to-Earth when he needs to be, such as whenever Stottlemeyer is disabled.
*ADayInTheLimeLight: Randy gets a number of episodes where he gets a chance to have more screen time - "Mr. Monk Goes to the Dentist" and "Mr. Monk Visits a Farm" for examples.
*DesignatedDriver: Randy is Designated Drunk in "Mr. Monk Is The Best Man".
* EgocentricTeamNaming: Randy Disher's garage rock band was called "The Randy Disher Project". The etymology explained in "Mr. Monk and the Secret Santa" around the band's name: "Well, my name's Randy Disher, and then... Project."
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* GirlfriendInCanada: Subverted in "Mr. Monk and the Employee of the Month"; Randy's girlfriend appears to be one of these -- the picture he shows Sharona is the one that came with his wallet ("She's a wallet model!") and he gives what appears to be a LineOfSightName -- except that at the end of the episode, we actually see her waving to him from a taxi.
*HeyThatsMyLine: He says a clever one-liner in "Mr. Monk Gets Lotto Fever" that he's sure is original ("It looks like her number came up"), but when another cop says the same thing, Randy is infuriated enough that he throws his notebook in the guy's face.
*HypocriticalHumor: In "Mr. Monk and the Voodoo Curse," Randy cites his astrological sign (Pisces) as a reason he isn't superstitious.
*
*HeyThatsMyLine: He says a clever one-liner in "Mr. Monk Gets Lotto Fever" that he's sure is original ("It looks like her number came up"), but when another cop says the same thing, Randy is infuriated enough that he throws his notebook in the guy's face.
*HypocriticalHumor: In "Mr. Monk and the Voodoo Curse," Randy cites his astrological sign (Pisces) as a reason he isn't superstitious.
*
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* SecretSanta: "Mr. Monk and the Secret Santa". Stottlemeyer forgets to buy a gift for Det. Chasen, his Secret Santa, so he regifts a bottle of port someone had sent him. Then the bottle turns out to be poisoned...
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* SecretSanta: "Mr. Monk and the Secret Santa". Stottlemeyer forgets to buy a gift for Det. Chasen, his Secret Santa, so he regifts a bottle of port someone had sent him. Then the bottle turns out to be poisoned...poisoned...
* WatchThePaintJob: He is like this with his new Dodge Charger in "Mr. Monk and the Three Julies". He's on the same stage of cleanliness as Monk in watching out for scratches, dints, or other blemishes. And then he loses his car by trusting Natalie with the keys, a no-no because she promptly manages to destroy it.
* WatchThePaintJob: He is like this with his new Dodge Charger in "Mr. Monk and the Three Julies". He's on the same stage of cleanliness as Monk in watching out for scratches, dints, or other blemishes. And then he loses his car by trusting Natalie with the keys, a no-no because she promptly manages to destroy it.
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* RunningGag: Randy's "insane" theories. Also, his ceremonial way of delivering information to Stottlemeyer, like here:
-->'''Lt. Disher:''' Sir, are you ready for this?
-->'''Capt. Stottlemeyer:''' What is this? A game show? Can't you just walk in here and say what you have to say?
-->'''Lt. Disher:''' Sir, are you ready for this?
-->'''Capt. Stottlemeyer:''' What is this? A game show? Can't you just walk in here and say what you have to say?
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* WhyDoYouKeepChangingJobs: Natalie was this before she worked for Monk. In her backstory, prior occupations have included a temporary job at a mall, a stint in a regular office, and a Vegas blackjack dealer. When she shows up in "Mr. Monk and the Red Herring," she is a bartender.
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* GenderFlip: Randy's equivalent in the [[ShowWithinAShow TV show]] in season 5's "Mr Monk in the Actor". PlayedForLaughs as the show version of Randy and Stottlemeyer are acting out the episode "Mr. Monk and the Astronaut" and they start kissing before the actress portraying Natalie comes in. Stottlemeyer says "[[LetUsNeverSpeakOfThisAgain that]] ''[[ThatDidntHappen never happened]]''." The real Randy says, "Not even once."
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* ArbitraySkepticism: Played with.
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* ArbitraySkepticism: ArbitrarySkepticism: Played with.
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* CharacterTics: neck-crinking, fingers steepled, hands in front when examining crime scenes... it's compounded by his obsessive-compulsive tendencies. It's eventually revealed that the finger-steepling is something he got from his truck-driver father.
* HatesBeingTouched: He's germophobic, obviously.
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Natalie Teeger, nee Davenport, is Monk's current personal assistant. She meets him in "Mr. Monk and the Red Herring", where, while working as a bartender, two men break into her house, and she stabs and kills Brian Lemmon, the second intruder, in self-defense with a pair of scissors. Captain Stottlemeyer and Lieutenant Disher, baffled, suggest to Natalie to take her case to Monk. Monk's former assistant Sharona has just left, and Monk asks Natalie if she would become his new assistant. Initially, she refuses, but over the course of the investigation, Monk proves himself kind to Natalie's daughter Julie.
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Natalie Teeger, nee Davenport, is Monk's current personal assistant. She meets him in "Mr. Monk and the Red Herring", where, while working as a bartender, two men break into her house, and she stabs and kills Brian Lemmon, the second intruder, in self-defense with a pair of scissors. Captain Stottlemeyer and Lieutenant Disher, baffled, suggest to Natalie to take her case to Monk. Monk's former assistant Sharona has just left, and Monk asks Natalie if she would become his new assistant. Initially, she refuses, but over the course of the investigation, Monk proves himself kind to Natalie's daughter Julie.
Julie. She turns to start working for him.
* ArbitraySkepticism: Played with.
** In "Mr. Monk and the Critic," the one time Natalie tries to convince Monk that a StrawCritic is a killer, Monk and the others don't believe her because they point out that he had a very airtight alibi for this.
** Natalie actually has provided a number of aversions to this trope:
*** In "Mr. Monk and the Other Detective," she supports Monk's belief that [[spoiler:Marty Eels]] is "cheating" at the case.
*** In "Mr. Monk Goes to a Fashion Show," she isn't skeptical of Monk's belief that the framed delivery boy is an innocent person.
*** In "Mr. Monk and the Astronaut", she is at first skeptical of [[spoiler:Steve Wagner's]] guilt in the death of his girlfriend until [[spoiler:Wagner]] gives a TheReasonYouSuckSpeech to Monk.
*** In "Mr. Monk Goes to a Rock Concert," when Monk and Natalie are approached by Kendra Frank, the murder victim's girlfriend, Natalie displays some initial skepticism towards Kendra's suspicions that something is wrong. She still helps Monk pursue the investigation after checking out the body.
*** In "Mr. Monk and the Bad Girlfriend," she appears to be the only person besides Monk to believe that Stottlemeyer's girlfriend is a killer. Note that Monk and Natalie had been sent by Stottlemeyer to investigate that murder.
** In "Mr. Monk and the Critic," the one time Natalie tries to convince Monk that a StrawCritic is a killer, Monk and the others don't believe her because they point out that he had a very airtight alibi for this.
** Natalie actually has provided a number of aversions to this trope:
*** In "Mr. Monk and the Other Detective," she supports Monk's belief that [[spoiler:Marty Eels]] is "cheating" at the case.
*** In "Mr. Monk Goes to a Fashion Show," she isn't skeptical of Monk's belief that the framed delivery boy is an innocent person.
*** In "Mr. Monk and the Astronaut", she is at first skeptical of [[spoiler:Steve Wagner's]] guilt in the death of his girlfriend until [[spoiler:Wagner]] gives a TheReasonYouSuckSpeech to Monk.
*** In "Mr. Monk Goes to a Rock Concert," when Monk and Natalie are approached by Kendra Frank, the murder victim's girlfriend, Natalie displays some initial skepticism towards Kendra's suspicions that something is wrong. She still helps Monk pursue the investigation after checking out the body.
*** In "Mr. Monk and the Bad Girlfriend," she appears to be the only person besides Monk to believe that Stottlemeyer's girlfriend is a killer. Note that Monk and Natalie had been sent by Stottlemeyer to investigate that murder.
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* AdaptationExpansion: Whereas the TV series generally focuses on just Monk, Natalie arguably is the second main character of the novels, as she is also the books' narrator. Her background, namely stuff relating to her marriage to Mitch, is expanded upon.
* BerserkButton: Natalie has a couple. She tends to get into a furious rage whenever Monk is late with her paycheck or is unable to pay her, for whatever reason. Lampshaded in "Mr. Monk and the Genius," where Monk and Natalie are fighting about back pay, and are interrupted by Linda Kloster, who apologetically says she heard screaming. Natalie coolly says, "Oh, no, that's just me. I scream every payday." Sort of becomes a RunningGag of the show.
* BerserkButton: Natalie has a couple. She tends to get into a furious rage whenever Monk is late with her paycheck or is unable to pay her, for whatever reason. Lampshaded in "Mr. Monk and the Genius," where Monk and Natalie are fighting about back pay, and are interrupted by Linda Kloster, who apologetically says she heard screaming. Natalie coolly says, "Oh, no, that's just me. I scream every payday." Sort of becomes a RunningGag of the show.
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* AdaptationExpansion: Whereas the TV series generally focuses on just Monk, Natalie arguably is the second main character of the novels, as she is also the books' narrator. Her background, namely stuff relating to her marriage to Mitch, is expanded upon.
upon. Elements of her childhood in Monterey are also mentioned.
* BerserkButton:Natalie has a couple. She For Natalie, these are her buttons.
**She tends to get into a furious rage whenever Monk is late with her paycheck or is unable to pay her, for whatever reason. Lampshaded in "Mr. Monk and the Genius," where Monk and Natalie are fighting about back pay, and are interrupted by Linda Kloster, who apologetically says she heard screaming. Natalie coolly says, "Oh, no, that's just me. I scream every payday." Sort of becomes a RunningGag of the show.
* BerserkButton:
**She tends to get into a furious rage whenever Monk is late with her paycheck or is unable to pay her, for whatever reason. Lampshaded in "Mr. Monk and the Genius," where Monk and Natalie are fighting about back pay, and are interrupted by Linda Kloster, who apologetically says she heard screaming. Natalie coolly says, "Oh, no, that's just me. I scream every payday." Sort of becomes a RunningGag of the show.
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* ADayInTheLimeLight: It should be noted that Natalie appears in all 87 episodes from "Mr. Monk and the Red Herring" onwards. However, whether she gets a day in the limelight is episode-dependant, as there are some episodes where she gets a lot of screen time, and others where she doesn't get much. For example:
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* ADayInTheLimeLight: It should be noted that Natalie appears in all 87 episodes from her intro in "Mr. Monk and the Red Herring" onwards. However, whether she gets a day in the limelight is episode-dependant, as there are some episodes where she gets a lot of screen time, and others where she doesn't get much. For example:
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* HotMom
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* HotMomHotMom: Natalie even thinks of herself as one InUniverse, according to one conversation with Julie in ''Mr. Monk and the Dirty Cop''.
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* SuspiciouslySimilarSubstitute: Traylor Howard was this when she was cast as Natalie and brought on in the middle of season 3 to replace BittySchram (Sharona). The fandom has long been locked in a battle over which one is better. It works better here than a few other cases because things like Natalie being similar to Sharona down to having a kid the same age (Benjy, instead of Julie) can be explained by Monk trying to make things stay the same when life changes around him. Though the episode "Mr. Monk and Sharona" highlights how different they are as well.
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* SuspiciouslySimilarSubstitute: Some fans considered Traylor Howard was this Howard, and in turn, Natalie, this, when she was cast as Natalie and brought on introduced in the middle of season 3 to replace BittySchram (Sharona). The fandom has long been locked in a battle over which one is better. It works better here than a few other cases because things like Natalie being similar to Sharona down to having a kid the same age (Benjy, instead of Julie) can be explained by Monk trying to make things stay the same when life changes around him. Though the episode "Mr. Monk and Sharona" highlights how different they are as well.
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Natalie's teenage daughter. Introduced alongside Natalie in "Mr. Monk and the Red Herring."
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-->''"Detective Monk, why don't we solve my case first, all right? Then we can come back here and figure out who killed Ogg, okay?"''
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-->''"Did I mention he also doesn't like driving?"''
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[[quoteright:300:http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/howard_04_3803.jpg]]
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[[quoteright:300:http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/howard_04_3803.jpg]]
org/pmwiki/pub/images/howard_09_6366.jpg]]
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* UnlimitedWardrobe: Natalie must have one. She has a different outfit for practically every single episode, and sometimes goes through as many as five outfits in one episode (although admittedly that might be justified if an episode takes place over the span of a few days). Her styles also change every episode.
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* DrunkenMaster: In "Mr. Monk Gets Drunk", Monk accidentally gets drunk and is able to subdue a hitman, and solve a conspiracy involving everyone in a hotel covering up a man's death so they can keep his money.
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* ADayInTheLimeLight: Sometimes Natalie gets more prominence in select episodes than others.
** For instance, she only appears in all of maybe three scenes in "Mr. Monk Makes the Playoffs", yet in the next episode, "Mr. Monk and the Bully", she appears in every single scene except for two (Monk talking to Roderick Brody in the interrogation room and Monk at Dr. Bell's office).
** Natalie gets a backseat in "Mr. Monk Gets a New Shrink," but in the episodes surrounding it, "Mr. Monk and the Class Reunion" and "Mr. Monk Goes to a Rock Concert," she has very prominent roles.
* DeadpanSnarker: Just like Monk. A few example:
** For instance, she only appears in all of maybe three scenes in "Mr. Monk Makes the Playoffs", yet in the next episode, "Mr. Monk and the Bully", she appears in every single scene except for two (Monk talking to Roderick Brody in the interrogation room and Monk at Dr. Bell's office).
** Natalie gets a backseat in "Mr. Monk Gets a New Shrink," but in the episodes surrounding it, "Mr. Monk and the Class Reunion" and "Mr. Monk Goes to a Rock Concert," she has very prominent roles.
* DeadpanSnarker: Just like Monk. A few example:
to:
* ADayInTheLimeLight: Sometimes It should be noted that Natalie gets more prominence in select episodes than others.
** For instance, she onlyappears in all 87 episodes from "Mr. Monk and the Red Herring" onwards. However, whether she gets a day in the limelight is episode-dependant, as there are some episodes where she gets a lot of maybe screen time, and others where she doesn't get much. For example:
**In "Mr. Monk and the Class Reunion," Natalie appears in practically every scene except for about threescenes or four scenes.
**In "Mr. Monk Meets His Dad", "Mr. Monk Visits a Farm," and "Mr. Monk Goes to the Hospital," she gets all of roughly two or three scenes.
**For an InUniverse one, "Mr. Monk Gets Lotto Fever"
**Episodes like "Mr. Monk and the Bad Girlfriend" do give Natalie more onscreen time.
**Sometimes, one episode will give her more screen time to compensate for her lacking such time in previous episodes. In "Mr. Monk on Wheels," Natalie is in every scene because she is central to causing the main plot point. In the next two episodes, "Mr. Monk and the Lady Next Door" and "Mr. Monk Makes thePlayoffs", yet in Playoffs," Natalie goes to the next episode, background and doesn't get many scenes. Then in "Mr. Monk and the Bully", she Bully," Natalie appears in every single scene except for two (Monk talking to with Roderick Brody in the police interrogation room and Monk at in Dr. Bell's office).
** Natalie gets a backseat in "Mr. Monk Gets a New Shrink," but in the episodes surrounding it, "Mr. Monk and the Class Reunion" and "Mr. Monk Goes to a Rock Concert," she has very prominent roles.
* DeadpanSnarker: Just like Monk. A few example:examples:
** For instance, she only
**In "Mr. Monk and the Class Reunion," Natalie appears in practically every scene except for about three
**In "Mr. Monk Meets His Dad", "Mr. Monk Visits a Farm," and "Mr. Monk Goes to the Hospital," she gets all of roughly two or three scenes.
**For an InUniverse one, "Mr. Monk Gets Lotto Fever"
**Episodes like "Mr. Monk and the Bad Girlfriend" do give Natalie more onscreen time.
**Sometimes, one episode will give her more screen time to compensate for her lacking such time in previous episodes. In "Mr. Monk on Wheels," Natalie is in every scene because she is central to causing the main plot point. In the next two episodes, "Mr. Monk and the Lady Next Door" and "Mr. Monk Makes the
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* EmbarassingSlide: Natalie and Monk are mortified when pictures of Stottlemeyer in riot gear show up in the slideshow in "Mr. Monk and the Class Reunion"
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* EmbarassingSlide: EmbarrassingSlide: Natalie and Monk are mortified when pictures of Stottlemeyer in riot gear show up in the slideshow in "Mr. Monk and the Class Reunion"
**Natalie being a Dr. Watson expy is expanded on in the novels where she is the narrator.
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Stottlemeyer is Monk's former partner/watch commander and closest friend.
* ArbitrarySkepticism
* BadassMustache: He wears one with such pride that in "Mr. Monk and the Miracle", Monk has trouble recognizing him when he shaves it off and becomes a monk (the only way Monk can identify him is to use the feather on a quill). When Leland is out of action, Randy grows one in response. Monk and Natalie are dumbstruck when they first notice Randy with a beard (though this isn't unusual, as it was said that Randy had a mustache when he lived in Philadelphia). After Leland returns to the force, he gives Randy a safety razor as an implied way of ordering him to shave it off.
* BlatantLies: In "Mr. Monk and the Red-Headed Stranger," Stottlemeyer claims that his arm is in a sling because he broke it in a motorcycle accident. Monk quietly tells Stottlemeyer not to tell this story to too many people because the area he claims to have had his accident in has been closed for brush fires. Stottlemeyer hesitantly admits that he fell off a ladder while cleaning his gutters.
*BerserkButton: Never hurt/nearly kill (intentionally or not) or even imply at having an affair with Leland's first wife Karen, or else you'd better pray that he doesn't end up beating you up or killing you for for it. This one is pressed in "Mr. Monk and the Captain's Wife" by Evan Coker, when he shoots a tow truck driver with a sniper rifle, causing the truck to veer right into the path of Karen's oncoming van, causing her to crash and end up in a coma. In "Mr. Monk and the Captain's Marriage," Sgt. Ryan Sharkey invokes this one on purpose by claiming to be having an affair with Karen to provoke Leland into punching him. This turns out to be because he was responsible for the murder that had just been committed, and he'd lost a tooth in the fight with his victim, and he needed to find an explanation for why the scene was contaminated with his DNA.
**Also, in "Mr. Monk and the Man Who Shot Santa Claus", Stottlemeyer can tolerate people crowding a crime scene to jeer at Monk for shooting Santa (of which the actual details are debated, although Stottlemeyer knows Monk's version is the true version), but if someone ever attempts to go so far as to throw one egg at Monk or Natalie, especially during a crime scene investigation that Monk is involved in trying to determine what most likely happened, Stottlemeyer's fury at this will have no bounds, even going so far as to shout when demanding to know who threw an egg at them and rush towards them.
***Justified, though. Likely the reason Stottlemeyer gets furious is because the egging could have risked contaminating forensic evidence.
* ChekhovsSkill: In "Mr. Monk Buys a House," Stottlemeyer, Randy, and Natalie know Morse code.
* TheCSIEffect: InUniverse, Stottlemeyer says he hates {{CSI}} and personally wants to punch the person "who had the brilliant idea of doing a show that teaches crooks how to avoid being caught".
* ChronicallyCrashedCar: In "Mr. Monk And The Three Julies", his new 2008 Dodge Charger falls victim to this as a result of him trusting Natalie to hold his keys.
* ClearMyName: Twice in the novels, and once in the TV series. In "Mr. Monk Gets Lotto Fever," Monk must clear Stottlemeyer and Natalie of accusations that they rigged a lottery drawing. In ''Mr. Monk and the Dirty Cop'', Nick Slade kills a detective named Paul Braddock that Stottlemeyer had a grudge against, and frames the captain for the killing. In ''Mr. Monk Gets Even'', Stottlemeyer is framed for helping Dale the Whale escape from prison.
* ConvenienceStoreGiftShopping: In "Mr. Monk and the Miracle," after Monk and Natalie rescue a "converted" Stottlemeyer from a monastery, Stottlemeyer gives a safety razor to Randy (who grew a moustache when he took command in Stottlemeyer's absence) as an implied order for him to shave it off, with Randy not being too happy about it.
* ADayInTheLimeLight: Stottlemeyer also has a lot of episodes where he plays a more prominent role.
**Namely, "Mr. Monk is the Best Man" gives Leland a lot of focus as that episode is about his wedding to TK Jansen, and a killer's attempts to sabotage it.
**In two of the episodes that involve Karen, "Mr. Monk and the Captain's Wife" and "Mr. Monk and the Captain's Marriage," Leland gets more screen time.
**Stottlemeyer gets justified extra screentime in "Mr. Monk and the Badge" since Monk temporarily gets reinstated to the force.
**In a few episodes, Stottlemeyer gets a backseat:
***These are episodes in which Stottlemeyer does not appear at all: "Mr. Monk Goes to the Asylum," "Mr. Monk Takes a Vacation," "Mr. Monk and the Airplane," "Mr. Monk Gets Married," "Mr. Monk and the Game Show," "Mr. Monk Gets Stuck in Traffic," and "Mr. Monk Is Underwater".
* DeadpanSnarker
* DrinkingOnDuty: Does this in "Mr. Monk Goes to Vegas", although in his case, [[DrunkenMaster he really does actually need the alcohol in regards to solving a case]].
* DrivesLikeCrazy: In the last episode. Justified, as they were trying to locate Monk before he ends up doing something bad to [[spoiler:Ethan Rickover]] in revenge for [[spoiler:murdering Trudy as well as a nurse]]. The fact that it is stormy outside, and Disher has sold his siren in a garage sale shortly beforehand (as he apparently thought crime was over and the bad guys had quit) didn't help matters, either.
* EmbarrassingSlide: During "Mr. Monk and the Class Reunion", while Stottlemeyer is making a request for information on the UC Berkeley nurse homicide at Monk's reunion, the projectionist displays some very compromising pictures of Stottlemeyer in full riot gear violently attacking protesters at an anti-nuclear demonstration back in the 1970s. Monk and Natalie are clearly mortified, while Stottlemeyer makes an unsuccessful attempt to calm the booing students:
-->'''Captain Leland Stottlemeyer:''' You didn't have a permit!
-->'''Student:''' Yes we did!
-->'''Captain Leland Stottlemeyer:''' It expired at noon!
-->'''Student:''' 12:06.
-->'''Captain Stottlemeyer:''' Like I said, it expired at noon.
*The {{Expy}}: Of InspectorLestrade, by being the smug cop who makes the actual arrest, often being quick to bring the obvious suspect into the interrogation room. Straight at first, but after the first season Stottlemeyer begins to move away from this, generally trusting Monk's intuition, and showing genuine detective skills, especially after "Mr. Monk and the Captain's Wife".
*FriendOnTheForce: He and Randy to Monk
*GenderFlip: The response Stottlemeyer has in "Mr. Monk and the Actor" to seeing his TV-movie self kissing a female Randy is, "That never happened."
*HeroicBSOD: Suffers one in "Mr. Monk and the Captain's Wife" when Karen is hospitalized as a result of the first tow truck shooting.
*INeverSaidItWasPoison: Stottlemeyer's line, "It's called guilty knowledge, and juries eat it up" in ''Mr. Monk Takes the Stand'' supplies the page quote.
**In "Mr. Monk's 100th Case," he admits in an interview that he withholds specific details from the press in order to make it easier to separate useless leads from potential suspects, which is an actual police strategy.
*JackBauerInterrogationTechnique: In the first part of "Mr. Monk and the End". "Your computer crashed."
*NoodleIncident: In "Mr. Monk Is the Best Man," it is revealed that Karen was actually Leland's ''second'' wife, and his first marriage was annulled after only five days.
**In "Mr. Monk vs. the Cobra," Stottlemeyer tells Monk about an incident that happened in Atlanta: according to him, he got in a cab and recognized the driver as [[HistoricalInJoke the guy who was the SAC of the FBI's Atlanta field office until he accused the wrong guy in the 1996 Olympic Park bombing, which ruined his career.]] He brings it up because the case Monk and Stottlemeyer are working involves a suspect who officially has been deceased for six years, and Stottlemeyer is genuinely afraid of the consequences that might occur if he goes public and is immediately proven wrong.
*QuipToBlack: Pulls off the occasional line that ''would'' be one if he did it with dramatic flair instead of perfect deadpan, such as referring to a dead hotel guest as having "checked out early." Tries a few in "Happy Birthday, Mr. Monk". Natalie promptly chews him out for being insensitive.
** Monk unintentionally also makes Leland feel bad about them by decribing how horrible the victim's death must have been. It involved hooks ripping him apart and then being compacted in what must be the world's deadliest trash compactor. "He must have been screaming for mercy the whole time."
* ReasonableAuthorityFigure: He's rarely skeptical of Monk's intuitive leaps, having seen him in action for so long, and often makes accommodations for Monk's OCD on the crime scene.
* SecretSanta: "Mr. Monk and the Secret Santa". Stottlemeyer forgets to buy a gift for Det. Chasen, his Secret Santa, so he regifts a bottle of port someone had sent him. Then the bottle turns out to be poisoned...
* WhatTheHellHero: Stottlemeyer is on the delivering end for Monk's streaker bailout in "Mr. Monk and the Red-Headed Stranger". He gets the receiving end in "Mr. Monk Is On The Run Part 2" when Natalie angrily chews him out for faking Monk's death without telling her.
* ArbitrarySkepticism
* BadassMustache: He wears one with such pride that in "Mr. Monk and the Miracle", Monk has trouble recognizing him when he shaves it off and becomes a monk (the only way Monk can identify him is to use the feather on a quill). When Leland is out of action, Randy grows one in response. Monk and Natalie are dumbstruck when they first notice Randy with a beard (though this isn't unusual, as it was said that Randy had a mustache when he lived in Philadelphia). After Leland returns to the force, he gives Randy a safety razor as an implied way of ordering him to shave it off.
* BlatantLies: In "Mr. Monk and the Red-Headed Stranger," Stottlemeyer claims that his arm is in a sling because he broke it in a motorcycle accident. Monk quietly tells Stottlemeyer not to tell this story to too many people because the area he claims to have had his accident in has been closed for brush fires. Stottlemeyer hesitantly admits that he fell off a ladder while cleaning his gutters.
*BerserkButton: Never hurt/nearly kill (intentionally or not) or even imply at having an affair with Leland's first wife Karen, or else you'd better pray that he doesn't end up beating you up or killing you for for it. This one is pressed in "Mr. Monk and the Captain's Wife" by Evan Coker, when he shoots a tow truck driver with a sniper rifle, causing the truck to veer right into the path of Karen's oncoming van, causing her to crash and end up in a coma. In "Mr. Monk and the Captain's Marriage," Sgt. Ryan Sharkey invokes this one on purpose by claiming to be having an affair with Karen to provoke Leland into punching him. This turns out to be because he was responsible for the murder that had just been committed, and he'd lost a tooth in the fight with his victim, and he needed to find an explanation for why the scene was contaminated with his DNA.
**Also, in "Mr. Monk and the Man Who Shot Santa Claus", Stottlemeyer can tolerate people crowding a crime scene to jeer at Monk for shooting Santa (of which the actual details are debated, although Stottlemeyer knows Monk's version is the true version), but if someone ever attempts to go so far as to throw one egg at Monk or Natalie, especially during a crime scene investigation that Monk is involved in trying to determine what most likely happened, Stottlemeyer's fury at this will have no bounds, even going so far as to shout when demanding to know who threw an egg at them and rush towards them.
***Justified, though. Likely the reason Stottlemeyer gets furious is because the egging could have risked contaminating forensic evidence.
* ChekhovsSkill: In "Mr. Monk Buys a House," Stottlemeyer, Randy, and Natalie know Morse code.
* TheCSIEffect: InUniverse, Stottlemeyer says he hates {{CSI}} and personally wants to punch the person "who had the brilliant idea of doing a show that teaches crooks how to avoid being caught".
* ChronicallyCrashedCar: In "Mr. Monk And The Three Julies", his new 2008 Dodge Charger falls victim to this as a result of him trusting Natalie to hold his keys.
* ClearMyName: Twice in the novels, and once in the TV series. In "Mr. Monk Gets Lotto Fever," Monk must clear Stottlemeyer and Natalie of accusations that they rigged a lottery drawing. In ''Mr. Monk and the Dirty Cop'', Nick Slade kills a detective named Paul Braddock that Stottlemeyer had a grudge against, and frames the captain for the killing. In ''Mr. Monk Gets Even'', Stottlemeyer is framed for helping Dale the Whale escape from prison.
* ConvenienceStoreGiftShopping: In "Mr. Monk and the Miracle," after Monk and Natalie rescue a "converted" Stottlemeyer from a monastery, Stottlemeyer gives a safety razor to Randy (who grew a moustache when he took command in Stottlemeyer's absence) as an implied order for him to shave it off, with Randy not being too happy about it.
* ADayInTheLimeLight: Stottlemeyer also has a lot of episodes where he plays a more prominent role.
**Namely, "Mr. Monk is the Best Man" gives Leland a lot of focus as that episode is about his wedding to TK Jansen, and a killer's attempts to sabotage it.
**In two of the episodes that involve Karen, "Mr. Monk and the Captain's Wife" and "Mr. Monk and the Captain's Marriage," Leland gets more screen time.
**Stottlemeyer gets justified extra screentime in "Mr. Monk and the Badge" since Monk temporarily gets reinstated to the force.
**In a few episodes, Stottlemeyer gets a backseat:
***These are episodes in which Stottlemeyer does not appear at all: "Mr. Monk Goes to the Asylum," "Mr. Monk Takes a Vacation," "Mr. Monk and the Airplane," "Mr. Monk Gets Married," "Mr. Monk and the Game Show," "Mr. Monk Gets Stuck in Traffic," and "Mr. Monk Is Underwater".
* DeadpanSnarker
* DrinkingOnDuty: Does this in "Mr. Monk Goes to Vegas", although in his case, [[DrunkenMaster he really does actually need the alcohol in regards to solving a case]].
* DrivesLikeCrazy: In the last episode. Justified, as they were trying to locate Monk before he ends up doing something bad to [[spoiler:Ethan Rickover]] in revenge for [[spoiler:murdering Trudy as well as a nurse]]. The fact that it is stormy outside, and Disher has sold his siren in a garage sale shortly beforehand (as he apparently thought crime was over and the bad guys had quit) didn't help matters, either.
* EmbarrassingSlide: During "Mr. Monk and the Class Reunion", while Stottlemeyer is making a request for information on the UC Berkeley nurse homicide at Monk's reunion, the projectionist displays some very compromising pictures of Stottlemeyer in full riot gear violently attacking protesters at an anti-nuclear demonstration back in the 1970s. Monk and Natalie are clearly mortified, while Stottlemeyer makes an unsuccessful attempt to calm the booing students:
-->'''Captain Leland Stottlemeyer:''' You didn't have a permit!
-->'''Student:''' Yes we did!
-->'''Captain Leland Stottlemeyer:''' It expired at noon!
-->'''Student:''' 12:06.
-->'''Captain Stottlemeyer:''' Like I said, it expired at noon.
*The {{Expy}}: Of InspectorLestrade, by being the smug cop who makes the actual arrest, often being quick to bring the obvious suspect into the interrogation room. Straight at first, but after the first season Stottlemeyer begins to move away from this, generally trusting Monk's intuition, and showing genuine detective skills, especially after "Mr. Monk and the Captain's Wife".
*FriendOnTheForce: He and Randy to Monk
*GenderFlip: The response Stottlemeyer has in "Mr. Monk and the Actor" to seeing his TV-movie self kissing a female Randy is, "That never happened."
*HeroicBSOD: Suffers one in "Mr. Monk and the Captain's Wife" when Karen is hospitalized as a result of the first tow truck shooting.
*INeverSaidItWasPoison: Stottlemeyer's line, "It's called guilty knowledge, and juries eat it up" in ''Mr. Monk Takes the Stand'' supplies the page quote.
**In "Mr. Monk's 100th Case," he admits in an interview that he withholds specific details from the press in order to make it easier to separate useless leads from potential suspects, which is an actual police strategy.
*JackBauerInterrogationTechnique: In the first part of "Mr. Monk and the End". "Your computer crashed."
*NoodleIncident: In "Mr. Monk Is the Best Man," it is revealed that Karen was actually Leland's ''second'' wife, and his first marriage was annulled after only five days.
**In "Mr. Monk vs. the Cobra," Stottlemeyer tells Monk about an incident that happened in Atlanta: according to him, he got in a cab and recognized the driver as [[HistoricalInJoke the guy who was the SAC of the FBI's Atlanta field office until he accused the wrong guy in the 1996 Olympic Park bombing, which ruined his career.]] He brings it up because the case Monk and Stottlemeyer are working involves a suspect who officially has been deceased for six years, and Stottlemeyer is genuinely afraid of the consequences that might occur if he goes public and is immediately proven wrong.
*QuipToBlack: Pulls off the occasional line that ''would'' be one if he did it with dramatic flair instead of perfect deadpan, such as referring to a dead hotel guest as having "checked out early." Tries a few in "Happy Birthday, Mr. Monk". Natalie promptly chews him out for being insensitive.
** Monk unintentionally also makes Leland feel bad about them by decribing how horrible the victim's death must have been. It involved hooks ripping him apart and then being compacted in what must be the world's deadliest trash compactor. "He must have been screaming for mercy the whole time."
* ReasonableAuthorityFigure: He's rarely skeptical of Monk's intuitive leaps, having seen him in action for so long, and often makes accommodations for Monk's OCD on the crime scene.
* SecretSanta: "Mr. Monk and the Secret Santa". Stottlemeyer forgets to buy a gift for Det. Chasen, his Secret Santa, so he regifts a bottle of port someone had sent him. Then the bottle turns out to be poisoned...
* WhatTheHellHero: Stottlemeyer is on the delivering end for Monk's streaker bailout in "Mr. Monk and the Red-Headed Stranger". He gets the receiving end in "Mr. Monk Is On The Run Part 2" when Natalie angrily chews him out for faking Monk's death without telling her.
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!! Dr. Charles Kroger (Stanley Kamel)
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!! Dr. Charles Kroger (Stanley Kamel)
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!! Harold Krenshaw (Tim Bagley)
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!! Harold Krenshaw (Tim Bagley)
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!! Kevin Dorfman (Jarrad Paul)
!! Trudy Monk (Stellina Ruisch, Melora Hardin and Lindy Newton)
!! Dale "The Whale" Biederbeck (Adam Arkin, Tim Curry, Ray Porter)
!! Trudy Monk (Stellina Ruisch, Melora Hardin and Lindy Newton)
!! Dale "The Whale" Biederbeck (Adam Arkin, Tim Curry, Ray Porter)
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!! Kevin Dorfman (Jarrad Paul)
(JarradPaul)
!! Trudy Monk(Stellina Ruisch, Melora Hardin (StellinaRuisch, MeloraHardin and Lindy Newton)
LindyNewton)
!! Dale "The Whale" Biederbeck(Adam Arkin, Tim Curry, Ray Porter)
(AdamArkin, TimCurry, RayPorter)
!! Linda Fusco (SharonLawrence)
!! Trudy K. "TK" Jensen (VirginiaMadsen)
!! Karen Stottlemeyer (GlenneHeadly)
!! Trudy Monk
!! Dale "The Whale" Biederbeck
!! Linda Fusco (SharonLawrence)
!! Trudy K. "TK" Jensen (VirginiaMadsen)
!! Karen Stottlemeyer (GlenneHeadly)
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* ImprobableAimingSkills: In the second part of the series premiere, Monk manages to aim and shoot the perpetrator holding Sharona hostage in the dark. "Aiming" here is key, as that's what separates it from AccidentialAimingSkills.
to:
* ImprobableAimingSkills: In the second part of the series premiere, Monk manages to aim and shoot the perpetrator holding Sharona hostage in the dark. "Aiming" here is key, as that's what separates it from AccidentialAimingSkills.AccidentalAimingSkills.
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The faculty and agents of the hit series ''Series/{{Monk}}''.
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The faculty and agents stars of the hit series television ''Series/{{Monk}}''.
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* DeadpanSnarker: Just like Monk. A few instances:
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* DeadpanSnarker: Just like Monk. A few instances:example:
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[[quoteright:222:http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/howard_09_6366.jpg]]
-->''"Did I mention he also doesn't like driving?"
-->''"Did I mention he also doesn't like driving?"
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-->''"Did I mention he also doesn't like
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Completed the section on Natalie
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* HideYourPregnancy: Traylor Howard became pregnant in the second half of season 5. Therefore, it was necessary for writers to position her in basically every scene accordingly so that her midsection and below were hidden by items like bags, tables, or car doors. This is evident in "Mr. Monk Makes a Friend" and "Mr. Monk and the Really, Really Dead Guy". In "Mr. Monk Is at Your Service," the writers took advantage of Traylor's pregnancy by incorporating it into the episode. So for most of her scenes in that episode, Natalie stands or sits in positions that make it so that we see only the section above her chest, (like behind Stottlemeyer's desk or leaning against her car with the driver's side door open when she and Monk are at the crash scene). However, when she needs to rescue Monk from her old obsessive boyfriend, she wards off his advances [[PillowPregnancy by stuffing a pillow down her chest]]. For these scenes, they just filmed her like they would in normal episodes, like in the first half of the season.
*HotMom
*IAteWhat: In "Mr. Monk and the Voodoo Curse," she accidentally drinks a ritual potion that she was meant to dabble on her neck.
* [[IJustShotMarvinInTheFace I Just Shot Mr. Monk in His Good Leg]]: Natalie accidentally discharges a bullet into Monk's good right leg in "Mr. Monk on Wheels" due to lack of proper firearms training.
*{{Jerkass}}: In some of her early episodes, Natalie seems to fit this.
**"Mr. Monk vs. the Cobra" being a defining example. You see she complains a lot about Monk not covering her expenses, which, although understandable, is just really irritating when you are bringing it up constantly while Monk is trying to conduct a homicide investigation that Stottlemeyer fears could make or break his own career. Though this is TruthInTelevision: people do occassionally blow up even on the job.
**"Mr. Monk Gets Lotto Fever" is another great example since Natalie becomes a full-tilt diva as lottery hostess. As discussed by Monk to Dr. Bell:
-->'''Adrian Monk:''' All I'm trying to say is... it's not the same Natalie! If you knew her you wouldn't know her! Last night after the show, she got somebody fired!
-->'''Dr. Neven Bell:''' Really?
-->'''Adrian Monk:''' One of the crew, sound guy! There were some wires on the floor, and she was just like ''[snarls like a raptor]'' you know, complaining! And I met the guy when I was there and he was a nice kid. Now what's he gonna do? ''[cuts to the person in question, Billy Logan, showing up at a lottery fanatic's apartment, then killing him]''
*ArsonMurderAndJaywalking: In "Mr. Monk Gets Cabin Fever", Natalie is upset with Monk for having to be in the Witness Protection Program just because he didn't stay in the car, for: she is stuck with him, Stottlemeyer and Agent Grooms in the middle of the woods; her daughter is missing a full week of school since she has to stay with Natalie's parents, Monk has a price on his head, and... he broke someone's car radio antenna while trying to straighten it out. The last of these was the one that caused all of the earlier problems.
* [[NiceJobBreakingItHero Nice Job Breaking It, Natalie]] / NoGoodDeedGoesUnpunished: "Mr. Monk on Wheels", the opening scene shows Natalie helping John Kuramoto after his bike hits a pothole and crashes, and even fixes his chain, then compliments him on his bolt-cutters, all while unaware that the bike is stolen. She is very embarrassed when Dean Berry, the bike's legitimate owner, comes running out just as Kuramoto rides away. This causes Monk to get shot in the leg by Kuramoto, ultimately leading to Monk verbally abusing Natalie to the point that she becomes his emotional punching bag/virtual slave.
* PillowPregnancy: See HideYourPregnancy
* ProductPlacement: At some point, the producers started giving Natalie a new car to drive every new season. They start with a Jeep Grand Cherokee from her introduction to halfway through season 5. She then drives a Buick Lucerne for a few episodes, then drives a Ford Escape for the duration of season 6. In season 7, she drives an Audi A3 for the first eight episodes, a Nissan Sentra for three midway episodes, and then a Hyundai Genesis from "Mr. Monk and the Lady Next Door" to the end of the series. How she affords this on Monk's low salary is questionable (although since the same license plate is reused on the last three, it's likely she did transfer plates whenever she changed vehicles).
* ProperlyParanoid: In "Mr. Monk and the Voodoo Curse," Angeline Dilworth sends her a voodoo doll in the mail to trick Natalie into thinking she will be decapitated. Subverted in that Angeline is trying to distract Monk when he notices a mistake regarding the murder of her uncle.
* RecklessGunUsage: After fighting with [[spoiler:Sarah Longson]] for her Walther PPK pistol in "Mr. Monk on Wheels", Natalie turns around, gun in hand. She tells Monk, who had already been shot in the leg earlier in the episode and was trying climb down some stairs to assist Natalie, that she was okay... and [[IJustShotMarvinInTheFace accidentally shoots Monk in his uninjured leg]]. Which makes no sense at first given that in "Mr. Monk and the Three Julies", Natalie tells Randy that she went to a firing range all the time and knows how to use a gun.
** Actually, it's rather Justified: this is only the second time that Natalie has held a firearm (having once held, but never used, a twelve gauge shotgun in an earlier episode). For all we care, she probably hasn't used one for a minimum of eleven years.
* SheIsNotMyGirlfriend: Natalie is generally amused whenever someone tries to suggest she has romantic feelings for Monk.
-->''(Dianne Brooks sees Monk and walks over to him)''\\
'''Dianne Brooks:''' Adrian! There you are. We've been looking for you. ''[Dianne notices Natalie and looks at her suspiciously]''\\
'''Natalie Teeger:''' Hi. I'm Natalie Teeger. ''[Natalie and Dianne shake hands]''\\
'''Dianne Brooks:''' Hi. Dianne Brooks.\\
'''Natalie Teeger:''' I'm his assistant.\\
'''Dianne Brooks:''' Ahh... Oh, so you two aren't [dating]... ''[she points between Monk and Natalie; Natalie smiles, amused]''\\
'''Natalie Teeger:''' No. ''[laughs lightly]''
**And in ''Mr. Monk Goes to Hawaii'', Natalie has to deny to her friend Candace that she and Monk are dating.
**In "Mr. Monk Gets Lotto Fever", one of Natalie's lottery fans asks her if Monk is her boyfriend when Monk is grabbing wipes from her purse.
*SharedFamilyQuirks: Natalie is disturbed by Kevin Dorfman's family being a bunch of {{Motor Mouth}}s in "Mr. Monk and the Magician".
* ShipTease: In "Mr. Monk and the Genius", Monk and Natalie are on a stakeout. When their cover is threatened, Natalie briefly and inexplicably blurts out, [[FakeOutMakeOut "We should kiss!"]], and immediately wonders aloud why she said it.
* SpitTake: Natalie has two memorable ones.
** From "Mr. Monk Fights City Hall":
-->''(Harold is trying to figure out the identity of Monk's new therapist)''
-->'''Harold Krenshaw:''' I'm talking about your new therapist, the mystery doctor, the genius you're always raving about. Who is he? Just tell me his name!
-->'''Adrian Monk:''' I can't tell you. It's privileged information.
-->'''Harold Krenshaw:''' No, it's not. What happens in the session is privileged. His name isn't privileged. People recommend therapists everyday. Am I right, Natalie?
-->'''Natalie Teeger:''' I don't know. I'm just waiting for the conversation to be over.
-->'''Adrian Monk:''' Okay, fine. His name is doctor... ''(glances at elevator doors)'' Door.
-->'''Harold Krenshaw:''' Dr. Door? Is that the best you can do? I suppose if we were standing by that alarm you would've said "Dr. '''Bell'''". ''(Natalie promptly spits water in Harold's face)''
-->'''Natalie Teeger:''' Oh god, Harold! I'm so sorry!
** From "Mr. Monk and the Genius":
-->'''Natalie Teeger:''' You have to admit, he's real good. ''(takes a sip from her lemonade)'' What? He was right. I am thirsty. '''(Monk looks at her oddly)'' What?
-->'''Adrian Monk:''' How do you feel?
-->'''Natalie Teeger:''' Uhhh, I feel fine. ''(Monk continues looking at her oddly; she takes another sip)'' What?
-->'''Adrian Monk:''' It just occurred to me: if there's poison in the lemonade, we could go to the DA and we'd have all the evidence we need. ''(Natalie promptly spits out her lemonade)''
-->'''Natalie Teeger:''' "It just occurred" to you?! And you didn't say anything?! My gosh, Mr. Monk, I've never seen you like this! ''(Disgusted, she dumps the rest of her cup onto the pavement)''
-->'''Adrian Monk:''' How do you feel now?
-->'''Natalie Teeger:''' You know I hate to disappoint you, but I feel fine!
* SuspiciouslySimilarSubstitute: Traylor Howard was this when she was cast as Natalie and brought on in the middle of season 3 to replace BittySchram (Sharona). The fandom has long been locked in a battle over which one is better. It works better here than a few other cases because things like Natalie being similar to Sharona down to having a kid the same age (Benjy, instead of Julie) can be explained by Monk trying to make things stay the same when life changes around him. Though the episode "Mr. Monk and Sharona" highlights how different they are as well.
*UnusuallyUninterestingSight: In "Mr. Monk and the Miracle", when Monk and Natalie are harmonizing TheSummation to get it to Stottlemeyer, we wonder how come none of the other monks hear two voices that obviously don't blend in.
* UnconventionalSmoothie: In "Mr. Monk is On The Run - Part 1", Natalie needs to use a power drill to get Monk's shackles off. Unfortunately, Randy is also staking out Natalie's house. To explain the drill, she pretends that her blender broke and uses the drill to create a smoothie from a number of questionable and unusual ingredients. It's quite funny, admittedly.
* WeirdnessMagnet: In the episode "Mr. Monk Gets Cabin Fever", Natalie observes that everywhere Monk goes, people get murdered, supposing he's followed by some karmic cloud of disaster. By the end of the episode, she changes her mind about him: he's not a Weirdness Magnet for murder, he's cosmically drawn to where murders occur so he can solve them.
** Natalie's one to talk here. Before her daughter Julie even gets her driver's license, she was involved somehow in ''six'' homicide investigations and one museum heist.
* WeNeedADistraction: In "Mr. Monk and the Bad Girlfriend," Natalie uses the pretense of viewing a new apartment to keep Linda Fusco out of her house while Monk searches it for evidence that proves her responsible for shooting her business partner.
* WhatTheHellHero: Natalie has been on the delivering end and the receiving end. On the delivering end, among other examples, she is seen angrily chewing out Monk for wanting to follow Roderick Brody's wife when she considers it stalking, she chews Stottlemeyer out for withholding the truth from her about Monk faking his death, and others. On the receiving end, Dr. Kroger chews her out twice in ''Mr. Monk Goes to Germany'' and ''Mr. Monk is Miserable'' - first for helping Monk travel to Germany, and then for refusing to help Monk in a homicide investigation.
* YouNeverDidThatForMe: In the episode where Sharona and Natalie meet, Natalie finds out that Monk paid Sharona a lot more than he paid her. Thus she complains that Monk never paid her that much. It was a difference of twenty dollars.
*HotMom
*IAteWhat: In "Mr. Monk and the Voodoo Curse," she accidentally drinks a ritual potion that she was meant to dabble on her neck.
* [[IJustShotMarvinInTheFace I Just Shot Mr. Monk in His Good Leg]]: Natalie accidentally discharges a bullet into Monk's good right leg in "Mr. Monk on Wheels" due to lack of proper firearms training.
*{{Jerkass}}: In some of her early episodes, Natalie seems to fit this.
**"Mr. Monk vs. the Cobra" being a defining example. You see she complains a lot about Monk not covering her expenses, which, although understandable, is just really irritating when you are bringing it up constantly while Monk is trying to conduct a homicide investigation that Stottlemeyer fears could make or break his own career. Though this is TruthInTelevision: people do occassionally blow up even on the job.
**"Mr. Monk Gets Lotto Fever" is another great example since Natalie becomes a full-tilt diva as lottery hostess. As discussed by Monk to Dr. Bell:
-->'''Adrian Monk:''' All I'm trying to say is... it's not the same Natalie! If you knew her you wouldn't know her! Last night after the show, she got somebody fired!
-->'''Dr. Neven Bell:''' Really?
-->'''Adrian Monk:''' One of the crew, sound guy! There were some wires on the floor, and she was just like ''[snarls like a raptor]'' you know, complaining! And I met the guy when I was there and he was a nice kid. Now what's he gonna do? ''[cuts to the person in question, Billy Logan, showing up at a lottery fanatic's apartment, then killing him]''
*ArsonMurderAndJaywalking: In "Mr. Monk Gets Cabin Fever", Natalie is upset with Monk for having to be in the Witness Protection Program just because he didn't stay in the car, for: she is stuck with him, Stottlemeyer and Agent Grooms in the middle of the woods; her daughter is missing a full week of school since she has to stay with Natalie's parents, Monk has a price on his head, and... he broke someone's car radio antenna while trying to straighten it out. The last of these was the one that caused all of the earlier problems.
* [[NiceJobBreakingItHero Nice Job Breaking It, Natalie]] / NoGoodDeedGoesUnpunished: "Mr. Monk on Wheels", the opening scene shows Natalie helping John Kuramoto after his bike hits a pothole and crashes, and even fixes his chain, then compliments him on his bolt-cutters, all while unaware that the bike is stolen. She is very embarrassed when Dean Berry, the bike's legitimate owner, comes running out just as Kuramoto rides away. This causes Monk to get shot in the leg by Kuramoto, ultimately leading to Monk verbally abusing Natalie to the point that she becomes his emotional punching bag/virtual slave.
* PillowPregnancy: See HideYourPregnancy
* ProductPlacement: At some point, the producers started giving Natalie a new car to drive every new season. They start with a Jeep Grand Cherokee from her introduction to halfway through season 5. She then drives a Buick Lucerne for a few episodes, then drives a Ford Escape for the duration of season 6. In season 7, she drives an Audi A3 for the first eight episodes, a Nissan Sentra for three midway episodes, and then a Hyundai Genesis from "Mr. Monk and the Lady Next Door" to the end of the series. How she affords this on Monk's low salary is questionable (although since the same license plate is reused on the last three, it's likely she did transfer plates whenever she changed vehicles).
* ProperlyParanoid: In "Mr. Monk and the Voodoo Curse," Angeline Dilworth sends her a voodoo doll in the mail to trick Natalie into thinking she will be decapitated. Subverted in that Angeline is trying to distract Monk when he notices a mistake regarding the murder of her uncle.
* RecklessGunUsage: After fighting with [[spoiler:Sarah Longson]] for her Walther PPK pistol in "Mr. Monk on Wheels", Natalie turns around, gun in hand. She tells Monk, who had already been shot in the leg earlier in the episode and was trying climb down some stairs to assist Natalie, that she was okay... and [[IJustShotMarvinInTheFace accidentally shoots Monk in his uninjured leg]]. Which makes no sense at first given that in "Mr. Monk and the Three Julies", Natalie tells Randy that she went to a firing range all the time and knows how to use a gun.
** Actually, it's rather Justified: this is only the second time that Natalie has held a firearm (having once held, but never used, a twelve gauge shotgun in an earlier episode). For all we care, she probably hasn't used one for a minimum of eleven years.
* SheIsNotMyGirlfriend: Natalie is generally amused whenever someone tries to suggest she has romantic feelings for Monk.
-->''(Dianne Brooks sees Monk and walks over to him)''\\
'''Dianne Brooks:''' Adrian! There you are. We've been looking for you. ''[Dianne notices Natalie and looks at her suspiciously]''\\
'''Natalie Teeger:''' Hi. I'm Natalie Teeger. ''[Natalie and Dianne shake hands]''\\
'''Dianne Brooks:''' Hi. Dianne Brooks.\\
'''Natalie Teeger:''' I'm his assistant.\\
'''Dianne Brooks:''' Ahh... Oh, so you two aren't [dating]... ''[she points between Monk and Natalie; Natalie smiles, amused]''\\
'''Natalie Teeger:''' No. ''[laughs lightly]''
**And in ''Mr. Monk Goes to Hawaii'', Natalie has to deny to her friend Candace that she and Monk are dating.
**In "Mr. Monk Gets Lotto Fever", one of Natalie's lottery fans asks her if Monk is her boyfriend when Monk is grabbing wipes from her purse.
*SharedFamilyQuirks: Natalie is disturbed by Kevin Dorfman's family being a bunch of {{Motor Mouth}}s in "Mr. Monk and the Magician".
* ShipTease: In "Mr. Monk and the Genius", Monk and Natalie are on a stakeout. When their cover is threatened, Natalie briefly and inexplicably blurts out, [[FakeOutMakeOut "We should kiss!"]], and immediately wonders aloud why she said it.
* SpitTake: Natalie has two memorable ones.
** From "Mr. Monk Fights City Hall":
-->''(Harold is trying to figure out the identity of Monk's new therapist)''
-->'''Harold Krenshaw:''' I'm talking about your new therapist, the mystery doctor, the genius you're always raving about. Who is he? Just tell me his name!
-->'''Adrian Monk:''' I can't tell you. It's privileged information.
-->'''Harold Krenshaw:''' No, it's not. What happens in the session is privileged. His name isn't privileged. People recommend therapists everyday. Am I right, Natalie?
-->'''Natalie Teeger:''' I don't know. I'm just waiting for the conversation to be over.
-->'''Adrian Monk:''' Okay, fine. His name is doctor... ''(glances at elevator doors)'' Door.
-->'''Harold Krenshaw:''' Dr. Door? Is that the best you can do? I suppose if we were standing by that alarm you would've said "Dr. '''Bell'''". ''(Natalie promptly spits water in Harold's face)''
-->'''Natalie Teeger:''' Oh god, Harold! I'm so sorry!
** From "Mr. Monk and the Genius":
-->'''Natalie Teeger:''' You have to admit, he's real good. ''(takes a sip from her lemonade)'' What? He was right. I am thirsty. '''(Monk looks at her oddly)'' What?
-->'''Adrian Monk:''' How do you feel?
-->'''Natalie Teeger:''' Uhhh, I feel fine. ''(Monk continues looking at her oddly; she takes another sip)'' What?
-->'''Adrian Monk:''' It just occurred to me: if there's poison in the lemonade, we could go to the DA and we'd have all the evidence we need. ''(Natalie promptly spits out her lemonade)''
-->'''Natalie Teeger:''' "It just occurred" to you?! And you didn't say anything?! My gosh, Mr. Monk, I've never seen you like this! ''(Disgusted, she dumps the rest of her cup onto the pavement)''
-->'''Adrian Monk:''' How do you feel now?
-->'''Natalie Teeger:''' You know I hate to disappoint you, but I feel fine!
* SuspiciouslySimilarSubstitute: Traylor Howard was this when she was cast as Natalie and brought on in the middle of season 3 to replace BittySchram (Sharona). The fandom has long been locked in a battle over which one is better. It works better here than a few other cases because things like Natalie being similar to Sharona down to having a kid the same age (Benjy, instead of Julie) can be explained by Monk trying to make things stay the same when life changes around him. Though the episode "Mr. Monk and Sharona" highlights how different they are as well.
*UnusuallyUninterestingSight: In "Mr. Monk and the Miracle", when Monk and Natalie are harmonizing TheSummation to get it to Stottlemeyer, we wonder how come none of the other monks hear two voices that obviously don't blend in.
* UnconventionalSmoothie: In "Mr. Monk is On The Run - Part 1", Natalie needs to use a power drill to get Monk's shackles off. Unfortunately, Randy is also staking out Natalie's house. To explain the drill, she pretends that her blender broke and uses the drill to create a smoothie from a number of questionable and unusual ingredients. It's quite funny, admittedly.
* WeirdnessMagnet: In the episode "Mr. Monk Gets Cabin Fever", Natalie observes that everywhere Monk goes, people get murdered, supposing he's followed by some karmic cloud of disaster. By the end of the episode, she changes her mind about him: he's not a Weirdness Magnet for murder, he's cosmically drawn to where murders occur so he can solve them.
** Natalie's one to talk here. Before her daughter Julie even gets her driver's license, she was involved somehow in ''six'' homicide investigations and one museum heist.
* WeNeedADistraction: In "Mr. Monk and the Bad Girlfriend," Natalie uses the pretense of viewing a new apartment to keep Linda Fusco out of her house while Monk searches it for evidence that proves her responsible for shooting her business partner.
* WhatTheHellHero: Natalie has been on the delivering end and the receiving end. On the delivering end, among other examples, she is seen angrily chewing out Monk for wanting to follow Roderick Brody's wife when she considers it stalking, she chews Stottlemeyer out for withholding the truth from her about Monk faking his death, and others. On the receiving end, Dr. Kroger chews her out twice in ''Mr. Monk Goes to Germany'' and ''Mr. Monk is Miserable'' - first for helping Monk travel to Germany, and then for refusing to help Monk in a homicide investigation.
* YouNeverDidThatForMe: In the episode where Sharona and Natalie meet, Natalie finds out that Monk paid Sharona a lot more than he paid her. Thus she complains that Monk never paid her that much. It was a difference of twenty dollars.
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Monk's current personal assistant. She meets him in "Mr. Monk and the Red Herring", after two men who had broken into her home, after she stabs and kills Brian Lemmon, the second intruder, in self-defense with a pair of scissors. Captain Stottlemeyer and Lieutenant Disher, baffled, suggest to Natalie to take her case to Monk. Monk's former assistant Sharona has just left, and Monk asks Natalie if she would become his new assistant. Initially, she refuses, but over the course of the investigation, Monk proves himself kind to Natalie's daughter Julie.
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-->''"Did I mention he also doesn't like driving?"
Natalie Teeger, nee Davenport, is Monk's current personal assistant. She meets him in "Mr. Monk and the Red Herring",after where, while working as a bartender, two men who had broken break into her home, after house, and she stabs and kills Brian Lemmon, the second intruder, in self-defense with a pair of scissors. Captain Stottlemeyer and Lieutenant Disher, baffled, suggest to Natalie to take her case to Monk. Monk's former assistant Sharona has just left, and Monk asks Natalie if she would become his new assistant. Initially, she refuses, but over the course of the investigation, Monk proves himself kind to Natalie's daughter Julie.
Natalie Teeger, nee Davenport, is Monk's current personal assistant. She meets him in "Mr. Monk and the Red Herring",
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ActorAllusion: Natalie's parents are '''Bobby''' and '''Peggy''' Davenport. Their first names are the exact same as the first names of Traylor Howard's real parents, '''Peggy''' E. Traylor and '''Robert''' M. Howard, Jr.
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*ActorAllusion: Natalie's parents are '''Bobby''' and '''Peggy''' Davenport. Their first names are the exact same as the first names of Traylor Howard's real parents, '''Peggy''' E. Traylor and '''Robert''' M. Howard, Jr.
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* BerserkButton: Natalie has a couple. She tends to get into a furious rage whenever Monk is late with her paycheck or is unable to pay her, for whatever reason. Lampshaded in "Mr. Monk and the Genius," where Monk and Natalie are fighting about back pay, and are interrupted by Linda Kloster, who apologetically says she heard screaming, and Natalie says, "Oh, no, that's just me. I scream every payday."
*** Natalie doesn't like people lying to her or keeping the truth back from her. She gets pissed off with Stottlemeyer in "Mr. Monk Is On The Run Part 2" when she realizes that he has been covering up the fact that he helped fake Monk's death.
*** Natalie doesn't like people lying to her or keeping the truth back from her. She gets pissed off with Stottlemeyer in "Mr. Monk Is On The Run Part 2" when she realizes that he has been covering up the fact that he helped fake Monk's death.
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* AdaptationExpansion: Whereas the TV series generally focuses on just Monk, Natalie arguably is the second main character of the novels, as she is also the books' narrator. Her background, namely stuff relating to her marriage to Mitch, is expanded upon.
* BerserkButton: Natalie has a couple. She tends to get into a furious rage whenever Monk is late with her paycheck or is unable to pay her, for whatever reason. Lampshaded in "Mr. Monk and the Genius," where Monk and Natalie are fighting about back pay, and are interrupted by Linda Kloster, who apologetically says she heardscreaming, and screaming. Natalie coolly says, "Oh, no, that's just me. I scream every payday."
*** Natalie" Sort of becomes a RunningGag of the show.
**Natalie doesn't like people lying to her or keeping the truth back from her. She gets pissed off with Stottlemeyer in "Mr. Monk Is On The Run Part 2" when she realizes that he has been covering up the fact that he helped fake Monk's death.
* BerserkButton: Natalie has a couple. She tends to get into a furious rage whenever Monk is late with her paycheck or is unable to pay her, for whatever reason. Lampshaded in "Mr. Monk and the Genius," where Monk and Natalie are fighting about back pay, and are interrupted by Linda Kloster, who apologetically says she heard
*** Natalie
**Natalie doesn't like people lying to her or keeping the truth back from her. She gets pissed off with Stottlemeyer in "Mr. Monk Is On The Run Part 2" when she realizes that he has been covering up the fact that he helped fake Monk's death.
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* BusmansHoliday: Natalie supplies the lampshade hanging for the page quote.
* ClearMyName: For Natalie, she and Sharona get this in the novel ''Mr. Monk and the Two Assistants''
* ADayInTheLimeLight: Sometimes Natalie gets more prominence in select episodes than others.
**For instance, she only appears in all of maybe three scenes in "Mr. Monk Makes the Playoffs", yet in the next episode, "Mr. Monk and the Bully", she appears in every single scene except for two (Monk talking to Roderick Brody in the interrogation room and Monk at Dr. Bell's office).
**Natalie gets a backseat in "Mr. Monk Gets a New Shrink," but in the episodes surrounding it, "Mr. Monk and the Class Reunion" and "Mr. Monk Goes to a Rock Concert," she has very prominent roles.
*DeadpanSnarker: Just like Monk. A few instances:
**In "Mr. Monk and the Lady Next Door"
-->'''Captain Leland Stottlemeyer:''' ''[getting taken hostage]'' Keyes, you don't wanna do this. You don't want to kill a cop.
-->'''Adrian Monk:''' Or an ex-cop.
-->'''Natalie Teeger:''' Or an ex-cop's assistant.
**In "Mr. Monk and the Bully":
-->''[watching Monk open a digital camera package with a scalpel]''
-->'''Natalie Teeger:''' Mr. Monk, it's not heart surgery.
*DrivesLikeCrazy: In "Mr. Monk and the Three Julies," Natalie does this when she "borrows" Captain Stottlemeyer's brand new Dodge Charger. The first time, the passenger's side mirror breaks off. The second time, the hood is crumpled up from supposedly taking a shortcut across a creek.
**DrivingTestSmashers
*EmbarassingSlide: Natalie and Monk are mortified when pictures of Stottlemeyer in riot gear show up in the slideshow in "Mr. Monk and the Class Reunion"
*{{Expy}}: Like Monk is one of SherlockHolmes, Natalie is one of Dr. Watson. However, it isn't entirely a perfect expy, as Natalie is a deceased Navy pilot's widow, in contrast to Sharona, who was a nurse before Monk hires her.
*FakeOutMakeOut: Averted in "Mr. Monk and the Genius", when Monk and Natalie are on a stakeout. Natalie sees their suspect approaching their car, Natalie blurts out "He's coming! What do we do? Uh, we should kiss! No! I didn't say that! I wasn't thinking, I never said that!"
* FifteenMinutesOfFame: Natalie gets a ridiculous amount of fame from a brief stint as a lottery girl, much to Monk's chagrin.
* GilliganCut: In "Mr. Monk Is On the Run, Part 2", Stottlemeyer makes Natalie promise not to locate Monk (who is in hiding). Immediately, the scene cuts to Natalie packing a suitcase.
* GirlFriday
* HeyThatsMyLine: To flatter Monk in "Mr. Monk Gets Lotto Fever," Natalie signs off with Monk's signature line, "You'll thank me later!"
-->'''Adrian Monk:''' "You'll thank me later?" That's my line! I say that!
-->'''Lt. Randall Disher:''' It hurts, doesn't it?
* HollywoodSpelling: Natalie's last name has twice been a plot point.
** In "Mr. Monk and the Election," Monk proves that a death threat letter against Natalie (running for the school board) was a diversion because he notices that although the shooter did take the time to dot his I's and cross his T's, he didn't write the last R on her last name when writing the message ("Close Ashton High, Natalie Teege Must Withdraw" is the result). This is proven when he realizes the shooter was getting her name from a custom poster with Natalie's name, from which the R had fallen off, indicating that the shooter didn't know her already.
** In "Mr. Monk and the Voodoo Curse," [[spoiler:Natalie receives a voodoo doll in the mail, sent by a killer paramedic trying to distract Monk from investigating her by tricking Natalie into thinking she will be decapitated.]] Monk realizes that the sender can't have known who Natalie was, since the sender misspelled her last name as "Teager" (with an A instead of a double E). Then [[spoiler:Angeline Dilworth, the aforementioned killer paramedic, [[NotMyDriver happens to be the one who picks Natalie up after she mistakenly ingests Reverend Jorgensen's concotion during a cleansing ritual]]. During the ride, after Monk gives TheSummation to Jorgensen in the van, Natalie is in the ambulance and happens to notice that Angeline misspells her name as "Teager" on the patient chart. A struggle breaks out.]]
* ClearMyName: For Natalie, she and Sharona get this in the novel ''Mr. Monk and the Two Assistants''
* ADayInTheLimeLight: Sometimes Natalie gets more prominence in select episodes than others.
**For instance, she only appears in all of maybe three scenes in "Mr. Monk Makes the Playoffs", yet in the next episode, "Mr. Monk and the Bully", she appears in every single scene except for two (Monk talking to Roderick Brody in the interrogation room and Monk at Dr. Bell's office).
**Natalie gets a backseat in "Mr. Monk Gets a New Shrink," but in the episodes surrounding it, "Mr. Monk and the Class Reunion" and "Mr. Monk Goes to a Rock Concert," she has very prominent roles.
*DeadpanSnarker: Just like Monk. A few instances:
**In "Mr. Monk and the Lady Next Door"
-->'''Captain Leland Stottlemeyer:''' ''[getting taken hostage]'' Keyes, you don't wanna do this. You don't want to kill a cop.
-->'''Adrian Monk:''' Or an ex-cop.
-->'''Natalie Teeger:''' Or an ex-cop's assistant.
**In "Mr. Monk and the Bully":
-->''[watching Monk open a digital camera package with a scalpel]''
-->'''Natalie Teeger:''' Mr. Monk, it's not heart surgery.
*DrivesLikeCrazy: In "Mr. Monk and the Three Julies," Natalie does this when she "borrows" Captain Stottlemeyer's brand new Dodge Charger. The first time, the passenger's side mirror breaks off. The second time, the hood is crumpled up from supposedly taking a shortcut across a creek.
**DrivingTestSmashers
*EmbarassingSlide: Natalie and Monk are mortified when pictures of Stottlemeyer in riot gear show up in the slideshow in "Mr. Monk and the Class Reunion"
*{{Expy}}: Like Monk is one of SherlockHolmes, Natalie is one of Dr. Watson. However, it isn't entirely a perfect expy, as Natalie is a deceased Navy pilot's widow, in contrast to Sharona, who was a nurse before Monk hires her.
*FakeOutMakeOut: Averted in "Mr. Monk and the Genius", when Monk and Natalie are on a stakeout. Natalie sees their suspect approaching their car, Natalie blurts out "He's coming! What do we do? Uh, we should kiss! No! I didn't say that! I wasn't thinking, I never said that!"
* FifteenMinutesOfFame: Natalie gets a ridiculous amount of fame from a brief stint as a lottery girl, much to Monk's chagrin.
* GilliganCut: In "Mr. Monk Is On the Run, Part 2", Stottlemeyer makes Natalie promise not to locate Monk (who is in hiding). Immediately, the scene cuts to Natalie packing a suitcase.
* GirlFriday
* HeyThatsMyLine: To flatter Monk in "Mr. Monk Gets Lotto Fever," Natalie signs off with Monk's signature line, "You'll thank me later!"
-->'''Adrian Monk:''' "You'll thank me later?" That's my line! I say that!
-->'''Lt. Randall Disher:''' It hurts, doesn't it?
* HollywoodSpelling: Natalie's last name has twice been a plot point.
** In "Mr. Monk and the Election," Monk proves that a death threat letter against Natalie (running for the school board) was a diversion because he notices that although the shooter did take the time to dot his I's and cross his T's, he didn't write the last R on her last name when writing the message ("Close Ashton High, Natalie Teege Must Withdraw" is the result). This is proven when he realizes the shooter was getting her name from a custom poster with Natalie's name, from which the R had fallen off, indicating that the shooter didn't know her already.
** In "Mr. Monk and the Voodoo Curse," [[spoiler:Natalie receives a voodoo doll in the mail, sent by a killer paramedic trying to distract Monk from investigating her by tricking Natalie into thinking she will be decapitated.]] Monk realizes that the sender can't have known who Natalie was, since the sender misspelled her last name as "Teager" (with an A instead of a double E). Then [[spoiler:Angeline Dilworth, the aforementioned killer paramedic, [[NotMyDriver happens to be the one who picks Natalie up after she mistakenly ingests Reverend Jorgensen's concotion during a cleansing ritual]]. During the ride, after Monk gives TheSummation to Jorgensen in the van, Natalie is in the ambulance and happens to notice that Angeline misspells her name as "Teager" on the patient chart. A struggle breaks out.]]
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Monk's current personal assistant. She meets him in "Mr. Monk and the Red Herring", after two men who had broken into her home, after she stabs and kills Brian Lemmon, the second intruder, in self-defense with a pair of scissors. Captain Stottlemeyer and Lieutenant Disher, baffled, suggest to Natalie to take her case to Monk. Monk's former assistant Sharona has just left, and Monk asks Natalie if she would become his new assistant. Initially, she refuses, but over the course of the investigation, Monk proves himself kind to Natalie's daughter Julie.
Tropes associated with Natalie are:
ActorAllusion: Natalie's parents are '''Bobby''' and '''Peggy''' Davenport. Their first names are the exact same as the first names of Traylor Howard's real parents, '''Peggy''' E. Traylor and '''Robert''' M. Howard, Jr.
** This is not the first time Natalie has been involved in a relationship with [[DirtyWork a man named Mitch]].
* AsLongAsItSoundsForeign: In ''Mr. Monk Goes to Germany'', Natalie brings up a real example widely known in California: the Weinerschnitzel hot dog chain. To elaborate:
** It was originally called "Der Wienerschnitzel", but they dropped the "Der" part in 1977 because it's a masculine article ("Das" should be used to refer to neuter nouns). Even so, "Wiener schnitzel" (as it should be written) doesn't refer to hot dogs, but rather a breaded Viennese-style veal cutlet (which is what is served in the scene where Natalie mentions this), which the restaurant ironically doesn't sell. "Wiener" is actually short for "Wiener Würstchen", loosely translating to "little Viennese sausage".
** Schnitzel is best known in the US as chicken-fried steak, which was invented when Austrian (or perhaps Bavarian) immigrants in Texas decided to make it with cube steak rather than veal cutlet (cube steak is far, far cheaper, and while beef is omnipresent in Texas, veal is less so for a variety of reasons).
* BerserkButton: Natalie has a couple. She tends to get into a furious rage whenever Monk is late with her paycheck or is unable to pay her, for whatever reason. Lampshaded in "Mr. Monk and the Genius," where Monk and Natalie are fighting about back pay, and are interrupted by Linda Kloster, who apologetically says she heard screaming, and Natalie says, "Oh, no, that's just me. I scream every payday."
*** Natalie doesn't like people lying to her or keeping the truth back from her. She gets pissed off with Stottlemeyer in "Mr. Monk Is On The Run Part 2" when she realizes that he has been covering up the fact that he helped fake Monk's death.
* ChekhovsSkill: In "Mr. Monk Buys a House", Natalie, Stottlemeyer and Disher share the knowledge of Morse code.
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!! Benjy Fleming (Max Morrow[[note:All season 1 episodes except for the pilot]] / Kane Ritchotte[[note:Season 1 pilot, and seasons 2-3]])
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!! Benjy Fleming (Max Morrow[[note:All season 1 episodes except for the pilot]] / Kane Ritchotte[[note:Season 1 pilot, and seasons 2-3]])
Morrow/Kane Ritchotte)
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!! Trudy Monk (Stellina Ruisch[[note:All flashbacks in seasons 1, 2, and first part of season 3]], Melora Hardin[[note:All appearances from season 3 through season 8]], and Lindy Newton[[note:Flashbacks in "Mr. Monk and the Class Reunion"]])
!! Dale "The Whale" Biederbeck (Adam Arkin [[note:"Mr. Monk Meets Dale the Whale"]], Tim Curry [[note:"Mr. Monk Goes to Jail"]], and Ray Porter [[note:"Mr. Monk Is On The Run, Part 2"]])
!! Dale "The Whale" Biederbeck (Adam Arkin [[note:"Mr. Monk Meets Dale the Whale"]], Tim Curry [[note:"Mr. Monk Goes to Jail"]], and Ray Porter [[note:"Mr. Monk Is On The Run, Part 2"]])
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!! Trudy Monk (Stellina Ruisch[[note:All flashbacks in seasons 1, 2, and first part of season 3]], Ruisch, Melora Hardin[[note:All appearances from season 3 through season 8]], Hardin and Lindy Newton[[note:Flashbacks in "Mr. Monk and the Class Reunion"]])
Newton)
!! Dale "The Whale" Biederbeck (AdamArkin [[note:"Mr. Monk Meets Dale the Whale"]], Arkin, Tim Curry [[note:"Mr. Monk Goes to Jail"]], and Curry, Ray Porter [[note:"Mr. Monk Is On The Run, Part 2"]])
Porter)
!! Dale "The Whale" Biederbeck (Adam
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!! Dale "The Whale" Biederbeck (Adam Arkin [[note:"Mr. Monk Meets Dale the Whale"]], Tim Curry [[note:"Mr. Monk Goes to Jail"]], and Ray Porter [[note:"Mr. Monk Is On The Run, Part 2"]])
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!! Dale "The Whale" Biederbeck (Adam Arkin [[note:"Mr. Monk Meets Dale the Whale"]], Tim Curry [[note:"Mr. Monk Goes to Jail"]], and Ray Porter [[note:"Mr. Monk Is On The Run, Part 2"]])2"]])
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The faculty and agents of the hit series ''Series/{{Monk}}''.
------
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[[folder: Main Characters]]
!!Adrian Monk (Tony Shalhoub)
[[quoteright:222:http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/monk.jpg]]
-->Here's what happened.
The main character of the series. He is a former San Francisco police inspector who suffered a [[FreakOut nervous breakdown]] after [[DisposableWoman the murder of his wife]], Trudy. He is a lifelong sufferer of [[SuperOCD Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder]] and has many phobias, and those obsessions became crippling after his breakdown, forcing his retirement; he recovers throughout the series, though he is never fully "cured". His OCD is also the reason Monk was such a successful policeman; one of his compulsions is [[HyperAwareness paying amazing attention to details]].
Thanks to his breakdown, Monk was [[TurnInYourBadge discharged from his department]], but is frequently called in to consult on cases which baffle the police, often some kind of LockedRoomMystery, by his friend and former commander Captain Stottlemeyer. His [[DisabilitySuperpower disorders]] are part and parcel of his unique mind; without them, he wouldn't be able to solve these cases. Of course, the one case Monk's been trying to solve since his breakdown is Trudy's murder, and each season of the show brings him a little closer to finally solving the mystery behind her death (with the show's final season bringing the case to a close for good).
*AccidentalAimingSkills: In the pilot, Monk hits something by accident. In "Mr. Monk Can't See a Thing," he quickly jerks Stottlemeyer's pistol off to the side to fire off a warning shot when cornered by Peter Breen in the morgue) and, in "Mr. Monk Is At Your Service", despite not having bothered to aim at anything, kills a bird with a rifle.
*ActorAllusion: In "Mr. Monk Is Someone Else", when Monk is going through the crash course on his doppelganger's background with FBI Agent Stone, he says his doppelgangers' parents' names were Joseph and Helen. Those are the names of Tony Shalhoub's parents.
*AfraidOfNeedles: To such a point that in "Mr. Monk and the End", they have literally single employee in the hospital brought in to restrain him while they inject him.
*AirHugging: Though this is less Monk being uncomfortable with men (specifically, his brother) and more of a "his being uncomfortable with touching" case.
*AttentionDeficitOohShiny: Monk solves impossible cases regularly at least once per episode, but he often solves cases in under a minute when he's barely paying attention, since he's already distracted by another case. Often he solves four or five cases within fifteen minutes like this, or cases so obscure that nobody actually cares about them. He once determined while working on another case in a museum that the body on display was actually hit in the skull rather than dying from the cause declared by the museum, effectively solving a 30,000 year-old case. Stottlemeyer actually exploits this, calling out the facts of various cases while he's distracted.
**Note that the closer a case comes to his own life, the more trouble he has solving it. For example, in "Mr. Monk and the Garbage Strike", the problem is his pet peeve, cleanliness, that literally drives him insane trying to solve, and takes three tries and actually going into a computer cleanroom before he closes it. Likewise, he has problems to a lesser degree in "Mr. Monk Goes to a Fashion Show," that involve the son of "Inspector Number 8" of his shirts. Here, however, his problems vanish once he gets enough evidence to make a solid start on the case. The ultimate example of course being the case of his wife, Trudy, and her car bombing.
*BadBadActing:
**In "Mr. Monk Goes to the Theater", after Hal Duncan is stabbed and killed on stage, Monk ends up taking the dead man's place... it goes as well as you'd expect. Also averted in that he did manage to act out the events quite well to recreate the crime scene... when the stage was empty. In fact, literally the only reason he was not acting well is due to stage fright. But this will probably remind ou very well of what it was like the first time you ever went out on stage if you ever were a stage actor.
**Thare's also "Mr. Monk Gets Married," where Monk and Sharona act like a couple with bad marriage problems to get into a marriage therapy clinic (Monk posing as a cowardly mop salesman and Sharona being his alcoholic wife), and do such a terrible job of it that the couple's therapist is relieved to hear they aren't married.
*BecomingTheMask: Twice. In "Mr. Monk Is Someone Else", Monk adopts the persona of a dead hit man in order to save the life of his target. He ends up playing his role a little bit too well, which Stottlemeyer praises him for. And in "Mr. Monk Is At Your Service," he goes undercover as the head butler for someone who had a crush on Natalie, and seems to enjoy it more than solving crimes. His acting is pretty good, though - he hastily improvises lies on the spot that he wasn't expecting to make, and does a good job pretending not to know Natalie when they meet during the luncheon in the episode.
*BewareTheNiceOnes: Really. In episodes related to Trudy's death, Monk can take on some KnightTemplar traits.
**In "Mr. Monk and the Man Who Shot Santa", with thief Michael Kenworthy dressing as Santa and setting up a distraction while his crew attempts to heist a diamond, Monk is in an emotionally bad state and ends up having to shoot Kenworthy in self-defense with his own revolver when the perp tries to kill him.
**Monk shows throughout the series that he is quite capable of defending himself when the situation demands, to the point of completely ignoring his phobias — including shooting and severely wounding a murderer in self-defense while temporarily blind, overpowering a deranged man with a gun, or fending off a perp with dirty bags when being ill.
**In "Mr. Monk and the Badge" Monk fights off Mikhail Almonov on an unstable window-washing platform and stabs the man in the leg with said badge.
**"Mr. Monk and the Blackout" — "Be careful, your left shoelace is untied," when stalking Winston Brenner in the dark. Brenner replies, "How does he know that?!"
** For Adrian, it could be anything, really, but his true BerserkButton is Trudy's death. Anything that threatens his memory of her, or implies anything about what happened, causes Adrian to snap, leading to BewareTheNiceOnes, as above.
*** That particular BerserkButton causes Monk to protest the demolition of the parking garage where Trudy was murdered in the Season Seven finale, "Mr. Monk Fights City Hall"; the structure was being demolished to make way for a children's playground, and Monk was worried that the demolition could destroy any remaining potential evidence. [[spoiler:However, the councilwoman who helps bring the matter before the city council is killed, leaving Monk to solve her murder and reveal that her vote would keep the parking garage standing; unfortunately, Monk insults the councilwoman's replacement during TheSummation, which causes the replacement to change the deciding vote out of spite. A sign shown after Monk leaves the structure for the last time shows that the playground replacing the parking garage will be named in Trudy's honor.]]
*** The memorable moment in "Mr. Monk Is on the Air" when the DJ made cruel jokes about Trudy's death (to the point his heckling yes men were disturbed by it). The yes men even tried to stop their boss before Monk simply jumped over the table and beat him up.
*** In the series finale, when Monk confronts Trudy's killer, [[spoiler:Ethan Rickover]], he claims that Trudy was unstable and crazy, prompting Monk to ''beat the crap out of him''. Mind you, at this point, Monk is [[spoiler:poisoned and ''dying'']]. The cool bit was that [[spoiler:the Judge wanted to make him look crazy. When he tries to get Monk killed by the cops using the same method at the end of the episode, Monk ''doesn't'' fall for it.]]
* BlackAndWhiteInsanity: Monk will try prosecuting people for letting their dogs pee in the street, having an uneven number of buttons undone on their shirts/sweaters or wearing mismatched socks, as InsaneTrollLogic and SuperOCD make him believe that such "crimes against the universe" will "invariably" lead to ArsonMurderAndJaywalking. And don't get us started on his nudity problem. He can't even look at nude ''sculptures'' (in fact, in "Mr. Monk Takes the Stand", when Monk must describe a nude marble sculpture that Evan Gildea had been creating, he describes it by.... squealing through gritted teeth, which almost sounds a bit like a tea kettle. So the judge asks the stenographer to read back what Monk said: "Witness: The defendant removed a sheet revealing a naked eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee...." ''[pitch falters]'').
* BlessedWithSuck / CursedWithAwesome: "It's a gift... and a curse."
* BrokenPedestal: When Christine Rapp writes a tell-all book about Monk's favorite TV show in "Mr. Monk's Favorite Show" -- the ''only thing that made him happy as a child'' -- there isn't enough BrainBleach in the world to help him. Given the rest of the book is that bad, it begs the question: what is on [[spoiler:page 73?]]
* BuffySpeak: When Monk tells people to pause or fast-forward something on a TV in later episodes, he says "picture freeze" or "picture go fast". Ironically, he didn't do this in earlier episodes.
* BunnyEarsLawyer: Monk, and to a lesser degree Randy.
* BusmansHoliday: Naturally, like with a lot of other mystery shows, Monk cannot seem to go on vacation anywhere without a few dead bodies involved.
** In "Mr. Monk Takes a Vacation," Sharona takes Monk on a vacation against his will, where he is incredibly uncomfortable and simply sits on the beach fully clothed. When a murder mystery pops up he couldn't be happier, and drags Sharona into helping him solve it. Upon their return Sharona asks that they never go on vacation again, then says "I can't believe I just said that!"
** {{Lampshade}}d in "Mr. Monk Gets Cabin Fever":
--->'''Natalie Teeger:''' Everywhere you go, every time you turn around, somebody is killing somebody else!\\
'''Captain Stottlemeyer:''' That's true.\\
'''Adrian Monk:''' What?\\
'''Captain Stottlemeyer:''' [[ContinuityNod There was the time you went on vacation]] "(Mr. Monk Takes A Vacation") and then on the airplane. ("Mr. Monk and the Airplane")\\
'''Adrian Monk:''' These things happen!\\
'''Captain Stottlemeyer:''' [[ContinuityNod And that stage play...]] ("Mr. Monk Goes to the Theater")\\
'''Adrian Monk:''' It happens!\\
'''Natalie Teeger:''' To you!
** Natalie even concludes at the end of the episode that fate makes Monk go to these places JUST SO he will be there to solve the murders...
** In "Mr. Monk Goes to a Rock Concert", it's either bad luck or pure coincidence that Monk and Natalie are right by the port-a-potty when Stork Murray's body falls out of it. Natalie is somewhat startled, but her attitude after the break shows that she's perfectly fine helping Monk investigate, which suggests that either she was convinced by Kendra Frank, the victim's girlfriend, that something was wrong, or it's because they came in Stottlemeyer's car and Stottlemeyer is still looking for his son.
** Played straight in "Mr. Monk Makes the Playoffs" when Monk and Stottlemeyer go to a playoff game with tickets for the press box with Bob Costas (AsHimself), but Monk discovers an attempted murder involving a rigged grill and murdered quarterback David Gitelson being HiddenInPlainSight by being dressed as a passed out fan.
** The ExpandedUniverse novels just love this trope:
*** In ''Mr. Monk Goes to Hawaii'', Monk [[BecomingTheMask takes Dioxynl]] to follow Natalie to Hawaii. After the drug wears off and he's back to being himself, he ruins Natalie's friend's wedding by exposing her groom-to-be as a bigamist, stumbles upon a homicide and drags Natalie along, while trying to find evidence to arrest a television medium for fraud, and solving a rash of mysterious burglaries and car accidents on the way.
*** In ''Mr. Monk Is Miserable'', Natalie uses emotional blackmail to get Monk to come along with her to Paris. There is a murder on the plane. Then, he finds a skull in the catacombs that was not dumped there a few hundred years ago, but less than twelve months ago. Later, Monk and Natalie are at a blind restaurant (where you eat in pitch-black darkness). Another woman sits down, and is about to talk to them when a shadowy assailant stabs and kills her with a steak knife, then escapes in a matter of a few seconds.
*** In ''Mr. Monk on Patrol'', it's averted since Monk and Natalie are called to Summit, New Jersey to help Randy investigate a series of break-ins.
*CannotTellAJoke: Supposedly he tells all of two jokes during the entire series, both times shocking everyone around him; this doesn't stop him from [[DeadpanSnarker snarking]], especially early in the series. He can't tell a joke, but at least he can be [[InsistentTerminology sardonic]].
** One was in "Mr. Monk and the UFO", [[spoiler: unless of course he really ''is'' [[CassandraTruth an alien that will destroy the planet if Natalie doesn't stop trying to see his belly button]].]]
** In "Mr. Monk Goes to the Ballgame", when Monk and Sharona walk into the Hammonds' house, Monk quips that he and Trudy considered buying the same house, which is not likely on a San Francisco cop's salary.
** There is also his excruciatingly painful attempt at stand-up comedy in "Mr. Monk is the Best Man".
* CareerEndingInjury: Monk's mental breakdown from Trudy's death ended his career as a police officer.
* CatchPhrase
** "You'll thank me later."
** "Unless I'm wrong, which, you know, I'm not..."
** "Here's what happened..."
** "Here's the thing..."
** "I don't know how he did it, but he did it."
** "He's the guy."
** "It's a gift...and a curse."
** "Wipe."
* CharacterNameAlias: In "Mr. Monk on Wheels", when knocking on John Kuramoto's door, Monk says, "Hello, Johnny! Open up, it's--it's EncyclopediaBrown! Sally and I want our blue bike back, and the name of your decorator."
* ChasteHero
* {{Claustrophobia}}: One of Monk's big phobias.
** In one episode, he is trapped in a coffin, and memories of Trudy keep him from completely freaking out.
** In another episode, he's caught in a submarine (he was convinced he's only be in there for a few minutes but they went under while he was on board), and only solves the problem by hallucinating that Dr. Bell is with him.
** [[spoiler: And in season 8, he gets over the fear trapped in a car trunk. With Harold, no less.]]
* ClearMyName: In "Mr. Monk Is On The Run, Part Two"
* ComicallySmallBribe: Monk is a pathetic cheapskate. Even when he takes Dioxynl (see other entries for more).
** In "Mr. Monk Goes to the Theater", Monk attempts to bribe a doorman with four dollars. Then Sharona gives him $40. Then Monk asks for his four dollars back. Then says, "We have four dollars in credit for future information!" as Sharona drags him away.
** In "Mr. Monk and the Bully", he tries to bribe a barman with a picture of General Washington (a $1 bill). Then he ups the bribe with another General Washington ([[UpToEleven a quarter]]). Monk and Natalie resort to getting information from the patron sitting right next to him.
* ConvictionByContradiction: Monk can often figure out the crime this way before he has any solid evidence and spends the rest of the episode obtaining said evidence. Lampshaded in "Mr. Monk Fights City Hall," when Paul Crawford questions the validity of ''how he phrased a sentence'' as evidence.
* CrapsackWorld: At first it seems this is just Monk's opinion, but think about it: he discovers murders and dead bodies almost everywhere, half the time when not on a case, and he's ''never wrong''. [[FridgeBrilliance Guess it really is]] [[ThematicThemeTune a jungle out there.]]
* CriminalDoppelganger: In "Mr. Monk Is Someone Else," he turns out to be a dead ringer for a mob hit-man. {{Inverted|Trope}}, in that the police don't mix him up, but instead the FBI need him to make the other ''criminals'' think he was the hit-man.
* CrouchingMoronHiddenBadass: Despite his phobias and neuroses, Monk can and will take physical action if necessary, disarming criminals holding him at gunpoint, shooting at least two suspects (one while blind), and knocking a hit man unconscious with a bottle (while drunk). Despite being visibly terrified, he does things like [[spoiler: standing in front of an F-22 fighter jet about to take off.]] In the finale [[spoiler:he beats up the judge who [[BerserkButton murdered Trudy]].]]
* DeadPersonConversation: Sometimes talks to Trudy in his sleep.
* DefeatingTheUndefeatable: Monk outsmarts killers with airtight alibis.
* DefectiveDetective: The TropeNamer. The show even used to be marketed as such, and this is what Randy refers to Monk as when first meeting him in the pilot.
* DisabilitySuperpower: Offensively so. Once, in "Mr. Monk and the Class Reunion," Natalie lampshades his ability to remember handwriting written on his back:
-->''[Monk has explained to Natalie how he met Trudy]''
-->'''Adrian Monk:''' And that’s how I got her number.
-->'''Natalie Teeger:''' Wait, wait, wait! You mean when he wrote it on your back, you could ''feel'' it? You--you could do that?
-->'''Adrian Monk:''' I have very sensitive skin.
-->'''Natalie Teeger:''' That's like a superpower! Like a very weird, not very useful, superpower!
* DrivesLikeCrazy: In "Mr. Monk Takes His Medicine" when Monk is driving a Ford Mustang convertible.
* DysfunctionalFamily: It is heavily implied in the series starting with "Mr. Monk and the Three Pies", that Monk's family was dysfunctional, and contributed to most of Monk's quirks.
* EasyAmnesia: In "Mr. Monk Bumps His Head," Monk gets hit on the head and loses his memory, but not his quirks.
* EurekaMoment: "I think I just solved the case."
* ExoticDetective: Monk
* ExasperatedPerp: Can be caused by Monk's eccentricities.
* The {{Expy}}: SherlockHolmes, [[CaptainObvious of course]].
** The GreatDetective who is the last mind sought when no one can figure out a queer situation, [[LampshadeHanging even called Sherlock Holmes on many occasions]].
** A brother who is even smarter who rarely puts it towards solving crime because of crippling shyness.
** An ArchEnemy who makes only sporadic appearances, usually preferring to stay in the background.
* FailedAuditionPlot: Monk's continued attempts to get reinstated despite being continually rejected.
*FakeOutMakeOut: Averted drastically in "Mr. Monk and the Genius", when Monk and Natalie are on a stakeout. Natalie sees their suspect approaching their car, Natalie blurts out "We should kiss!" only to [[CrowningMomentOfFunny immediately backpedal]].
* FlowersForAlgernonSyndrome: "Mr. Monk Takes His Medicine"
* FoundTheKillerLostTheMurderer: Happens when Monk gets close to finding [[spoiler Trudy's killer.]]
* FriendOnTheForce: Lieutenant Disher and Captain Stottlemeyer.
* GreenAesop: Arguably, "Mr. Monk and the Garbage Strike". ([[InsaneTrollLogic By the way, the best way to deal with trash is to burn the city. Then burn the ashes and rebuild San Francisco from scratch]]. And while they're at it, they can straighten out Lombard Street.) There's a simpler solution: Just throw all the trash into the bay, "one bag at a time. One truck at a time! One bag at a time." It might take a while, but at least you're making an effort!
* HandshakeRefusal:
** Monk is a germophobe and refuses to shake hands with just about anyone. If he's forced to, he will immediately turn to his assistant for a wipe.
** In one episode he voluntarily shook hands as a sign of friendship with an ex-colleague of his, who was accused (even by Monk) of being in the drug-business (which he wasn't, which was proven of course.)
** In another episode he shook hands with a succession of people, after the last one he immediately turned to his assistant for a wipe. The problem being, the last handshakee was black, leading to much accusations of racism.
* HappyDance: Monk does the "jig" when he solves the case in "Mr. Monk Gets Fired".
* HappyFlashback: Several times
* HeroicBSOD: It is heavily implied that, although Trudy's murder via a bombing didn't cause Monk's issues, but it certainly made it a lot worse than before, suffering a mental breakdown that forced him into early retirement from the force before the start of the series, and necessitated therapy as well as [[spoiler:finding Trudy's killer, not to mention learning that the car bomb was intended for Trudy all along and not a backfired assassination attempt on him that he ever gets better. He also has relatively minor episodes within the main HeroicBSOD, namely pertained to whether he can get his old job back or not (such as when he was not only removed from the case, but also had his detective's license revoked by the commissioner simply because he accidentially deleted a few years worth of forensic files while attempting to eliminate crumbs from the keyboard, or when a four-year hiring freeze threatened his chances of reinstatement).]]
* InsaneTrollLogic: Happens a few times in the novels when Monk sees someone doing something he finds disgusting from his perspective -- which causes him to call said person out with a very interesting idea of the consequences of their actions, to the point that Natalie has occasionally said it might make sense to Monk in some way but not to her. Though occasionally, he does actually have a point.
* HollywoodPersonalityDisorders: The way the show portrays OCD is incredibly inaccurate.
** Although the writers seem to realize this, and therefore Monk is explicitly identified as having OCD maybe only once across the entire series, with characters opting to call him simply "weird" or "persnickety" when explaining his disorder to others. It's heavily toted as OCD in promotional material, however.
* HonorBeforeReason: When Monk becomes Stottlemeyer's best man, he takes his duty of keeping the wedding ring safe seriously -- by holding it clenched in his fist ''for nine days straight'', like [[SarcasmMode it is the only guaranteed way that you won't lose your friend's wedding ring!]]
* HurricaneOfPuns: When Monk participates in the interrogation of the guy who bullied him in middle school (imagine Monk's horror over getting a swirly). Monk unleashes a slew of toilet/swirly-related puns.
* HyperAwareness: Monk
* [[ICantBelieveAGuyLikeYouWouldNoticeMe I Can't Believe a Girl Like You Would Marry Me]]: How Monk feels about his Trudy, even years after they got married.
* IdiosyncraticEpisodeNaming: Every single episode has "Mr. Monk" in the title, always at the beginning of the title (the only episode where it ''isn't'' at the beginning is "Happy Birthday, Mr. Monk").
* ImprobableAimingSkills: In the second part of the series premiere, Monk manages to aim and shoot the perpetrator holding Sharona hostage in the dark. "Aiming" here is key, as that's what separates it from AccidentialAimingSkills.
* IResembleThatRemark: In "Mr. Monk and the Actor".
-->'''Adrian Monk''': He's completely obsessed - and not in a good way, like me.
* {{Jerkass}}: Probably to make him less pathetic, but the way he treated the people around him in the last few seasons, especially Natalie, makes one want to smack him. Monk's usual level of jerkiness is nothing compared to the way he behaves in "Mr. Monk Takes His Medicine," due to the side effects of his anti-OCD medication.
* LaughingMad: Monk briefly undergoes this trope in "Mr. Monk and the Garbage Strike" when, [[spoiler:after being driven insane by the continuing piling of garbage as well as his earlier failure to find the one responsible for the murder of the saniation union boss due to being wrong the first time around, hijacks a city garbage truck, and is planning to dump it into the bay, and implies to do the same with every garbage truck available until the city is clean]], as well as coming up with an even less credible and ridiculously hillarious theory that ''AliceCooper'' killed the union leader due to envy over his owning a chair. In case you're wondering how it's less credible, the first theory was only wrong in that the Mayor killed the union leader, and everything else was spot on, even the Mayor visiting the union leader the night of his death. The second theory, however missed out on a lot of the evidences observed by Monk earlier, and was simply too ludicrous to be true. Randy takes it so seriously that he starts poking holes in it until Stottlemeyer asks him, "Do we really need to poke holes in the 'Alice Cooper wants a wingback chair' theory?"
* LickedByTheDog: "Dog...lick...hand! Boil water!"
* LimitedWardrobe: A rare non-animated version; Monk likes consistency in every aspect of his life, and this extends to wearing nearly-identical suits at almost all times, with most exceptions being when a different style is required (i.e. his old police uniform when trying to get his badge back).
** In contrast, Natalie has the reverse, a seemingly UnlimitedWardrobe. Her general outfits tend to change from season to season.
* MadnessMantra: When Monk breaks down during the garbage strike and tries to get rid of the trash himself by driving it into the sea, he keeps muttering "One bag at a time, one truck at a time" to himself.
* ManChild: Monk becomes one through hypnosis in "Mr. Monk Gets Hypnotized". He gets better, though. Its also hinted that even during this state, he still innately could find clues about the actual murder, although his way of expressing these facts is much different -- like tasting a piece of gum taken off Sally Larkin's ''shoe''.
* [[MeaningfulBackgroundEvent Meaningful Foreground Event]]: Monk is obsessing over the fact that Harold Krenshaw has, apparently, lost his phobias and become a daredevil. While he and Stottlemeyer are engaged in a contest of bladders, Monk's coffee table is perfectly aligned. In an [[ContinuityNod earlier season]] we saw that Monk always keeps it cock-eyed. That he doesn't care about '''that''' shows that he's more obsessed with '''this'''.
* MistakenForBadass: Quite a few times. One good example is when Monk, disguised as a strangely identical hit man, straightens a mobster's tie -- which apparently is taken for an intimidating gesture.
* MistakenForExhibit: In "Mr. Monk Takes the Stand", a flashback during Monk's testimony shows that at the victim's house, he mistakenly believed a display stand was an art piece.
* MistakenForRacist: In "Mr. Monk and the Marathon Man", Monk is meeting with a group of people at the marathon committee's office, and has a wipe ready to wipe his hands after all handshakes are complete. Unfortunately, the last person to shake his hand is a black man, and Monk wipes his hands right after. This trope is played straight, racism is implied and accused. Afterwards, everyone there regards him with contempt.
* MonochromeCasting: Tony Shalhoub, though born in America, is Lebanese, but Monk is supposed to be white.
* MoodWhiplash: The show is fearless about switching between drama and comedy. The best examples, by far, are in "Mr. Monk and the End", such as Dr. Shuler informing Monk he's going to die. He'll feel better, then there'll be vomiting, followed by death. [[ComicallyMissingThePoint Of course, Monk wants death to happen before the vomiting]].
* MundaneMadeAwesome: Monk's reaction in "Mr. Monk on Wheels" to discovering Dean Berry's square tomatoes. He is literally beside himself with joy, since each slice is the ''exact'' same size and won't overlap in sandwiches.
-->'''Monk:''' You can taste the ''symmetry''!
** Of course, there is a small SeriesContinuityError with this - in "Mr. Monk Goes to the Asylum", Dr. Morris Lancaster reads from Monk's patient chart that Monk is allergic to tomatoes.
* MurderArsonAndJaywalking
** In "Mr. Monk and the Psychic", Monk says, "You've gotta be a little skeptical, Sharona. Otherwise you end up believing in everything. UFOs, elves... income tax rebates...."
* MurderMakesYouCrazy: At least to all appearances in "Mr. Monk is on the Run". [[spoiler:When Frank Nunn is shot dead, to all appearances by Monk himself, he acts really disoriented and neurotic (more so than usual). Driving in circles while attempting to steal a pickup truck (as the club is locked around the steering wheel), and stopping to re-thread his torn prison uniform with the correct color thread, are probably good examples.]]
* MysteryMagnet: Monk is one. With only a few exceptions, not a single corpse that he runs across has ever died of a natural death.
** This has been lampshaded a couple of times. In the novel ''Mr. Monk on Patrol'', after Monk and Natalie are nearly incinerated by an arsonist who sets their hotel rooms on fire with a Molotov cocktail, Officer Walter Woodlake tells Randy (paraphrased), "Chief, I thought these two were supposed to drive crime down, not up." In ''Mr. Monk Is Miserable'', Natalie says she feels like she'll have to start carrying body bags around.
* MythArc
* OhTheHumanity: Monk yells this whenever he encounters something ''really'' nasty.
** "Mr. Monk and the Paperboy": after realizing he just wiped his hands with an oily garage rag
** "Mr. Monk and the Kid": when changing a diaper.
* PaintingTheMedium
** In the season 4 episode, Monk is finally put on retainer by the police. He's guaranteed 16 homicides a year for the next two years.
** In an inadvertent example, the ad for "Mr. Monk Stays in Bed" features Monk being served a bowl of alphabet soup. Monk says, "I see letters". Yes, he's talking about the letters in the soup, but by ContrivedCoincidence in TV airings, he's looking in the direction of the episode's [[MediaClassifications age rating]] on the screen.
* PetTheDog: A literal example occurs in the final season.
* PhotographicMemory: Monk has incredible memory. He can even recognize the most minute details about a man's earlobe. So if he witnesses a crime, just be aware that he'll find you.
-->'''Monk:''' I know that rock!
* PhraseCatcher: "It doesn't have to be perfect." From pretty much every random person Monk works with who isn't already aware of his neuroses, directed at Monk.
* PlayedForLaughs: Monk's debilitating mental illness.
* ProperlyParanoid: "Mr. Monk Is Up All Night". [[spoiler: Monk is walking out late at night, and oversees a sour drug deal going wrong in a restaurant kitchen. An Asian man reveals that he is an undercover cop and pulls his gun on a bald-headed customer and a drug dealer, and orders both of them to line up against the wall. A fight breaks out and the undercover cop is shot dead by the drug dealer. The bald man is hustled by the drug dealer outside to a waiting car that drives away. By the time Monk has gotten back after running a few blocks to a payphone to call the police, the kitchen is practically spotless, and there is no evidence of a killing, making Stottlemeyer and Disher suspect that Monk was seeing things as he was suffering from insomnia. Monk's first clue is when the supposedly killed "undercover cop" turns up alive at the train station, throwing out some trash that is traced to an antique coin store (the Asian claims he is on his way to see his brother in Portland). Tracing the garbage, Monk recognizes the coin dealer as the bald witness, who claims he was in bed at the time. When the "undercover cop" turns up dead at the station, Monk realizes something mentioned by Gully, who pickpocketed his wallet earlier: that it's a different city at night. The solution: the "undercover cop" was not actually killed, and a waitress working late helped him clean up the kitchen afterwards. The "drug dealer" was scamming the coin dealer into giving them his antique coins under the pretense that it was hush money.]]
* RealLifeRelative: Tony Shalhoub's wife Brooke Adams appears several times in the series as different characters:
** In "Mr. Monk and the Airplane" as Leigh Harrison, a flight attendant who is driven crazy by Monk's antics (she is later interviewed by James Novak in "Mr. Monk's 100th Case", which establishes that she has developed a fear of flying and also ended up regressing to alcoholism, which was also implied by her final appearance in her main episode.
** In "Mr. Monk and the Kid" as Abigail Carlyle, an abducted violinist's mother.
** In "Mr. Monk Visits a Farm" as Sheriff Marge Butterfield. This results in some interesting reactions in that scene where Monk is dancing (badly) with his real wife while bringing up stuff about Trudy.
** In "Mr. Monk and the Badge" as Edith Capriani, a CrazyCatLady that Monk gets fed up with for pulling him away from other cases.
* ScreamsLikeALittleGirl: "Mr. Monk Goes Camping." [[spoiler:Because of a bear. A [[EverythingsWorseWithBears big damn bear]]]]. Interestingly, though, the trailers for this scene had Tony Shalhoub screaming in his own voice. They dubbed it over with a little girl's one due to the RuleOfFunny.
* [[HesDeadJim She's Dead, Monk]]: In the series finale, Monk finally accepts Trudy's death in two different ways. The first is when he opens Trudy's Christmas present, and the second is when he sleeps in the middle of the bed (rather than sleeping on one side as if to save room for Trudy).
* {{Sexiled}}: Invoked and ultimately subverted in the episode "Mr. Monk and the Class Reunion", where Monk may have had this, as shown by the dialogue when Monk and Natalie are in the dormitory corridor:
-->'''Natalie Teeger:''' Mr. Monk, come on! Let's have some fun! ''[snaps her fingers]'' You said you were gonna show me your dorm room!\\
'''Adrian Monk:''' Well, it's right here. This is it, old #303. Uh-oh! Tie on the doorknob! ''[Camera pans to show a tie wrapped around the doorknob; Natalie laughs]'' My roommate and I did the same thing, it's a code.\\
'''Natalie Teeger:''' Yeah, I think I might know about that.\\
'''Adrian Monk:''' Yeah, it means, "Don't come in! I'm reorganizing my closet!" ''[Natalie stares at him incredulously]''\\
'''Natalie Teeger:''' Your ''closet''?\\
'''Adrian Monk:''' Yeah. My roommate in freshman year, Greg, he reorganized his closet 4-5 times a week.\\
'''Natalie Teeger:''' Uh-huh, and did his girlfriend ever come over to help?\\
'''Adrian Monk:''' Oh yeah, all the time, they were real neat freaks. I used to tease them about it. "Neat freaks!"
* SheIsNotMyGirlfriend: A number of times, other characters seem to be under the impression that Monk and Natalie suppress romantic feelings for each other. Natalie usually finds the suggestion rather amusing.
**In "Mr. Monk Gets Lotto Fever," Monk is mistaken for Natalie's boyfriend by one of her fans.
*SharedFamilyQuirks: Adrian and Ambrose are both {{Insufferable Genius}}es, and both are crippled with psychological diseases (Adrian has OCD, Ambrose has agoraphobia).
* ShellShockedVeteran: Averted. Despite being taken hostage very frequently, buried alive on a few occasions, frequently seeing the aftermath of many bloody murders (shootings, stabbings, explosions, beatings, even a few mutilations on the side), Monk is afraid of milk, handshakes, and germs, and has traumatic memories of birth.
* SherlockScan: As an expy of the TropeNamer, Monk is notorious for this. However, since Monk is also socially inept, he also doesn't always know that there are some details not to bring up. Here's a good piece of advice: If you know that a woman is lying about her age, don't call her out on it. Or if you know that the judge at a hearing is sleeping with his secretary, don't use that as your way of proving your credibility to him. Or mention that a widow is having a sexual affair if her daughter is also standing there.
* ShowDontTell: In the entirety of the show's run, Monk was explicitly described as having OCD ''maybe'' twice, not counting promos. This is made especially jarring on the multiple occasions where Monk gets in trouble for grossly inappropriate behavior and Natalie or Sharona tries to explain to an authority figure that Monk suffers from a condition; the best she's ever able to come up with is "he's... persnickity".
* SickEpisode: "Mr. Monk Stays in Bed"
* SlippingAMickey: Invoked and [[HoistByHisOwnPetard Inverted]] in [[ExactlyAsItSaysOnTheTin "Mr. Monk Gets Drunk"]]. Monk attempts to do this to Al Nicoletto to extract a confession from him, and also orders for a non-alcoholic beverage (intended for himself) and an alcoholic beverage for Nicoletto. He ends up being the one drunk shortly thereafter. It's implied that the orders were mixed up.
* TheSoCalledCoward: Monk is terrified of 312 specifically named, listed, and ordered things. In spite of constantly encountering them, he ''always'' gets his man. And he never gets over his fear.
* StatusQuoIsGod: Whenever Monk makes a new friend, they turn out to be [[SixthRangerTraitor evil criminals manipulating him.]] Whenever he makes some progress in his mental health, he's [[ResetButton back to being worse than ever at the end of the episode]]. It took the final episode to give him some closure.
** The final season has him working though some of his problems.
** An episode at the beginning of the final season had him make a friend who's wife died in the {{cold open}} in a hit-and-run and was not [[AssholeVictim evil or manipulating]]. However, he wasn't from around this part of the country, so...
*** This friend was literally put on a bus at the end, too.
** In "Mr. Monk Goes to the Office", his coworkers at the office he was working at while undercover liked him and seemed to be forming a friendship, but of course after the crime was solved he had to go back to his regular job. Making it worse, Monk had ruined his relationship with them due to not wearing proper shoes at a bowling game.
** One episode lampshaded it by having him convinced that the elderly woman who had become a mother figure to him had to have been in on the murder, because everyone else who had become his friend in the past ended up betraying him. Things got awkward when he found out that she really was innocent, right after cruelly berating her.
** In "Mr. Monk and the Badge", [[spoiler:Monk quits the force after having been back on it for only a few days, finding consulting to be more of his thing.]]
** Monk had sparked a possible romance with a woman who is arrested for murdering an escaped war criminal. [[spoiler:She had taken the rap for the real killer, her mother]].
* StripperCopConfusion: Sadly, yes, in the one where Natalie's brother gets married. Monk couldn't notice that the guy had dollar bills sticking out of his belt.
* TheSummation: Almost always signaled with the CatchPhrase "Here's what happened..."
** Lampshaded in "Mr. Monk Gets Drunk": "Monk was doing his summation thing..." Played with in [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin the manner in which he delivered it.]]
** Subverted in "Mr. Monk and the Earthquake", wherein the episode goes through all the usual bells and whistles of the summation formula (black and white flashbacks, dramatic camera shots, etc), while totally oblivious to the fact that the voiceover being supplied by an unusually-addled Monk is pure gibberish.
** Also played awesomely in "Mr. Monk and the Kid" where Monk reads the summation to the one-year old boy he has temporarily adopted as a bedtime story.
* SuperOCD: Very. [[http://forums.usanetwork.com/lofiversion/index.php/t403246.html Possibly]] a misdiagnosed autistic savant, instead.
* SuperSenses: Although not emphasized in every episode, it's periodically shown that Monk's senses, particularly hearing, smell, and touch, are sharp to an almost superhuman degree. The show emphasizes the negative SensoryOverload aspect of having such senses, with Monk often being driven nuts by noises or smells that no one else even notices.
* TagAlongActor: Monk acquires David Ruskin in "Mr. Monk and the Actor". It didn't work out well because of the guy's method acting.
* TakeAThirdOption
** In "Happy Birthday, Mr. Monk," faced with hiding in either a dumpster or port-a-john, Monk declares "I choose death!"
** "Mr. Monk and the Red-Headed Stranger":
-->'''Stottlemeyer:''' It's either (a) the blind woman who has zero motive or it's (b) your friend the red-headed stranger.\\
'''Randy:''' Who had motive, means, and opportunity, and was identified by the only witness at the scene.\\
'''Stottlemeyer:''' A or B, Monk.\\
'''Monk:''' I think it's C.\\
'''Stottlemeyer:''' What the hell is C?\\
'''Monk:''' I don't know yet.
* ThirdActStupidity: Monk will often let it slip to the killer that he knows he's the killer and has solid evidence to prove it. This usually occurs when the killer is an authority figure in a position to kill Monk in a way that would raise absolutely no questions. As a result, Monk is regularly endangered in ways he could have easily avoided if he had kept his mouth shut and waited for the police to arrive. This is generally explained by the fact that Monk has ''really'' bad social skills.
* UnusualEuphemism: "BM" for "shit" and "haul bottom" for "haul ass".
* UpToEleven: Monk's OCD becomes much worse after Trudy's murder.
* WantingIsBetterThanHaving: Getting back on the police force was one of Monk's goals since the start of the show. When he finally accomplished it late in the final season, he discovered that he actually preferred the independence of being an outside consultant.
* [[WeWantOurJerkBack We Want Our OCD Detective Back]]:
** In the episode "Mr. Monk Takes His Medicine", Monk ends up taking a type of medication where all of his regular quirks are being suppressed and he can live a (relatively) normal life after an incident where he was forced to let a criminal get away due to his hands being soiled. It works too well, and he ends up becoming similar to one of those jerkish college frat-boys, with Sharona and the SFPD wanting the Monk they know to be there. Eventually, Monk manages to give up on that medication when it became apparent that he'd have to choose between the medicine and his memories of Trudy.
** Lee Goldberg brings the drug back in some of the novels, as the only way Monk can manage to make an airline flight. [[spoiler: In ''Mr. Monk Goes to Germany'', at one point Natalie observes that this will keep him from solving the murder. He replies that he has already solved it, and just needs to find the evidence-- indeed, it turns out that in his normal state he would not have been ABLE to handle the evidence. Unfortunately, Monk and Natalie are almost killed when the shack they enter to retrieve the evidence in question catches fire, and they barely escape the flames.]]
* WeirdnessMagnet
** In the episode "Mr. Monk Gets Cabin Fever", Natalie observes that everywhere Monk goes, people get murdered, supposing he's followed by some karmic cloud of disaster. By the end of the episode, she changes her mind about him: he's not a Weirdness Magnet for murder, he's cosmically drawn to where murders occur so he can solve them.
* WhatTheHellHero: In "Mr. Monk and the Red-Headed Stranger", when Stottlemeyer finds out that Monk not only released a streaker that they just picked up for disrupting two police press conferences, but also hired him to streak, is about to tell Monk off for it, until Monk points to Mrs. Mass to indicate her reaction, showing he actually had a good reason for hiring him: See YouJustToldMe below.
** In "Mr. Monk and the Bully", Natalie angrily chews Monk out for his desire to continue following Roderick Brody's wife:
-->'''Natalie Teeger:''' Yeah, look, uh, Mr. Monk, I have to tell you something. I made a decision: if you want to keep following Mrs. Brody, I suppose that's your right, although it really isn't, but, I can't help you anymore.
-->'''Adrian Monk:''' Why not?
-->'''Natalie Teeger:''' I--I--I'm just not comfortable! Her husband fired us!
-->'''Adrian Monk:''' It's what they call pro bono.
-->'''Natalie Teeger:''' No, "pro bono" is for lawyers! This is stalking!
-->'''Adrian Monk:''' No, this is comeuppance. Pro bono comeuppance.
-->'''Natalie Teeger:''' No! No! That is just crazy talk! ''[She marches forward and switches off Monk's table lamp]''
-->'''Adrian Monk:''' It's not crazy talk!
-->'''Natalie Teeger:''' Pro bono comeuppance?! That's the craziest talk there is! You heard what he said! He wants you to quit!!
-->'''Adrian Monk:''' I wanted him to quit! I begged him to quit 40 years ago, in stall #3! ''[He starts looking at the digital camera]'' Oh yeah.
*WildTeenParty: Inverted in "Mr. Monk is the Best Man". Because Stottlemeyer lets Monk plan his bachelor party (which turns out to be anything but a good idea), it's barely even a "party", and most certainly isn't wild with: a port-a-potty within the actual bathroom, pizza with [[ExactWords nothing on it]] (not even cheese or sauce), one 12 ounce beer for each partygoer [12 party members, amounting to 144 fluid ounces of alcohol total] which requires Randy to be assigned Designated Drunk; some jokes that just don't go well, and he shows them ''BachelorParty'' as their movie, of which the movie is implied to not be a popular choice among the cops. The closest it ever gets to being a wild teen party is when Randy staggers in asking who owns the police unit out front that's painted a charcoal gray with flames on the side and on the roof and windshield, which causes everyone to run outside and find Stottlemeyer's car on fire.
* YouCantGoHomeAgain: In "Mr. Monk and the Badge" Monk realizes his goal of being reinstated in the SFPD, only to find that nothing about policing was familiar to him anymore and the episode end with him retiring from the force.
* YouJustToldMe: This is usually how Monk manages to get the perpetrator should the evidence he finds can't implicate the perpetrator directly, although it's more similar to "You Just Showed Me."
** In "Mr. Monk Goes to Hawaii", this is how Monk manages to deduce that Dylan Swift, a supposed TV psychic who films in San Francisco and Hawaii is responsible for two beating deaths at a hotel in the course of a week: knowing the likelihood that Swift has bugged all of the hotel rooms (Monk figuring this out after he realized that this was the only way Swift could know so much about Natalie's background without meeting her or going on the Internet), he fakes "cleaning" so he can find the devices. So to trap him, Monk and Natalie have a moving conversation, where Monk talks about Trudy and her security blanket. The next morning, Monk sends Stottlemeyer a letter, which he reads when Monk shows up at Swift's show in San Francisco, right after Swift mentions the very same story that Monk told Natalie -- a conversation that he could only have known about if he was listening in. The letter itself reads that this story was a trap to incriminate Swift. In this case, some INeverSaidItWasPoison is involved, as Monk reveals that Swift, unable to speak to the dead, could only know so much about the first murder victim and her background if he was the killer.
** In "Mr. Monk and the Sleeping Suspect", the identity of [[spoiler:Brian Babbage]] as the mail bomber is confirmed when he panics at the sight of someone opening one of his custom-made packages. He shouldn't have known about the bombings because he had been in a coma when the bombings happened. (If you're curious about how he managed to set off the bombings while in a coma, watch the episode in full).
** "Mr. Monk and the Red-Headed Stranger": Monk clears Willie Nelson's name by proving that Mrs. Mass, the blind woman who was the only other person besides Willie in the alleyway when his road manager was killed, wasn't blind (or at least, not completely blind)—he had a streaker run past her, and she reacted. See the WhatTheHellHero listing above for more.
** In the second episode, "Mr. Monk and the Psychic," Harry Ashcombe needs his wife's body found without revealing that he had killed her, so he looks up a hack psychic named Dolly Flint in the police files. He tricks Dolly into thinking she was guided to the body (in reality, Ashcombe knocked her out, put on a wig, drove through a red light to make sure "she" was seen driving to the crash scene). Monk trapped him by getting Dolly to accuse Ashcombe of murder, thus forcing him to discredit her—and he helpfully though inadvertently confessed in the process.
** A mixture of this trope and BluffingTheMurderer was used by Monk on Derek Philby in "Mr. Monk Goes Back to School". Monk, after deducing that Philby killed his mistress and passed it off as a suicide and a custodian who was threatening to blackmail him through a staged explosion, particularly how he committed the former murder, tells Philby that the cops will do a search of the building for whatever evidence implicated him. After finding the incriminating glasses in the clock tower, Philby finds Monk and the police waiting for him when he leaves, and Monk then reveals that he didn't need to find proof as he planted the glasses on the tower in order to trick him into revealing his guilt.
* YouNeverDidThatForMe: In the episode where Sharona and Natalie meet, Natalie finds out that Monk paid Sharona a lot more than he paid her. Thus she complains that Monk never paid her that much. It was a difference of twenty dollars.
* YourPrincessIsInAnotherCastle: In the finale, [[spoiler:Monk sits around in a chair with his therapist at about 40 minutes in, the case apparently solved, and talks about [[LampshadeHanging his lack of closure]].]]
!!Natalie Teeger (Traylor Howard)
!!Captain Leland Stottlemeyer (Ted Levine)
!!Lieutenant Randall "Randy" Disher (Jason Gray-Stanford)
!!Sharona Fleming (Bitty Schram)
[[folder: Supporting / Auxilary characters]]
!! Ambrose Monk (John Turturro)
!! Benjy Fleming (Max Morrow[[note:All season 1 episodes except for the pilot]] / Kane Ritchotte[[note:Season 1 pilot, and seasons 2-3]])
!! Julie Teeger (Emmy Clarke)
!! Dr. Charles Kroger (Stanley Kamel)
!! Dr. Neven Bell (Hector Elizondo)
!! Harold Krenshaw (Tim Bagley)
!! Marci Maven (SarahSilverman)
!! Kevin Dorfman (Jarrad Paul)
!! Trudy Monk (Stellina Ruisch[[note:All flashbacks in seasons 1, 2, and first part of season 3]], Melora Hardin[[note:All appearances from season 3 through season 8]], and Lindy Newton[[note:Flashbacks in "Mr. Monk and the Class Reunion"]])
!! Dale "The Whale" Biederbeck (Adam Arkin [[note:"Mr. Monk Meets Dale the Whale"]], Tim Curry [[note:"Mr. Monk Goes to Jail"]], and Ray Porter [[note:"Mr. Monk Is On The Run, Part 2"]])
------
[[foldercontrol]]
[[folder: Main Characters]]
!!Adrian Monk (Tony Shalhoub)
[[quoteright:222:http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/monk.jpg]]
-->Here's what happened.
The main character of the series. He is a former San Francisco police inspector who suffered a [[FreakOut nervous breakdown]] after [[DisposableWoman the murder of his wife]], Trudy. He is a lifelong sufferer of [[SuperOCD Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder]] and has many phobias, and those obsessions became crippling after his breakdown, forcing his retirement; he recovers throughout the series, though he is never fully "cured". His OCD is also the reason Monk was such a successful policeman; one of his compulsions is [[HyperAwareness paying amazing attention to details]].
Thanks to his breakdown, Monk was [[TurnInYourBadge discharged from his department]], but is frequently called in to consult on cases which baffle the police, often some kind of LockedRoomMystery, by his friend and former commander Captain Stottlemeyer. His [[DisabilitySuperpower disorders]] are part and parcel of his unique mind; without them, he wouldn't be able to solve these cases. Of course, the one case Monk's been trying to solve since his breakdown is Trudy's murder, and each season of the show brings him a little closer to finally solving the mystery behind her death (with the show's final season bringing the case to a close for good).
*AccidentalAimingSkills: In the pilot, Monk hits something by accident. In "Mr. Monk Can't See a Thing," he quickly jerks Stottlemeyer's pistol off to the side to fire off a warning shot when cornered by Peter Breen in the morgue) and, in "Mr. Monk Is At Your Service", despite not having bothered to aim at anything, kills a bird with a rifle.
*ActorAllusion: In "Mr. Monk Is Someone Else", when Monk is going through the crash course on his doppelganger's background with FBI Agent Stone, he says his doppelgangers' parents' names were Joseph and Helen. Those are the names of Tony Shalhoub's parents.
*AfraidOfNeedles: To such a point that in "Mr. Monk and the End", they have literally single employee in the hospital brought in to restrain him while they inject him.
*AirHugging: Though this is less Monk being uncomfortable with men (specifically, his brother) and more of a "his being uncomfortable with touching" case.
*AttentionDeficitOohShiny: Monk solves impossible cases regularly at least once per episode, but he often solves cases in under a minute when he's barely paying attention, since he's already distracted by another case. Often he solves four or five cases within fifteen minutes like this, or cases so obscure that nobody actually cares about them. He once determined while working on another case in a museum that the body on display was actually hit in the skull rather than dying from the cause declared by the museum, effectively solving a 30,000 year-old case. Stottlemeyer actually exploits this, calling out the facts of various cases while he's distracted.
**Note that the closer a case comes to his own life, the more trouble he has solving it. For example, in "Mr. Monk and the Garbage Strike", the problem is his pet peeve, cleanliness, that literally drives him insane trying to solve, and takes three tries and actually going into a computer cleanroom before he closes it. Likewise, he has problems to a lesser degree in "Mr. Monk Goes to a Fashion Show," that involve the son of "Inspector Number 8" of his shirts. Here, however, his problems vanish once he gets enough evidence to make a solid start on the case. The ultimate example of course being the case of his wife, Trudy, and her car bombing.
*BadBadActing:
**In "Mr. Monk Goes to the Theater", after Hal Duncan is stabbed and killed on stage, Monk ends up taking the dead man's place... it goes as well as you'd expect. Also averted in that he did manage to act out the events quite well to recreate the crime scene... when the stage was empty. In fact, literally the only reason he was not acting well is due to stage fright. But this will probably remind ou very well of what it was like the first time you ever went out on stage if you ever were a stage actor.
**Thare's also "Mr. Monk Gets Married," where Monk and Sharona act like a couple with bad marriage problems to get into a marriage therapy clinic (Monk posing as a cowardly mop salesman and Sharona being his alcoholic wife), and do such a terrible job of it that the couple's therapist is relieved to hear they aren't married.
*BecomingTheMask: Twice. In "Mr. Monk Is Someone Else", Monk adopts the persona of a dead hit man in order to save the life of his target. He ends up playing his role a little bit too well, which Stottlemeyer praises him for. And in "Mr. Monk Is At Your Service," he goes undercover as the head butler for someone who had a crush on Natalie, and seems to enjoy it more than solving crimes. His acting is pretty good, though - he hastily improvises lies on the spot that he wasn't expecting to make, and does a good job pretending not to know Natalie when they meet during the luncheon in the episode.
*BewareTheNiceOnes: Really. In episodes related to Trudy's death, Monk can take on some KnightTemplar traits.
**In "Mr. Monk and the Man Who Shot Santa", with thief Michael Kenworthy dressing as Santa and setting up a distraction while his crew attempts to heist a diamond, Monk is in an emotionally bad state and ends up having to shoot Kenworthy in self-defense with his own revolver when the perp tries to kill him.
**Monk shows throughout the series that he is quite capable of defending himself when the situation demands, to the point of completely ignoring his phobias — including shooting and severely wounding a murderer in self-defense while temporarily blind, overpowering a deranged man with a gun, or fending off a perp with dirty bags when being ill.
**In "Mr. Monk and the Badge" Monk fights off Mikhail Almonov on an unstable window-washing platform and stabs the man in the leg with said badge.
**"Mr. Monk and the Blackout" — "Be careful, your left shoelace is untied," when stalking Winston Brenner in the dark. Brenner replies, "How does he know that?!"
** For Adrian, it could be anything, really, but his true BerserkButton is Trudy's death. Anything that threatens his memory of her, or implies anything about what happened, causes Adrian to snap, leading to BewareTheNiceOnes, as above.
*** That particular BerserkButton causes Monk to protest the demolition of the parking garage where Trudy was murdered in the Season Seven finale, "Mr. Monk Fights City Hall"; the structure was being demolished to make way for a children's playground, and Monk was worried that the demolition could destroy any remaining potential evidence. [[spoiler:However, the councilwoman who helps bring the matter before the city council is killed, leaving Monk to solve her murder and reveal that her vote would keep the parking garage standing; unfortunately, Monk insults the councilwoman's replacement during TheSummation, which causes the replacement to change the deciding vote out of spite. A sign shown after Monk leaves the structure for the last time shows that the playground replacing the parking garage will be named in Trudy's honor.]]
*** The memorable moment in "Mr. Monk Is on the Air" when the DJ made cruel jokes about Trudy's death (to the point his heckling yes men were disturbed by it). The yes men even tried to stop their boss before Monk simply jumped over the table and beat him up.
*** In the series finale, when Monk confronts Trudy's killer, [[spoiler:Ethan Rickover]], he claims that Trudy was unstable and crazy, prompting Monk to ''beat the crap out of him''. Mind you, at this point, Monk is [[spoiler:poisoned and ''dying'']]. The cool bit was that [[spoiler:the Judge wanted to make him look crazy. When he tries to get Monk killed by the cops using the same method at the end of the episode, Monk ''doesn't'' fall for it.]]
* BlackAndWhiteInsanity: Monk will try prosecuting people for letting their dogs pee in the street, having an uneven number of buttons undone on their shirts/sweaters or wearing mismatched socks, as InsaneTrollLogic and SuperOCD make him believe that such "crimes against the universe" will "invariably" lead to ArsonMurderAndJaywalking. And don't get us started on his nudity problem. He can't even look at nude ''sculptures'' (in fact, in "Mr. Monk Takes the Stand", when Monk must describe a nude marble sculpture that Evan Gildea had been creating, he describes it by.... squealing through gritted teeth, which almost sounds a bit like a tea kettle. So the judge asks the stenographer to read back what Monk said: "Witness: The defendant removed a sheet revealing a naked eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee...." ''[pitch falters]'').
* BlessedWithSuck / CursedWithAwesome: "It's a gift... and a curse."
* BrokenPedestal: When Christine Rapp writes a tell-all book about Monk's favorite TV show in "Mr. Monk's Favorite Show" -- the ''only thing that made him happy as a child'' -- there isn't enough BrainBleach in the world to help him. Given the rest of the book is that bad, it begs the question: what is on [[spoiler:page 73?]]
* BuffySpeak: When Monk tells people to pause or fast-forward something on a TV in later episodes, he says "picture freeze" or "picture go fast". Ironically, he didn't do this in earlier episodes.
* BunnyEarsLawyer: Monk, and to a lesser degree Randy.
* BusmansHoliday: Naturally, like with a lot of other mystery shows, Monk cannot seem to go on vacation anywhere without a few dead bodies involved.
** In "Mr. Monk Takes a Vacation," Sharona takes Monk on a vacation against his will, where he is incredibly uncomfortable and simply sits on the beach fully clothed. When a murder mystery pops up he couldn't be happier, and drags Sharona into helping him solve it. Upon their return Sharona asks that they never go on vacation again, then says "I can't believe I just said that!"
** {{Lampshade}}d in "Mr. Monk Gets Cabin Fever":
--->'''Natalie Teeger:''' Everywhere you go, every time you turn around, somebody is killing somebody else!\\
'''Captain Stottlemeyer:''' That's true.\\
'''Adrian Monk:''' What?\\
'''Captain Stottlemeyer:''' [[ContinuityNod There was the time you went on vacation]] "(Mr. Monk Takes A Vacation") and then on the airplane. ("Mr. Monk and the Airplane")\\
'''Adrian Monk:''' These things happen!\\
'''Captain Stottlemeyer:''' [[ContinuityNod And that stage play...]] ("Mr. Monk Goes to the Theater")\\
'''Adrian Monk:''' It happens!\\
'''Natalie Teeger:''' To you!
** Natalie even concludes at the end of the episode that fate makes Monk go to these places JUST SO he will be there to solve the murders...
** In "Mr. Monk Goes to a Rock Concert", it's either bad luck or pure coincidence that Monk and Natalie are right by the port-a-potty when Stork Murray's body falls out of it. Natalie is somewhat startled, but her attitude after the break shows that she's perfectly fine helping Monk investigate, which suggests that either she was convinced by Kendra Frank, the victim's girlfriend, that something was wrong, or it's because they came in Stottlemeyer's car and Stottlemeyer is still looking for his son.
** Played straight in "Mr. Monk Makes the Playoffs" when Monk and Stottlemeyer go to a playoff game with tickets for the press box with Bob Costas (AsHimself), but Monk discovers an attempted murder involving a rigged grill and murdered quarterback David Gitelson being HiddenInPlainSight by being dressed as a passed out fan.
** The ExpandedUniverse novels just love this trope:
*** In ''Mr. Monk Goes to Hawaii'', Monk [[BecomingTheMask takes Dioxynl]] to follow Natalie to Hawaii. After the drug wears off and he's back to being himself, he ruins Natalie's friend's wedding by exposing her groom-to-be as a bigamist, stumbles upon a homicide and drags Natalie along, while trying to find evidence to arrest a television medium for fraud, and solving a rash of mysterious burglaries and car accidents on the way.
*** In ''Mr. Monk Is Miserable'', Natalie uses emotional blackmail to get Monk to come along with her to Paris. There is a murder on the plane. Then, he finds a skull in the catacombs that was not dumped there a few hundred years ago, but less than twelve months ago. Later, Monk and Natalie are at a blind restaurant (where you eat in pitch-black darkness). Another woman sits down, and is about to talk to them when a shadowy assailant stabs and kills her with a steak knife, then escapes in a matter of a few seconds.
*** In ''Mr. Monk on Patrol'', it's averted since Monk and Natalie are called to Summit, New Jersey to help Randy investigate a series of break-ins.
*CannotTellAJoke: Supposedly he tells all of two jokes during the entire series, both times shocking everyone around him; this doesn't stop him from [[DeadpanSnarker snarking]], especially early in the series. He can't tell a joke, but at least he can be [[InsistentTerminology sardonic]].
** One was in "Mr. Monk and the UFO", [[spoiler: unless of course he really ''is'' [[CassandraTruth an alien that will destroy the planet if Natalie doesn't stop trying to see his belly button]].]]
** In "Mr. Monk Goes to the Ballgame", when Monk and Sharona walk into the Hammonds' house, Monk quips that he and Trudy considered buying the same house, which is not likely on a San Francisco cop's salary.
** There is also his excruciatingly painful attempt at stand-up comedy in "Mr. Monk is the Best Man".
* CareerEndingInjury: Monk's mental breakdown from Trudy's death ended his career as a police officer.
* CatchPhrase
** "You'll thank me later."
** "Unless I'm wrong, which, you know, I'm not..."
** "Here's what happened..."
** "Here's the thing..."
** "I don't know how he did it, but he did it."
** "He's the guy."
** "It's a gift...and a curse."
** "Wipe."
* CharacterNameAlias: In "Mr. Monk on Wheels", when knocking on John Kuramoto's door, Monk says, "Hello, Johnny! Open up, it's--it's EncyclopediaBrown! Sally and I want our blue bike back, and the name of your decorator."
* ChasteHero
* {{Claustrophobia}}: One of Monk's big phobias.
** In one episode, he is trapped in a coffin, and memories of Trudy keep him from completely freaking out.
** In another episode, he's caught in a submarine (he was convinced he's only be in there for a few minutes but they went under while he was on board), and only solves the problem by hallucinating that Dr. Bell is with him.
** [[spoiler: And in season 8, he gets over the fear trapped in a car trunk. With Harold, no less.]]
* ClearMyName: In "Mr. Monk Is On The Run, Part Two"
* ComicallySmallBribe: Monk is a pathetic cheapskate. Even when he takes Dioxynl (see other entries for more).
** In "Mr. Monk Goes to the Theater", Monk attempts to bribe a doorman with four dollars. Then Sharona gives him $40. Then Monk asks for his four dollars back. Then says, "We have four dollars in credit for future information!" as Sharona drags him away.
** In "Mr. Monk and the Bully", he tries to bribe a barman with a picture of General Washington (a $1 bill). Then he ups the bribe with another General Washington ([[UpToEleven a quarter]]). Monk and Natalie resort to getting information from the patron sitting right next to him.
* ConvictionByContradiction: Monk can often figure out the crime this way before he has any solid evidence and spends the rest of the episode obtaining said evidence. Lampshaded in "Mr. Monk Fights City Hall," when Paul Crawford questions the validity of ''how he phrased a sentence'' as evidence.
* CrapsackWorld: At first it seems this is just Monk's opinion, but think about it: he discovers murders and dead bodies almost everywhere, half the time when not on a case, and he's ''never wrong''. [[FridgeBrilliance Guess it really is]] [[ThematicThemeTune a jungle out there.]]
* CriminalDoppelganger: In "Mr. Monk Is Someone Else," he turns out to be a dead ringer for a mob hit-man. {{Inverted|Trope}}, in that the police don't mix him up, but instead the FBI need him to make the other ''criminals'' think he was the hit-man.
* CrouchingMoronHiddenBadass: Despite his phobias and neuroses, Monk can and will take physical action if necessary, disarming criminals holding him at gunpoint, shooting at least two suspects (one while blind), and knocking a hit man unconscious with a bottle (while drunk). Despite being visibly terrified, he does things like [[spoiler: standing in front of an F-22 fighter jet about to take off.]] In the finale [[spoiler:he beats up the judge who [[BerserkButton murdered Trudy]].]]
* DeadPersonConversation: Sometimes talks to Trudy in his sleep.
* DefeatingTheUndefeatable: Monk outsmarts killers with airtight alibis.
* DefectiveDetective: The TropeNamer. The show even used to be marketed as such, and this is what Randy refers to Monk as when first meeting him in the pilot.
* DisabilitySuperpower: Offensively so. Once, in "Mr. Monk and the Class Reunion," Natalie lampshades his ability to remember handwriting written on his back:
-->''[Monk has explained to Natalie how he met Trudy]''
-->'''Adrian Monk:''' And that’s how I got her number.
-->'''Natalie Teeger:''' Wait, wait, wait! You mean when he wrote it on your back, you could ''feel'' it? You--you could do that?
-->'''Adrian Monk:''' I have very sensitive skin.
-->'''Natalie Teeger:''' That's like a superpower! Like a very weird, not very useful, superpower!
* DrivesLikeCrazy: In "Mr. Monk Takes His Medicine" when Monk is driving a Ford Mustang convertible.
* DysfunctionalFamily: It is heavily implied in the series starting with "Mr. Monk and the Three Pies", that Monk's family was dysfunctional, and contributed to most of Monk's quirks.
* EasyAmnesia: In "Mr. Monk Bumps His Head," Monk gets hit on the head and loses his memory, but not his quirks.
* EurekaMoment: "I think I just solved the case."
* ExoticDetective: Monk
* ExasperatedPerp: Can be caused by Monk's eccentricities.
* The {{Expy}}: SherlockHolmes, [[CaptainObvious of course]].
** The GreatDetective who is the last mind sought when no one can figure out a queer situation, [[LampshadeHanging even called Sherlock Holmes on many occasions]].
** A brother who is even smarter who rarely puts it towards solving crime because of crippling shyness.
** An ArchEnemy who makes only sporadic appearances, usually preferring to stay in the background.
* FailedAuditionPlot: Monk's continued attempts to get reinstated despite being continually rejected.
*FakeOutMakeOut: Averted drastically in "Mr. Monk and the Genius", when Monk and Natalie are on a stakeout. Natalie sees their suspect approaching their car, Natalie blurts out "We should kiss!" only to [[CrowningMomentOfFunny immediately backpedal]].
* FlowersForAlgernonSyndrome: "Mr. Monk Takes His Medicine"
* FoundTheKillerLostTheMurderer: Happens when Monk gets close to finding [[spoiler Trudy's killer.]]
* FriendOnTheForce: Lieutenant Disher and Captain Stottlemeyer.
* GreenAesop: Arguably, "Mr. Monk and the Garbage Strike". ([[InsaneTrollLogic By the way, the best way to deal with trash is to burn the city. Then burn the ashes and rebuild San Francisco from scratch]]. And while they're at it, they can straighten out Lombard Street.) There's a simpler solution: Just throw all the trash into the bay, "one bag at a time. One truck at a time! One bag at a time." It might take a while, but at least you're making an effort!
* HandshakeRefusal:
** Monk is a germophobe and refuses to shake hands with just about anyone. If he's forced to, he will immediately turn to his assistant for a wipe.
** In one episode he voluntarily shook hands as a sign of friendship with an ex-colleague of his, who was accused (even by Monk) of being in the drug-business (which he wasn't, which was proven of course.)
** In another episode he shook hands with a succession of people, after the last one he immediately turned to his assistant for a wipe. The problem being, the last handshakee was black, leading to much accusations of racism.
* HappyDance: Monk does the "jig" when he solves the case in "Mr. Monk Gets Fired".
* HappyFlashback: Several times
* HeroicBSOD: It is heavily implied that, although Trudy's murder via a bombing didn't cause Monk's issues, but it certainly made it a lot worse than before, suffering a mental breakdown that forced him into early retirement from the force before the start of the series, and necessitated therapy as well as [[spoiler:finding Trudy's killer, not to mention learning that the car bomb was intended for Trudy all along and not a backfired assassination attempt on him that he ever gets better. He also has relatively minor episodes within the main HeroicBSOD, namely pertained to whether he can get his old job back or not (such as when he was not only removed from the case, but also had his detective's license revoked by the commissioner simply because he accidentially deleted a few years worth of forensic files while attempting to eliminate crumbs from the keyboard, or when a four-year hiring freeze threatened his chances of reinstatement).]]
* InsaneTrollLogic: Happens a few times in the novels when Monk sees someone doing something he finds disgusting from his perspective -- which causes him to call said person out with a very interesting idea of the consequences of their actions, to the point that Natalie has occasionally said it might make sense to Monk in some way but not to her. Though occasionally, he does actually have a point.
* HollywoodPersonalityDisorders: The way the show portrays OCD is incredibly inaccurate.
** Although the writers seem to realize this, and therefore Monk is explicitly identified as having OCD maybe only once across the entire series, with characters opting to call him simply "weird" or "persnickety" when explaining his disorder to others. It's heavily toted as OCD in promotional material, however.
* HonorBeforeReason: When Monk becomes Stottlemeyer's best man, he takes his duty of keeping the wedding ring safe seriously -- by holding it clenched in his fist ''for nine days straight'', like [[SarcasmMode it is the only guaranteed way that you won't lose your friend's wedding ring!]]
* HurricaneOfPuns: When Monk participates in the interrogation of the guy who bullied him in middle school (imagine Monk's horror over getting a swirly). Monk unleashes a slew of toilet/swirly-related puns.
* HyperAwareness: Monk
* [[ICantBelieveAGuyLikeYouWouldNoticeMe I Can't Believe a Girl Like You Would Marry Me]]: How Monk feels about his Trudy, even years after they got married.
* IdiosyncraticEpisodeNaming: Every single episode has "Mr. Monk" in the title, always at the beginning of the title (the only episode where it ''isn't'' at the beginning is "Happy Birthday, Mr. Monk").
* ImprobableAimingSkills: In the second part of the series premiere, Monk manages to aim and shoot the perpetrator holding Sharona hostage in the dark. "Aiming" here is key, as that's what separates it from AccidentialAimingSkills.
* IResembleThatRemark: In "Mr. Monk and the Actor".
-->'''Adrian Monk''': He's completely obsessed - and not in a good way, like me.
* {{Jerkass}}: Probably to make him less pathetic, but the way he treated the people around him in the last few seasons, especially Natalie, makes one want to smack him. Monk's usual level of jerkiness is nothing compared to the way he behaves in "Mr. Monk Takes His Medicine," due to the side effects of his anti-OCD medication.
* LaughingMad: Monk briefly undergoes this trope in "Mr. Monk and the Garbage Strike" when, [[spoiler:after being driven insane by the continuing piling of garbage as well as his earlier failure to find the one responsible for the murder of the saniation union boss due to being wrong the first time around, hijacks a city garbage truck, and is planning to dump it into the bay, and implies to do the same with every garbage truck available until the city is clean]], as well as coming up with an even less credible and ridiculously hillarious theory that ''AliceCooper'' killed the union leader due to envy over his owning a chair. In case you're wondering how it's less credible, the first theory was only wrong in that the Mayor killed the union leader, and everything else was spot on, even the Mayor visiting the union leader the night of his death. The second theory, however missed out on a lot of the evidences observed by Monk earlier, and was simply too ludicrous to be true. Randy takes it so seriously that he starts poking holes in it until Stottlemeyer asks him, "Do we really need to poke holes in the 'Alice Cooper wants a wingback chair' theory?"
* LickedByTheDog: "Dog...lick...hand! Boil water!"
* LimitedWardrobe: A rare non-animated version; Monk likes consistency in every aspect of his life, and this extends to wearing nearly-identical suits at almost all times, with most exceptions being when a different style is required (i.e. his old police uniform when trying to get his badge back).
** In contrast, Natalie has the reverse, a seemingly UnlimitedWardrobe. Her general outfits tend to change from season to season.
* MadnessMantra: When Monk breaks down during the garbage strike and tries to get rid of the trash himself by driving it into the sea, he keeps muttering "One bag at a time, one truck at a time" to himself.
* ManChild: Monk becomes one through hypnosis in "Mr. Monk Gets Hypnotized". He gets better, though. Its also hinted that even during this state, he still innately could find clues about the actual murder, although his way of expressing these facts is much different -- like tasting a piece of gum taken off Sally Larkin's ''shoe''.
* [[MeaningfulBackgroundEvent Meaningful Foreground Event]]: Monk is obsessing over the fact that Harold Krenshaw has, apparently, lost his phobias and become a daredevil. While he and Stottlemeyer are engaged in a contest of bladders, Monk's coffee table is perfectly aligned. In an [[ContinuityNod earlier season]] we saw that Monk always keeps it cock-eyed. That he doesn't care about '''that''' shows that he's more obsessed with '''this'''.
* MistakenForBadass: Quite a few times. One good example is when Monk, disguised as a strangely identical hit man, straightens a mobster's tie -- which apparently is taken for an intimidating gesture.
* MistakenForExhibit: In "Mr. Monk Takes the Stand", a flashback during Monk's testimony shows that at the victim's house, he mistakenly believed a display stand was an art piece.
* MistakenForRacist: In "Mr. Monk and the Marathon Man", Monk is meeting with a group of people at the marathon committee's office, and has a wipe ready to wipe his hands after all handshakes are complete. Unfortunately, the last person to shake his hand is a black man, and Monk wipes his hands right after. This trope is played straight, racism is implied and accused. Afterwards, everyone there regards him with contempt.
* MonochromeCasting: Tony Shalhoub, though born in America, is Lebanese, but Monk is supposed to be white.
* MoodWhiplash: The show is fearless about switching between drama and comedy. The best examples, by far, are in "Mr. Monk and the End", such as Dr. Shuler informing Monk he's going to die. He'll feel better, then there'll be vomiting, followed by death. [[ComicallyMissingThePoint Of course, Monk wants death to happen before the vomiting]].
* MundaneMadeAwesome: Monk's reaction in "Mr. Monk on Wheels" to discovering Dean Berry's square tomatoes. He is literally beside himself with joy, since each slice is the ''exact'' same size and won't overlap in sandwiches.
-->'''Monk:''' You can taste the ''symmetry''!
** Of course, there is a small SeriesContinuityError with this - in "Mr. Monk Goes to the Asylum", Dr. Morris Lancaster reads from Monk's patient chart that Monk is allergic to tomatoes.
* MurderArsonAndJaywalking
** In "Mr. Monk and the Psychic", Monk says, "You've gotta be a little skeptical, Sharona. Otherwise you end up believing in everything. UFOs, elves... income tax rebates...."
* MurderMakesYouCrazy: At least to all appearances in "Mr. Monk is on the Run". [[spoiler:When Frank Nunn is shot dead, to all appearances by Monk himself, he acts really disoriented and neurotic (more so than usual). Driving in circles while attempting to steal a pickup truck (as the club is locked around the steering wheel), and stopping to re-thread his torn prison uniform with the correct color thread, are probably good examples.]]
* MysteryMagnet: Monk is one. With only a few exceptions, not a single corpse that he runs across has ever died of a natural death.
** This has been lampshaded a couple of times. In the novel ''Mr. Monk on Patrol'', after Monk and Natalie are nearly incinerated by an arsonist who sets their hotel rooms on fire with a Molotov cocktail, Officer Walter Woodlake tells Randy (paraphrased), "Chief, I thought these two were supposed to drive crime down, not up." In ''Mr. Monk Is Miserable'', Natalie says she feels like she'll have to start carrying body bags around.
* MythArc
* OhTheHumanity: Monk yells this whenever he encounters something ''really'' nasty.
** "Mr. Monk and the Paperboy": after realizing he just wiped his hands with an oily garage rag
** "Mr. Monk and the Kid": when changing a diaper.
* PaintingTheMedium
** In the season 4 episode, Monk is finally put on retainer by the police. He's guaranteed 16 homicides a year for the next two years.
** In an inadvertent example, the ad for "Mr. Monk Stays in Bed" features Monk being served a bowl of alphabet soup. Monk says, "I see letters". Yes, he's talking about the letters in the soup, but by ContrivedCoincidence in TV airings, he's looking in the direction of the episode's [[MediaClassifications age rating]] on the screen.
* PetTheDog: A literal example occurs in the final season.
* PhotographicMemory: Monk has incredible memory. He can even recognize the most minute details about a man's earlobe. So if he witnesses a crime, just be aware that he'll find you.
-->'''Monk:''' I know that rock!
* PhraseCatcher: "It doesn't have to be perfect." From pretty much every random person Monk works with who isn't already aware of his neuroses, directed at Monk.
* PlayedForLaughs: Monk's debilitating mental illness.
* ProperlyParanoid: "Mr. Monk Is Up All Night". [[spoiler: Monk is walking out late at night, and oversees a sour drug deal going wrong in a restaurant kitchen. An Asian man reveals that he is an undercover cop and pulls his gun on a bald-headed customer and a drug dealer, and orders both of them to line up against the wall. A fight breaks out and the undercover cop is shot dead by the drug dealer. The bald man is hustled by the drug dealer outside to a waiting car that drives away. By the time Monk has gotten back after running a few blocks to a payphone to call the police, the kitchen is practically spotless, and there is no evidence of a killing, making Stottlemeyer and Disher suspect that Monk was seeing things as he was suffering from insomnia. Monk's first clue is when the supposedly killed "undercover cop" turns up alive at the train station, throwing out some trash that is traced to an antique coin store (the Asian claims he is on his way to see his brother in Portland). Tracing the garbage, Monk recognizes the coin dealer as the bald witness, who claims he was in bed at the time. When the "undercover cop" turns up dead at the station, Monk realizes something mentioned by Gully, who pickpocketed his wallet earlier: that it's a different city at night. The solution: the "undercover cop" was not actually killed, and a waitress working late helped him clean up the kitchen afterwards. The "drug dealer" was scamming the coin dealer into giving them his antique coins under the pretense that it was hush money.]]
* RealLifeRelative: Tony Shalhoub's wife Brooke Adams appears several times in the series as different characters:
** In "Mr. Monk and the Airplane" as Leigh Harrison, a flight attendant who is driven crazy by Monk's antics (she is later interviewed by James Novak in "Mr. Monk's 100th Case", which establishes that she has developed a fear of flying and also ended up regressing to alcoholism, which was also implied by her final appearance in her main episode.
** In "Mr. Monk and the Kid" as Abigail Carlyle, an abducted violinist's mother.
** In "Mr. Monk Visits a Farm" as Sheriff Marge Butterfield. This results in some interesting reactions in that scene where Monk is dancing (badly) with his real wife while bringing up stuff about Trudy.
** In "Mr. Monk and the Badge" as Edith Capriani, a CrazyCatLady that Monk gets fed up with for pulling him away from other cases.
* ScreamsLikeALittleGirl: "Mr. Monk Goes Camping." [[spoiler:Because of a bear. A [[EverythingsWorseWithBears big damn bear]]]]. Interestingly, though, the trailers for this scene had Tony Shalhoub screaming in his own voice. They dubbed it over with a little girl's one due to the RuleOfFunny.
* [[HesDeadJim She's Dead, Monk]]: In the series finale, Monk finally accepts Trudy's death in two different ways. The first is when he opens Trudy's Christmas present, and the second is when he sleeps in the middle of the bed (rather than sleeping on one side as if to save room for Trudy).
* {{Sexiled}}: Invoked and ultimately subverted in the episode "Mr. Monk and the Class Reunion", where Monk may have had this, as shown by the dialogue when Monk and Natalie are in the dormitory corridor:
-->'''Natalie Teeger:''' Mr. Monk, come on! Let's have some fun! ''[snaps her fingers]'' You said you were gonna show me your dorm room!\\
'''Adrian Monk:''' Well, it's right here. This is it, old #303. Uh-oh! Tie on the doorknob! ''[Camera pans to show a tie wrapped around the doorknob; Natalie laughs]'' My roommate and I did the same thing, it's a code.\\
'''Natalie Teeger:''' Yeah, I think I might know about that.\\
'''Adrian Monk:''' Yeah, it means, "Don't come in! I'm reorganizing my closet!" ''[Natalie stares at him incredulously]''\\
'''Natalie Teeger:''' Your ''closet''?\\
'''Adrian Monk:''' Yeah. My roommate in freshman year, Greg, he reorganized his closet 4-5 times a week.\\
'''Natalie Teeger:''' Uh-huh, and did his girlfriend ever come over to help?\\
'''Adrian Monk:''' Oh yeah, all the time, they were real neat freaks. I used to tease them about it. "Neat freaks!"
* SheIsNotMyGirlfriend: A number of times, other characters seem to be under the impression that Monk and Natalie suppress romantic feelings for each other. Natalie usually finds the suggestion rather amusing.
**In "Mr. Monk Gets Lotto Fever," Monk is mistaken for Natalie's boyfriend by one of her fans.
*SharedFamilyQuirks: Adrian and Ambrose are both {{Insufferable Genius}}es, and both are crippled with psychological diseases (Adrian has OCD, Ambrose has agoraphobia).
* ShellShockedVeteran: Averted. Despite being taken hostage very frequently, buried alive on a few occasions, frequently seeing the aftermath of many bloody murders (shootings, stabbings, explosions, beatings, even a few mutilations on the side), Monk is afraid of milk, handshakes, and germs, and has traumatic memories of birth.
* SherlockScan: As an expy of the TropeNamer, Monk is notorious for this. However, since Monk is also socially inept, he also doesn't always know that there are some details not to bring up. Here's a good piece of advice: If you know that a woman is lying about her age, don't call her out on it. Or if you know that the judge at a hearing is sleeping with his secretary, don't use that as your way of proving your credibility to him. Or mention that a widow is having a sexual affair if her daughter is also standing there.
* ShowDontTell: In the entirety of the show's run, Monk was explicitly described as having OCD ''maybe'' twice, not counting promos. This is made especially jarring on the multiple occasions where Monk gets in trouble for grossly inappropriate behavior and Natalie or Sharona tries to explain to an authority figure that Monk suffers from a condition; the best she's ever able to come up with is "he's... persnickity".
* SickEpisode: "Mr. Monk Stays in Bed"
* SlippingAMickey: Invoked and [[HoistByHisOwnPetard Inverted]] in [[ExactlyAsItSaysOnTheTin "Mr. Monk Gets Drunk"]]. Monk attempts to do this to Al Nicoletto to extract a confession from him, and also orders for a non-alcoholic beverage (intended for himself) and an alcoholic beverage for Nicoletto. He ends up being the one drunk shortly thereafter. It's implied that the orders were mixed up.
* TheSoCalledCoward: Monk is terrified of 312 specifically named, listed, and ordered things. In spite of constantly encountering them, he ''always'' gets his man. And he never gets over his fear.
* StatusQuoIsGod: Whenever Monk makes a new friend, they turn out to be [[SixthRangerTraitor evil criminals manipulating him.]] Whenever he makes some progress in his mental health, he's [[ResetButton back to being worse than ever at the end of the episode]]. It took the final episode to give him some closure.
** The final season has him working though some of his problems.
** An episode at the beginning of the final season had him make a friend who's wife died in the {{cold open}} in a hit-and-run and was not [[AssholeVictim evil or manipulating]]. However, he wasn't from around this part of the country, so...
*** This friend was literally put on a bus at the end, too.
** In "Mr. Monk Goes to the Office", his coworkers at the office he was working at while undercover liked him and seemed to be forming a friendship, but of course after the crime was solved he had to go back to his regular job. Making it worse, Monk had ruined his relationship with them due to not wearing proper shoes at a bowling game.
** One episode lampshaded it by having him convinced that the elderly woman who had become a mother figure to him had to have been in on the murder, because everyone else who had become his friend in the past ended up betraying him. Things got awkward when he found out that she really was innocent, right after cruelly berating her.
** In "Mr. Monk and the Badge", [[spoiler:Monk quits the force after having been back on it for only a few days, finding consulting to be more of his thing.]]
** Monk had sparked a possible romance with a woman who is arrested for murdering an escaped war criminal. [[spoiler:She had taken the rap for the real killer, her mother]].
* StripperCopConfusion: Sadly, yes, in the one where Natalie's brother gets married. Monk couldn't notice that the guy had dollar bills sticking out of his belt.
* TheSummation: Almost always signaled with the CatchPhrase "Here's what happened..."
** Lampshaded in "Mr. Monk Gets Drunk": "Monk was doing his summation thing..." Played with in [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin the manner in which he delivered it.]]
** Subverted in "Mr. Monk and the Earthquake", wherein the episode goes through all the usual bells and whistles of the summation formula (black and white flashbacks, dramatic camera shots, etc), while totally oblivious to the fact that the voiceover being supplied by an unusually-addled Monk is pure gibberish.
** Also played awesomely in "Mr. Monk and the Kid" where Monk reads the summation to the one-year old boy he has temporarily adopted as a bedtime story.
* SuperOCD: Very. [[http://forums.usanetwork.com/lofiversion/index.php/t403246.html Possibly]] a misdiagnosed autistic savant, instead.
* SuperSenses: Although not emphasized in every episode, it's periodically shown that Monk's senses, particularly hearing, smell, and touch, are sharp to an almost superhuman degree. The show emphasizes the negative SensoryOverload aspect of having such senses, with Monk often being driven nuts by noises or smells that no one else even notices.
* TagAlongActor: Monk acquires David Ruskin in "Mr. Monk and the Actor". It didn't work out well because of the guy's method acting.
* TakeAThirdOption
** In "Happy Birthday, Mr. Monk," faced with hiding in either a dumpster or port-a-john, Monk declares "I choose death!"
** "Mr. Monk and the Red-Headed Stranger":
-->'''Stottlemeyer:''' It's either (a) the blind woman who has zero motive or it's (b) your friend the red-headed stranger.\\
'''Randy:''' Who had motive, means, and opportunity, and was identified by the only witness at the scene.\\
'''Stottlemeyer:''' A or B, Monk.\\
'''Monk:''' I think it's C.\\
'''Stottlemeyer:''' What the hell is C?\\
'''Monk:''' I don't know yet.
* ThirdActStupidity: Monk will often let it slip to the killer that he knows he's the killer and has solid evidence to prove it. This usually occurs when the killer is an authority figure in a position to kill Monk in a way that would raise absolutely no questions. As a result, Monk is regularly endangered in ways he could have easily avoided if he had kept his mouth shut and waited for the police to arrive. This is generally explained by the fact that Monk has ''really'' bad social skills.
* UnusualEuphemism: "BM" for "shit" and "haul bottom" for "haul ass".
* UpToEleven: Monk's OCD becomes much worse after Trudy's murder.
* WantingIsBetterThanHaving: Getting back on the police force was one of Monk's goals since the start of the show. When he finally accomplished it late in the final season, he discovered that he actually preferred the independence of being an outside consultant.
* [[WeWantOurJerkBack We Want Our OCD Detective Back]]:
** In the episode "Mr. Monk Takes His Medicine", Monk ends up taking a type of medication where all of his regular quirks are being suppressed and he can live a (relatively) normal life after an incident where he was forced to let a criminal get away due to his hands being soiled. It works too well, and he ends up becoming similar to one of those jerkish college frat-boys, with Sharona and the SFPD wanting the Monk they know to be there. Eventually, Monk manages to give up on that medication when it became apparent that he'd have to choose between the medicine and his memories of Trudy.
** Lee Goldberg brings the drug back in some of the novels, as the only way Monk can manage to make an airline flight. [[spoiler: In ''Mr. Monk Goes to Germany'', at one point Natalie observes that this will keep him from solving the murder. He replies that he has already solved it, and just needs to find the evidence-- indeed, it turns out that in his normal state he would not have been ABLE to handle the evidence. Unfortunately, Monk and Natalie are almost killed when the shack they enter to retrieve the evidence in question catches fire, and they barely escape the flames.]]
* WeirdnessMagnet
** In the episode "Mr. Monk Gets Cabin Fever", Natalie observes that everywhere Monk goes, people get murdered, supposing he's followed by some karmic cloud of disaster. By the end of the episode, she changes her mind about him: he's not a Weirdness Magnet for murder, he's cosmically drawn to where murders occur so he can solve them.
* WhatTheHellHero: In "Mr. Monk and the Red-Headed Stranger", when Stottlemeyer finds out that Monk not only released a streaker that they just picked up for disrupting two police press conferences, but also hired him to streak, is about to tell Monk off for it, until Monk points to Mrs. Mass to indicate her reaction, showing he actually had a good reason for hiring him: See YouJustToldMe below.
** In "Mr. Monk and the Bully", Natalie angrily chews Monk out for his desire to continue following Roderick Brody's wife:
-->'''Natalie Teeger:''' Yeah, look, uh, Mr. Monk, I have to tell you something. I made a decision: if you want to keep following Mrs. Brody, I suppose that's your right, although it really isn't, but, I can't help you anymore.
-->'''Adrian Monk:''' Why not?
-->'''Natalie Teeger:''' I--I--I'm just not comfortable! Her husband fired us!
-->'''Adrian Monk:''' It's what they call pro bono.
-->'''Natalie Teeger:''' No, "pro bono" is for lawyers! This is stalking!
-->'''Adrian Monk:''' No, this is comeuppance. Pro bono comeuppance.
-->'''Natalie Teeger:''' No! No! That is just crazy talk! ''[She marches forward and switches off Monk's table lamp]''
-->'''Adrian Monk:''' It's not crazy talk!
-->'''Natalie Teeger:''' Pro bono comeuppance?! That's the craziest talk there is! You heard what he said! He wants you to quit!!
-->'''Adrian Monk:''' I wanted him to quit! I begged him to quit 40 years ago, in stall #3! ''[He starts looking at the digital camera]'' Oh yeah.
*WildTeenParty: Inverted in "Mr. Monk is the Best Man". Because Stottlemeyer lets Monk plan his bachelor party (which turns out to be anything but a good idea), it's barely even a "party", and most certainly isn't wild with: a port-a-potty within the actual bathroom, pizza with [[ExactWords nothing on it]] (not even cheese or sauce), one 12 ounce beer for each partygoer [12 party members, amounting to 144 fluid ounces of alcohol total] which requires Randy to be assigned Designated Drunk; some jokes that just don't go well, and he shows them ''BachelorParty'' as their movie, of which the movie is implied to not be a popular choice among the cops. The closest it ever gets to being a wild teen party is when Randy staggers in asking who owns the police unit out front that's painted a charcoal gray with flames on the side and on the roof and windshield, which causes everyone to run outside and find Stottlemeyer's car on fire.
* YouCantGoHomeAgain: In "Mr. Monk and the Badge" Monk realizes his goal of being reinstated in the SFPD, only to find that nothing about policing was familiar to him anymore and the episode end with him retiring from the force.
* YouJustToldMe: This is usually how Monk manages to get the perpetrator should the evidence he finds can't implicate the perpetrator directly, although it's more similar to "You Just Showed Me."
** In "Mr. Monk Goes to Hawaii", this is how Monk manages to deduce that Dylan Swift, a supposed TV psychic who films in San Francisco and Hawaii is responsible for two beating deaths at a hotel in the course of a week: knowing the likelihood that Swift has bugged all of the hotel rooms (Monk figuring this out after he realized that this was the only way Swift could know so much about Natalie's background without meeting her or going on the Internet), he fakes "cleaning" so he can find the devices. So to trap him, Monk and Natalie have a moving conversation, where Monk talks about Trudy and her security blanket. The next morning, Monk sends Stottlemeyer a letter, which he reads when Monk shows up at Swift's show in San Francisco, right after Swift mentions the very same story that Monk told Natalie -- a conversation that he could only have known about if he was listening in. The letter itself reads that this story was a trap to incriminate Swift. In this case, some INeverSaidItWasPoison is involved, as Monk reveals that Swift, unable to speak to the dead, could only know so much about the first murder victim and her background if he was the killer.
** In "Mr. Monk and the Sleeping Suspect", the identity of [[spoiler:Brian Babbage]] as the mail bomber is confirmed when he panics at the sight of someone opening one of his custom-made packages. He shouldn't have known about the bombings because he had been in a coma when the bombings happened. (If you're curious about how he managed to set off the bombings while in a coma, watch the episode in full).
** "Mr. Monk and the Red-Headed Stranger": Monk clears Willie Nelson's name by proving that Mrs. Mass, the blind woman who was the only other person besides Willie in the alleyway when his road manager was killed, wasn't blind (or at least, not completely blind)—he had a streaker run past her, and she reacted. See the WhatTheHellHero listing above for more.
** In the second episode, "Mr. Monk and the Psychic," Harry Ashcombe needs his wife's body found without revealing that he had killed her, so he looks up a hack psychic named Dolly Flint in the police files. He tricks Dolly into thinking she was guided to the body (in reality, Ashcombe knocked her out, put on a wig, drove through a red light to make sure "she" was seen driving to the crash scene). Monk trapped him by getting Dolly to accuse Ashcombe of murder, thus forcing him to discredit her—and he helpfully though inadvertently confessed in the process.
** A mixture of this trope and BluffingTheMurderer was used by Monk on Derek Philby in "Mr. Monk Goes Back to School". Monk, after deducing that Philby killed his mistress and passed it off as a suicide and a custodian who was threatening to blackmail him through a staged explosion, particularly how he committed the former murder, tells Philby that the cops will do a search of the building for whatever evidence implicated him. After finding the incriminating glasses in the clock tower, Philby finds Monk and the police waiting for him when he leaves, and Monk then reveals that he didn't need to find proof as he planted the glasses on the tower in order to trick him into revealing his guilt.
* YouNeverDidThatForMe: In the episode where Sharona and Natalie meet, Natalie finds out that Monk paid Sharona a lot more than he paid her. Thus she complains that Monk never paid her that much. It was a difference of twenty dollars.
* YourPrincessIsInAnotherCastle: In the finale, [[spoiler:Monk sits around in a chair with his therapist at about 40 minutes in, the case apparently solved, and talks about [[LampshadeHanging his lack of closure]].]]
!!Natalie Teeger (Traylor Howard)
!!Captain Leland Stottlemeyer (Ted Levine)
!!Lieutenant Randall "Randy" Disher (Jason Gray-Stanford)
!!Sharona Fleming (Bitty Schram)
[[folder: Supporting / Auxilary characters]]
!! Ambrose Monk (John Turturro)
!! Benjy Fleming (Max Morrow[[note:All season 1 episodes except for the pilot]] / Kane Ritchotte[[note:Season 1 pilot, and seasons 2-3]])
!! Julie Teeger (Emmy Clarke)
!! Dr. Charles Kroger (Stanley Kamel)
!! Dr. Neven Bell (Hector Elizondo)
!! Harold Krenshaw (Tim Bagley)
!! Marci Maven (SarahSilverman)
!! Kevin Dorfman (Jarrad Paul)
!! Trudy Monk (Stellina Ruisch[[note:All flashbacks in seasons 1, 2, and first part of season 3]], Melora Hardin[[note:All appearances from season 3 through season 8]], and Lindy Newton[[note:Flashbacks in "Mr. Monk and the Class Reunion"]])
!! Dale "The Whale" Biederbeck (Adam Arkin [[note:"Mr. Monk Meets Dale the Whale"]], Tim Curry [[note:"Mr. Monk Goes to Jail"]], and Ray Porter [[note:"Mr. Monk Is On The Run, Part 2"]])
