Captain Stottlemeyer is preparing to go on a Hawaiian vacation with Linda Fusco, his serious girlfriend. She in the meantime prepares for her real estate partner Sean Corcoran leaving the firm. A masked assailant murders Sean, however, while he's showing a house. Monk realizes that Linda is the most likely murderer and digs for proof, despite the Captain's reluctance .
Tropes for this episode include:
- Affably Evil: Aside from killing her co-worker and trying to frame Monk of sexually harassing her, Linda's a charming personality. However, this is deconstructed as the crux for why everyone's dismayed to learn she's the killer.
- Alliterative Name: Helen Hubbert.
- Being Good Sucks:
- Monk and Natalie hate the fact that all the evidence points to Linda as the prime suspect in the murder. They like her and they think that she's a good match for Stotlemeyer. On realizing that she has a motive and the means, however, Monk becomes convinced that she is the most likely suspect. He tries to find the proof, even as Stottlemeyer makes it clear he hates Monk doing it.
- When Monk manages to prove that Linda was the murderer, Randy reluctantly arrests her. Stottlemeyer is also unhappy about it.
- Bloodless Carnage: We see little specks of blood on some boxes in the area where Sean's corpse fell... far less than a man who took a shotgun shell to the chest probably should have left.
- Blown Across the Room: When Sean is shot with the killer's shotgun, he's knocked a good couple feet backwards into a coffee table, all while the killer is a few feet away themselves.
- Breaking Bad News Gently: When the evidence becomes irrefutable that Linda is the killer, Monk and Natalie try to gently break the news to Stottlemeyer. Stottlemeyer doesn't take it well.
- Call-Back: Stottlemeyer doesn't want to believe Linda is a murderer because he already had one failed marriage and can't keep looking for another.
- Conspicuously Public Assassination: Monk notes that the killer hid in the bathroom, and had plenty of opportunity to kill Sean Corcoran before his clients arrived. The fact that the killer only carried out the shooting after the couple turns up leads Monk to conclude that the killer wanted to have witnesses provide the police with an exact time of death because they have an alibi for that time. This is another detail that Monk views as evidence pointing to Linda as a suspect: she has an alibi (that 20 minutes before the murder, she was talking to Monk, Natalie and Stottlemeyer on webcam from her house).
- Downer Ending: Monk unhappily proves that Linda indeed murdered Sean Corcoran. Stottlemeyer orders Randy to arrest her, sadly saying how happy they could have been together, and takes Randy on the Hawaii trip instead. He then tosses a ring into the waves, implying he was going to propose to her.
- Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: When she's proven to be the killer, Linda tries to reason to the Captain "I did it for us". Somehow, it eluded Linda that the Captain wouldn't have wanted her to commit murder in the first place.
- Fake Alibi: Linda designed a mobile copy of her bedroom in a back of a moving truck, and sets up regular evening webcam chats with Stottlemeyer from her bedroom. On the night of the murder, she chats with him from the set in the back of the truck, making it seem like she was at home (and too far away from the crime scene to have committed the crime) when she was actually just a few blocks away from the house where her victim was going to be showing to potential buyers.
- Foreshadowing: Linda is a little nervous when Stottlemeyer has a moving truck parked across the street from her house towed. That's because it's the truck containing the recreation of her bedroom she used in her alibi, and it's inevitably going to be discovered.
- Hope Spot: After realizing Linda has the means and motive to commit the murder, Monk and Natalie test her alibi by doing a motorcycle trip between her house and the murder scene to see if she could have arrived in time. The trip takes too long, so at first, they're ecstatic. Monk even declares how he's never been so happy to have been wrong. But then he finds a bush of hibiscus flowers that match the flower Linda wore in her hair on the night of the murder, and his and Natalie's joy turns to despair at the realization that they'll be informing Stottlemeyer that they're investigating Linda as a murder suspect.
- Karma Houdini: Stottlemeyer never apologizes to Monk for all the horrible things he said and did to Monk when he told him that Linda was a suspect.
- Loophole Abuse: Monk wasn't invited to Linda and Stottlemeyer's send-off party. So, he sends Natalie into the party alone while he finds the bedroom set in the impounded moving truck. Natalie then uses Stottlemeyer's webcam to call Monk, and then he plays Hawaiian music loudly to draw the cops down to the truck to discover the set.
- Oh, Crap!:
- Monk and Natalie when he finds the flowers at the murder scene, which provides circumstantial evidence that Linda is the murderer.
- Linda when Monk reveals the van with a replica of her room, and proves that she killed Sean.
- Once Done, Never Forgotten: Randy asking Natalie if she's in love with him. Natalie keeps bringing it up for the rest of the scene.
- Out-of-Character Alert: Linda, knowing that Monk is close to finding possible proof that she was the killer, tries to poison his friendship with Stottlemeyer by claiming Monk was framing her so as to blackmail her into having sex with him. Stottlemeyer, knowing full well Monk is all but disgusted to any form of physical (let alone sexual) contact and is still committed to Trudy, gets immediately suspicious of her after she tells him that. This is ironic since he was completely on her side until she said that.
- Orgy of Evidence: It's circumstantial evidence, yes, but once Monk sees a photo that shows Linda can use a shotgun (a photo in her office of her hunting with her grandfather), notices she wears the same lipstick one of the witnesses saw on the shooter (coral peach, an unusual shade), she is 5'7, like how the killer was described, and finds out she has a motive (Sean was about to start his own real estate company, taking a ton of Linda's clients with him), he realizes she could be the killer.
- Red Herring: Helen Hubbert, an unsatisfied home buyer that Sean helped, also has the skills and know-how, and lacks a solid alibi. Linda names her as the perfect fall guy for the crime.
- Retirony:
- Sean Corcoran was going to leave the company before Linda murdered him.
- A variant: Stottlemeyer was going to propose to Linda on their Hawaii trip.
- RevengeSVP: Subverted. Monk wasn't invited to the send-off party, but he didn't use it to get revenge on Stottlemeyer. He and Natalie simply use the party to expose Linda as the killer.
- Sherlock Scan: Parodied. While masquerading as an FBI agent, Monk tries to intimidate Helen Hubbert into cleaning up the interrogation room by calling to attention her alcoholism and her second job as a waitress, seemingly without any clues. Stottlemeyer then points out that he gleaned such from some rather obvious evidence, that being Helen's hip flask and the number of single dollar bills in her opened purse.
- Spanner in the Works:
- Stottlemeyer calls Monk in to solve a case outside the SFPD's jurisdiction as a favor to Linda...leading to Monk and Natalie uncovering evidence that points to Linda being the killer.
- Stottlemeyer makes a call for the moving truck illegally parked in front of a fire hydrant across the street from Linda's house to be towed. Unbeknownst to him, the moving truck contains the fake bedroom set that Linda was using as her alibi, meaning she has no opportunity to destroy the set. Monk thus is able to link her to the truck when he finds rental forms for it in Linda's house that she signed under her maiden name, and then discovers the set when he searches it in the impound lot.
- Spoiler Title: Yes, the "bad girlfriend" shot her former partner.
- Spotting the Thread:
- The wife that was viewing the house mentions the assailant was a woman because she was wearing a specific type of lipstick. The discovery of that exact shade and brand of lipstick in Linda's purse is what leads Monk to suspect her.
- Monk finds hibiscus flowers at the murder scene identical to the one Linda was wearing.
- The thing that leads Monk to realize that Linda wasn't really in her bedroom on the night of the murder. He notes that on the night of the murder, Linda put a pen down on the table by the chair she was sitting in, and it rolled away. But when Monk is in her house searching for evidence, he puts a pen down on the same table...and it doesn't roll. Combined with the rental forms for the moving truck that he'd found, this leads him to realize that Linda's "bedroom" was on a slant that night, as she'd parked the truck on a hill.
- Title Drop: During the confrontation at her house, Monk actually calls Linda a "bad girlfriend".
- Troll: While interrogating Hubbert, Stottlemeyer litters the room with pieces he tore off of a Styrofoam cup and opens the blinds crookedly, just to annoy Monk who was watching.
- Villain Ball:
- Linda would have gotten away with it if she hadn't put a flower in her hair that grew by the house. Or not parked on a hill, which slam-dunked the case for Monk. The latter clearly crushes her when she realizes she very nearly got away with it had it not been for her parking on a hill.
- Also, if she hadn't tried to claim Monk sexually harassed her, Stottlemeyer wouldn't have gotten suspicious.
- Was It All a Lie?: Stottlemeyer takes Randy on the Hawaii trip, and he laments about whether Linda really loved him or planned the murder from the beginning.
- What the Hell, Hero?:
- While Linda isn't a hero, she is nonetheless someone Stottelmeyer has cared for these past episodes. When he learns that she really did kill Sean Corcoran, she claims "I did it for us". Stottlemeyer esponds with a sober "What we had was real. We were gonna go all the way." If anything, this indicates how deeply disappointed he is in his girlfriend for throwing away their future together.
- The trope actually is more apt to describe Stottlemeyer who not only refuses to investigate a credible suspect because of his own feelings but also 1) violently shoves Monk, 2) riles Monk up using his phobias, 3) accuses him of being jealous and bitter and 4) rubs Monk's lack of badge and Trudy's death in his face just because Monk dared to look at a suspect objectively. Does Stottlemeyer think that the other killers they've arrested don't have people who love them?
- Yank the Dog's Chain: After his marriage to Karen fell apart, you'd think Linda would be the one for Stottlemeyer. Instead, she turns out to be a killer, much to everyone's dismay.
- You're Just Jealous: Monk and Natalie warn Stottlemeyer about his new girlfriend, who is their prime suspect in a shooting. He refuses to believe it and accuses Monk of just being jealous and trying to ruin his happiness out of envy as he has everything Monk could want. Unfortunately for Stottlemeyer, it turns out Monk isn't being biased at all, and while Monk doesn't like that Linda is his only suspect, he is simply just following the evidence.
