A succession of killings strike the neighborhood, the victims and modus operandi all different from each other. Deducing what the targets have in common — having served on the same jury — Monk attempts to track down the murderer. Meanwhile, Sharona's romance with deputy mayor Kenny Shale complicates life for everyone.
This episode includes examples of the following tropes:
- Blackmail Backfire: Mr. Babcock killed his first wife and hid the corpse. Then a workman fell off his roof and sued him, and the jury on that case came to his house to examine the scene. One of the jurors, snooping for something to steal, managed to discover incriminating evidence and then blackmailed him. The juror is a gambling addict and as such continuously keeps on asking for money, and eventually Mr. Babcock decides that killing the blackmailer is the best solution. He doesn't know who it is, so he has to start killing one juror after another; by sheer dumb luck, the blackmailer ends up as the last juror alive.
- Bloodier and Gorier:
- In a sense. While the violence shown onscreen is pretty typical of the show, Stewart Babcock has the second highest body count of the series, with 12 victimsnote ; only three happen onscreen, while the other 9 (which included his own wife) were already offed before the episode begins.
- Also with Frank Pulaski, even if we don't see it onscreen. After being dragged almost a mile behind a speeding car, Stottlemeyer implies that what's left of him isn't pretty.
- Bloody Horror: Implied when Stottlemeyer is talking about Frank's corpse after his murder. Since he was dragged almost a mile behind a speeding car, it's likely a horrible sight.
- Body Horror: The poor handyman who has to go on living his life with a pipe sticking out the back of his head.
- Chekhov's Gag: Monk and Mrs. Ling have a fight about the way she sewed a button on. It initially looks to be just a joke about Monk's fussiness...and then it turns out that he and the murderer both had a button replaced at her shop, enabling Monk to prove that a shirt cuff ripped off by one of the victims belonged to Mr. Babcock.
- Chekhov's Gunman: Mrs. Ling, a dry cleaner who is driven crazy by Monk's habits at the beginning of the episode. Monk later brings her in at the very end to correctly identify a shirt sleeve found at a crime scene as Stewart Babcock's.
- Chinese Launderer: Mrs. Ling, the Chinese woman who owns the laundromat is able to confirm a vital piece of evidence. Oh, and Monk, being Monk, complains about the way she sews on buttons.
- Cloudcuckoolander: Ian Agnew is a realistic take on this trope. He hasn't recovered entirely ever since a pipe got lodged in his head when he fell off the Babcocks' roof. It's affected him psychologically, to the point where he shushes an imaginary dog, sings randomly, and answers a phone that's not ringing. It's little surprise when he says "I don't get many visitors".
- Comically Missing the Point: Mrs. Ling greets Mr. Babcock, lauding him as a good customer compared to Monk. When Sharona points out Mr. Babcock and his wife killed 12 people in cold blood, Mrs. Ling is apparently shocked before she gives a weak "...well, he's still a good customer."
- Constructive Body Disposal: Stottlemeyer hypothesizes that the first Mrs. Babcock was buried under the patio.
- Contrived Coincidence:
- The blackmailer on the jury was the last juror the killers went after and the only one they failed to kill.
- Not to mention the killer just happens to go to the same dry cleaner as Monk, meaning Monk recognizes the way buttons get sewn back on there.
- Cruel and Unusual Death: Frank Pulaski dies being dragged behind a speeding car for nearly a mile. Offscreen it may be, but it's one of the most horrific murder methods seen on this show.
- Fingore: Downplayed. During the jury's visit to the scene of the accident, one juror found the body of Babcock's first wife in a deep freezer and cut off one of her fingers to use as blackmail against him.
- Foreshadowing: Kenny being a flawed character is hinted at with Sharona recalling Stottlemeyer called him a weasel once when Stottlemeyer is trying to suck up to him.
- The Gambling Addict: Wallace Cassidy, the juror who was blackmailing the Babcocks. Things might not have turned out the way they did, since in his first blackmail note, he only asked for $10K, and Stewart was willing to pay out that small amount. But since Wallace kept losing, he kept needing money, and thus he asked for more, possibly increasing his price somewhere along the way. The Babcocks eventually get sick of this juror bleeding them dry, and ended up killing all of them off since they didn't have anything to identify the specific juror who was blackmailing him.
- High-Voltage Death: Stottlemeyer mentions that one of the recent murders was an electrocution.
- Holding the Floor: Stottlemeyer and Monk arrive as the Babcocks are leaving their house to flee the country. Monk gives the summation to keep them there while Randy brings in Mrs. Ling to prove Babcock's guilt.
- Hypocritical Humor: Captain Stottlemeyer warns Sharona about how a lot of people will want a piece of her now that she's dating someone influential and then immediately goes on to propose a double-date with his wife, Sharona, and Kenny.
- Innocently Insensitive: Mrs. Ling praises Kenny Shale to Sharona, having heard that they're dating. Unfortunately, she says this right after Kenny had insulted Sharona's judgement, leaving her furious at him. Sharona declares that she prefers Monk (who Mrs. Ling just insulted).
- Insult of Endearment: When Stottlemeyer compliments Kenny to Sharona, she reminds him that he called Kenny a weasel at some point before they began dating. Stottlemeyer tries to pass it off as an endearment.
- Karma Houdini: Wallace Cassidy, the sole surviving juror, is the one who caused Babcock's killing spree by blackmailing Babcock to feed his gambling addiction. If he received any kind of book-tossing for this, we just didn't got to see it (or hear about it).
- Laser-Guided Karma: Sharona tries to warn Kenny against breaking the news that they have a suspect in custody. Monk has just realized said suspect wasn't the killer, and she tells her boyfriend that people won't forget this kind of error. Kenny dismisses Sharona's concerns, telling her he can trust her to pick his ties but "not with the important stuff" like this. This ends up biting him in the ass hard when Monk proves Babcock's guilt. Kenny’s career is utterly destroyed — once the likely next mayor, he ends up resigning the very next day.
- Moving the Goalposts: Wallace initially only demanded $10,000 from Stewart, who paid it off since it was a small price to pay in the long run. Unfortunately, Wallace was a bad gambler who never knew when to quit, so he kept asking for more whenever he lost out. Stewart finally decided that the blackmailer needed to go, and started hunting down the jury.
- Not So Above It All: Throughout the episode, Monk tries to act like the Only Sane Man amongst everyone trying to rub elbows with Sharona and her new boyfriend Kenny. But while talking with Dr. Kroger, Monk admits he too has secret hopes that Kenny's connections will help get his badge back. This is reconstructed when Dr. Kroger points out there's nothing wrong with it and it only makes Monk "human", a word Monk admits people rarely call him.
- Open Mouth, Insert Foot: When Sharona tries to warn Kenny about publicly announcing they have the killer when Monk has just realized it's someone else, he tells her that she doesn't know how to play the game and he can't trust her opinion on important things like this. Understandably, Sharona is furious.
- Persona Non Grata: Monk ends up being banned from Mrs. Ling's shop at the end of the episode.
- Platonic Kissing: Monk figures out an important clue to the case (all the victims served on the same jury). As Stottlemeyer rushes out of the room, he pauses to plant one on Monk's cheek as a sign of excitement and gratitude rather than attraction.
- Red Herring:
- The eleventh victim is initially considered as a suspect because they realize he sold calendars to most of the other victims and consider it a big coincidence (before Monk realizes it was because they knew him from the jury).
- Initially Stottlemeyer and Kenny Shale plan to go public with the announcement that they have a suspect in custody after the twelfth juror has been arrested. However, Monk realizes that the twelfth juror wasn't guilty of the murders; he was blackmailing the real killer.
- Remember the New Guy?: Kenny is presented as Sharona's boyfriend and a deputy mayor despite never appearing before and a different deputy mayor being in another episode.
- Resigned in Disgrace: Kenny ignores Sharona's warnings that Monk has just realized the twelfth juror is not the murderer, wanting to show off to the press by declaring that he has the serial killer in custody. After Stottlemeyer arrests the Babcocks, the news breaks, and Kenny winds up stepping down due to the scandal.
- Right for the Wrong Reasons: Stottlemeyer thinks Monk's theory that Henry Smalls is involved because some of the victims have his company's calendar is a stretch. Smalls is killed later that night, proving Monk was right about a connection, but as Monk points out, he saw Smalls as a suspect, not the next victim.
- Running Gag:
- The stitching of Monk's button and the fact that Monk assumes everyone is staring at it.
- People being nice to Sharona now that she's dating Kenny.
- Scream Discretion Shot: The killer handcuffs Frank Pulaski to his car and floors the gas. Despite their efforts, Pulaski and his partner, Tommy, can't uncuff him or cut the rope before the rope goes taut and yanks the screaming Pulaski out of camera range. The camera then focuses on Tommy's horrified reaction rather than the nasty injuries being inflicted on Frank.
- Serial Killings, Specific Target: Mr. Babcock is being blackmailed by someone who served on the jury in a court case he was involved in years before. Not knowing which juror it is, he starts killing one after another. Unlike many of these examples, where people try to cover up their crimes by making them look like serial killings, this guy didn't know the exact identity of the person he wanted dead, but had it narrowed down to 12 people. He deliberately varied the locations and details of the murders in order to throw the police off his track, but Monk notes that the $10 bills used to pay at two of the crime scenes have consecutive serial numbers, which suggest to him that a serial killer is at work.
- Shout-Out:
- One victim is murdered in a movie theater while watching an Alfred Hitchcock double feature: Psycho and The Man Who Knew Too Much. This sums up the episode’s plot: Someone is hunting down a blackmailer, murdering numerous innocent people in the process.
- When Stottlemeyer gets the psychological profile on the killer from Disher, he talks of the contents while holding the file to his head á la Carnac the Magnificent.
- Skewed Priorities: Mrs. Ling, hearing that her favorite customer, Mr. Babcock, killed 12 people in cold blood, says he's still a good customer, "not crazy like that Mr. Monk over there."
- Survivor Guilt: Tommy initially thinks the killer was just after a random victim and feels horrible that he didn't target him, especially given that Tommy's booth was wide open. However, the fact that the killer waited for Frank to be available makes Monk suspect that the killer was after him in particular.
- Suspect Is Hatless: Randy presents Stottlemeyer with a preliminary psych profile of the Serial Killer. Stottlemeyer holds it to his forehead, pretending to read it psychically, and recites a generic description of the killer that is completely useless:Disher: Yeah. How'd you know?
Stottlemeyer: 'Cause that's what they always say. That's scrap paper. - That Came Out Wrong: A non-sexual example; Sharona is taken aback by Monk's description of the group of victims as "too diverse", but he says he's not saying diversity is a bad thing; rather, he's talking about statistics - it takes a deliberate effort to find or assemble a group of such different people, which is how Monk realizes the connection between them: they all served on the same jury.
- Threat Backfire: Monk threatens to quit using Mrs. Ling's dry-cleaning services after she sews a button on with a different stitch than the others. Mrs. Ling, exasperated by his fussiness, urges him to do so (and eventually bans him from her shop).
- Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Had the blackmailer just reported the body he discovered, he would've been regarded as a hero. Instead, he decided he needed a quick, easy cash flow to fuel his gambling addiction, and wound up causing the deaths of 11 innocent people.
- What a Drag: The first onscreen victim is a tollbooth attendant named Frank Pulaski. Upon learning his name, the driver demands the change for his $10 bill. When Pulaski reaches out his hand to give the driver the change, the driver suddenly handcuffs his left wrist to a long piece of rope, then floors on the gas pedal. Pulaski's partner attempts to unfasten the rope, but it's too late, and the partner can only watch as Pulaski is dragged to his death. Captain Stottlemeyer says during the crime scene investigation that Pulaski got dragged about 0.7 miles, and the remains aren't exactly pretty.
