History Monk / TropesFToJ

*** In the first scene of "Mr. Monk and the Secret Santa," Alice tells Leland, "Captain, I took a message. Your wife called. She said her mother's sick and she won't be able to make it tonight." Leland replies, "Her mother's...? Well, that's too bad." The tone, and the briefly frustrated expression Leland makes, convey that he knows Karen's mother is not sick, and she just doesn't want to come to the party.

** In "Mr. Monk Goes to the Ballgame," this happens when the Hammonds' GPS system directs them to an industrial park, where a hooded man is waiting with a pistol in hand:

* JanitorImpersonationInfiltration: In "[[Recap/MonkS7E15MrMonkAndTheMagician Mr. Monk and the Magician]," Karl Torini poses as a repairman to sneak into the Magic Castle theater and kill Kevin Dorfman.

* HeelFaceTurn: Harold Krenshaw, after years as Monk's nemesis Harold realizes (after being lock in a car trunk with Monk by the bad guy of the week) that the two are a lot alike and becomes his friend, then he makes a un-Krenshaw gesture and joins a new group therapy to allow Monk to have Dr. Bell to himself (though his insurance required him to only be in group therapy. The other members were murdered by the bad guy leaving only Harold and Monk so Harold leaving left Monk as the only member left).

*** In "Mr. Monk and the Critic", thanks to work from Monk and Natalie, the police suspect theater critic John Hannigan killed his girlfriend Callie Esterhaus by throwing her off a hotel balcony. So Monk, Natalie, Stottlemeyer and Disher confront Hannigan at his office to question him about drugging and raping an underaged girl - and bring in the supposed victim, who we see is Julie, who tells her story. Hannigan, exasperated, denies the accusation, claiming he was at home writing, despite Stottlemeyer producing a business card that Hannigan supposedly gave to Julie. Baffled and scared, Hannigan swears positively that he has never seen Julie before in his life.....and gives himself away. That is because Julie performed in the play Hannigan was using as his alibi for the murder. Midway through, she has a solo where she wears a costume looking a lot like the one she's wearing right now, a solo Hannigan wrote a scathing review about, calling it "forgettable". Hannigan's stating that he doesn't recognize Julie proves he was out of the theater at the time (also, Natalie insists that no critic would write such a review unless they were outside). Goodbye, alibi.

*** In "Mr. Monk Meets Dale the Whale", the titular Dale 'the Whale' Biederback arranges for his physician Dr. Christiaan Vezza to murder a judge named Catherine Lavinio who issued a costly antitrust ruling against Dale, then stage the scene to make it look like Dale did it, even faking a 911 call fingering him as the attacker and making sure a witness sees a morbidly obese man (actually Vezza wearing a fat suit) disconnecting a smoke alarm in the house. This is completely impossible, because not only is Dale too fat to move, he couldn't even fit through the victim's door if he could, because he's basically like a ship in a bottle.

*** A notable example is "Mr. Monk and the Captain's Wife," when, after Karen is hospitalized for a car crash that leaves her in a coma and necessitated temporary surgery, Stottlemeyer begin to have an unhealthy obsession of bringing down the person responsible, even to the point of dismissing basic logic, such as immediately pinning the blame on a picket union because the victims, two truck drivers, were scabs, despite Monk trying to tell him that the union's negotiation is going in their favor, not to mention that the assailant responsible for sniping the tow truck driver wasn't even wearing shoes. Then there's also the fact that Leland actually attacks head union boss Harry Bolston's second in command Frank Wicks (who Leland arrested during a previous union strike for assault) that most certainly would result in Leland having his badge taken away if Bolston hadn't covered it up. Also, once Evan Coker is identified as the killer, and after it is learned that Coker did it first to recover incriminating evidence in a repossessed car that linked him to a bank robbery that resulted in the death of a clerk, and the second to throw the police off the wrong trail once Monk got suspicious, he actually throws Coker onto the hood of a police car and deeply considers beating him up badly in retribution to what he nearly did with his wife. He only barely stops himself when Monk, Sharona and Randy remind him that if he does this, he'll lose his badge, and it really isn't worth it.

* GenderFlip: Parodied in "Mr. Monk and the Actor," when Stottlemeyer and Disher stop by during filming of ''[[ShowWithinAShow The Killer Astronaut]]'', the TV movie adaptation of "Mr. Monk and the Astronaut"[[note]]Well, actually, they weren't shooting. Since all of the actors except Ruskin have their script folders in their hands, this is probably the actors acting out the script as it currently is written to see if there are any things that need to be changed, and to make their performances more natural when they shoot for real[[/note]]. They are on the set of the crime scene investigation at Joanne Raphelson's house. Randy is really embarrassed to find that he's portrayed by a woman and that a romantic subplot has been put in between "her" and "Stottlemeyer" in the film. This leads to a very uncomfortable moment for the real Stottlemeyer and Disher when their actors lean in for a kiss:

** Two of Creator/TonyShalhoub's ''Series/{{Wings}}'' costars appeared in guest roles: TimDaly AsHimself (complete with an ActorAllusion for Shaloub) in the first season and Steven Weber as the killer of the week in a fifth season episode.

** After Dr. Kroger passed away (due to Stanley Kamel's death in 2008), Monk has difficulty finding a new one by "Mr. Monk Buys a House." He rejects one reccomended by Natalie's brother because the chairs in his waiting room were too low, and rejects another one because he has an eyepatch. Then comes Dr. Neven Bell. His first name is the same forwards as it is backwards, but Monk can't approve because the first N is capitalized, rendering the palindrome imperfect (neveN), even with Dr. Bell doing several small gestures to win his confidence over (beginning the appointment at the exact second it is scheduled, supplying Monk with his favorite bottled water, handwipes during their introductory handshake, and acquiring a painting in his office that came from Dr. Kroger's waiting room)..

*** It's more likely that Adrian and Trudy were DINKs (Double Income No Kids)and thus living in San Francisco was not financially that hard. Trudy must have had life insurance and Adrian is on disability (read no income tax. He also has his psychiatrist sessions covered by police union benefits (police union contracts are very generous given the nature of the work). Trump is notoriously frugal and likely he wants to ensure that his money lasts longer than him.

* GenreSavvy:
** In "Mr. Monk and the Paperboy," when Monk realizes what Kevin's girlfriend plans to do, he predicts that she'll try to kill him as early as that night. He turns out to be correct.
** In "Mr. Monk and the Election," due to ChekhovsSkill, Monk recognizes a game of "keep away" when he sees one.
** "Mr. Monk Goes to the Dentist": Dr. Oliver Bloom and his assistant Terri must love ''Film/MarathonMan'' since they even refer to the movie as they prepare to torture Monk with a dental drill.
** "Mr. Monk Meets His Dad": Unlike his father, Adrian is smart enough to be suspicious of any trucking boss who orders you to stick to the backroads when there are more direct highways, or sends you on a back-and-forth journey that zigzags.
** In the novel ''Mr. Monk on the Road'', a combination of lampshade hanging/genre savviness happens when Natalie asks Stottlemeyer if he's noticed that about half the time Monk solves a murder right on the spot, the killer is also the person who found the body. She jokingly suggests that Stottlemeyer just arrest that person right away to save money, but Stottlemeyer counters that the other 50% of the time the department can get sued for false arrest.
** Stottlemeyer describes in [[http://www2.usanetwork.com/series/monk/webexclusives/blogs/stottlemeyer09.html this blog entry]] an incident where he and Randy are in a long line at a popular hot dog stand at Fisherman's Wharf. They see a guy pull up in a sports car and Stottlemeyer senses that the man is going to cut in line, so he warns Randy. They see him do just that, so they confront him and tell him to go to the back of the line.
*** ''He gave me the wiseass comments I've come to expect from punks like him -- "are you the line police, the hot dog cops, oh I get it the wiener patrol?" -- that kind of thing.'' Once the guy at the counter refuses to serve the man, Stottlemeyer and Disher take him aside and he threatens them with a lawsuit and insults. So Stottlemeyer thinks fast to see if there's a police or municipal violation that can give the brat some more difficulty, then looks at the man's car and gets an idea: he tells Randy a certain police code to call in. So the man, now realizing he's being confronted by actual police detectives, changes his idle threats until the tow truck arrives to take his car away. Stottlemeyer notes that the man had parked in a red zone.
** [[http://www2.usanetwork.com/series/monk/webexclusives/blogs/stottlemeyer14.html Another Stottlemeyer blog entry]]:
-->''Years ago, I was working a beat with my partner when we noticed a young kid behind the wheel of a fancy, brand-new car. He was driving erratically, and when we pulled up behind him and lit him up he turned into the Tasmanian Devil and took off. But the chase didn't last long; after only a few blocks, he over-negotiated a right turn and went up over a curb and into a storefront. We grabbed him as he was trying to make his escape through a dress shop and brought him back to the station.''\\
\\
''The kid was obnoxious and uncooperative, answering all our questions with insults and curses. He was underage and obviously under the influence of alcohol. When we ran his high school ID we discovered, [[DullSurprise not exactly to our surprise]], that the punk had been listed on a number of prior police reports, for everything from stealing food from the cafeteria to threatening harm to teachers who accused him of cheating on exams. Since this little angel was a juvenile, we were obligated to contact Juvenile Hall and present our case to them for booking. This case did not qualify, which meant that only thing left to do was contact the parents and release the kid into their custody.''
** In ''Mr. Monk on the Couch'' after Jerry Yermo, a guy Natalie has dated a few times, is exposed by Monk as a murderer, Natalie immediately is savvy enough to decide that she'll live longer if she assumes every guy she dates is a murderer to begin with then gets proven wrong. This compared to Sharona, who in her tenure on the show did date several less-than-worthy guys including a couple of killers from the episodes in question.

* INeverSaidItWasPoison: Played with a lot, especially in the episode "Mr. Monk Takes His Medicine" where Monk, under the influence of medication that makes him go loopy, actually forgets that the suspect was indeed told the details of the investigation. At different points, Monk, Natalie, Stottlemeyer and Disher are all very much GenreSavvy about this trope.

** In "Mr. Monk Is On The Air," Natalie is seen facepalming when Monk tries talking to Max Hudson and his yes-colleagues live on the radio.

*** Sorta happened in "Mr. Monk and the Genius," as Patrick Kloster has practically admitted to killing his own wife, and the alleged poison matched that which could be extracted from oleander flowers in Patrick's garden. Unable to find adequate evidence and driven to his wits' end, Monk steals some of the flowers, extracts the poison, breaks into Patrick's house to leave it in plain sight on a shelf, and only gets caught when he went back to retrieve the planted vial after his conscience got the better of him, as Patrick had apparently anticipated to try this move.

** In "Mr. Monk and the Man Who Shot Santa Claus," Monk and the team are trying to investigate a crime scene while a crowd is jeering at Monk for his shooting and wounding of a man dressed in a Santa suit a few days earlier. At one point, someone throws an egg that hits Natalie. Stottlemeyer appropriately does get angry at the crowd and immediately has Monk and Natalie escorted away by officers for their protection. However, given the egging happened while Natalie was inside the crime scene perimeter, Stottlemeyer should also legally have had the authority to have the entire crowd arrested for interfering with a police investigation.

** In "Mr. Monk and the Foreign Man," Monk is distracted by Samuel Waingaya burning incense outside the apartment. Natalie gets a call about a murder case. Monk is thankful for it, saying he should be able to breath. Cut to him covering his mouth and saying he can't breath as he enters a house with a corpse that's been dead for a few weeks.

** Sharona is made a victim of this in "Mr. Monk and the Girl Who Cried Wolf", where her writing professor Meredith Preminger tries to discredit her sanity by having her lover, a security guard named Denny Graf, pose as a dying man with a knife in his blood-soaked chest and a screwdriver sticking out of his ear, stating "Douglas is worried about you", and then have him disappear when she tries to show him to Monk: Thrice. Turns out, she is doing this because Sharona has written a mystery paper which was about a woman who kills her husband by feeding him tomato soup laced with a toxin that can emulate a heart attack, which Meredith and her lover have decided will be helpful to use against her husband, and thus cover their tracks in case Sharona gets suspicious.

* {{Filler}}: Sharona, Stottlemeyer and Disher are absent from "Mr. Monk and the Game Show" because the episode was produced in the midst of contract disputes between the show producers and Bitty Schram, Ted Levine and Jason Gray-Stanford. As a result, of the regular cast, only Tony Shalhoub appears, and the assistant role in this episode is handled by Kevin Dorfman.

** Two of Tony Shalhoub's ''Series/{{Wings}}'' costars appeared in guest roles: TimDaly AsHimself (complete with an ActorAllusion for Shaloub) in the first season and Steven Weber as the killer of the week in a fifth season episode.

** Regarding {{Jerkass}} villains, special mention must go to Max Hudson in "Mr. Monk Is on the Air". Truly one of the most hateful bastards the show has ever produced, especially since he humiliates Monk and Natalie on separate occasions (Natalie is really offended when Randy tells her that he likes the show). To put it in perspective, Steven Weber, the actor who played Max, who formerly worked with Tony Shalhoub in ''Series/{{Wings}}'', after reading what his character does to Monk in regards to Trudy's car bomb accident, actually ''begged'' the producers of ''Monk'' not to have him do that scene.

* IWasYoungAndNeededTheMoney: [[spoiler:Sharona]] in "Mr. Monk Meets the Playboy"

** In "Mr. Monk and the Three Pies," Ambrose points out that of course Pat van Ranken's rusted-old pickup truck runs, and that it's been to a certain section of the park, because it has yellow acorns in the truckbed that only grow in one spot in the park. That's rather impressive knowledge of the local ecology, for a guy who ''never'' leaves his house.

** In "Mr. Monk and the Very Very Old Man," Stottlemeyer and Monk bring up an unsolved hit-and-run case.

* HideYourPregnancy: Traylor Howard became pregnant before shooting began for the second half of season 5. To avoid causing problems, it was necessary for writers to position Natalie during scenes such that her midsection and below is 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. For most of her scenes, Natalie stands or sits in positions that make it so that we see only the section above her chest, (like behind a desk or leaning against her car with the driver's side door open). 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.

** Though Randy is also a female name (there's a character in the first ''{{Airplane}}'' film), so the in-universe producer figured they weren't doing much harm.

** In "Mr. Monk Makes a Friend," Stottlemeyer and Disher realize that Hal Tucker killed Tim Hayden and Gail Segalis when they look at the revolver used to pistol-whip the former, and Stottlemeyer realizes that when Randy showed the gun to Hal and said "Here's the murder weapon," Hal pointed to the cracked handle, meaning he knew Tim Hayden was pistol-whipped, when a normal person would assume the victim had been shot.

* JanitorImpersonationInfiltration: In "Mr. Monk and the Magician," Karl Torini poses as a repairman to sneak into the Magic Castle theater and kill Kevin Dorfman.

** On "Mr. Monk Gets Married", Dalton Padron is able to grab the sheriff's gun because he was cuffed with his hands in front of him.

** In "Mr. Monk and the Birds and the Bees", Natalie says to Tim Sussman, "Tim, I've been waiting a long time to say this: [[TheSummation 'Here's what happened.']].."