Monk heads to his college reunion at UC Berkeley with Natalie, only for Stottlemeyer to ask for help when the former college nurse, Katherine Rutherford, is found dead. In addition, a series of strange events follows one of Adrian's old classmates and her husband.
This episode involves examples of the following tropes:
- Brick Joke: When a staff member of the college asks if Leland attended the university as he looks familiar, he explains that he was actually there for an anti-nuclear rally. During the photo montage at the reunion, we see him there... as a riot cop, beating the crap out of the protestors. Suffice it to say, he gets booed.
- Bungled Suicide: Dianne attempted to kill herself in college, only to be saved by Katherine Rutherford.
- Chekhov's Skill: Monk mentions to Natalie that he had sensitive skin and was able to remember Trudy's phone number when Drew wrote it on his back. This skill comes in handy when they had to save Dianne: she had written her registration form on his back earlier, which means his skin remembers the name of the hotel Dianne and Kyle are staying in.
- Clue, Evidence, and a Smoking Gun: The police briefly suspect a former UC Berkeley student named Henry Kalimarakis, who had been denied a chance to go to the Olympics after Katherine gave him a drug test that proved steroid usage, for the murder. Randy finds out he didn't commit the murder, and tells Stottlemeyer in a very peculiar way:Disher: Captain, I tracked down Kalimarakis; I don't think he's our guy. Number one, it turns out he was allowed to join the Olympic swim team as an alternate; he got a waiver.
Stottlemeyer: So there's no motive.
Disher: Right. Number two, he's dead. He died in 1995. And number three, he moved to Europe in the late eighties. So there's no record of him ever returning to the United States...
Stottlemeyer: Randy, Randy, excuse me, sorry to interrupt you, but what was number two again? - Contrived Coincidence: In-Universe. Monk's first clue that something was fishy was when Dianne talks about how her husband adopted a black lab for her named "Tangerine". Which is the same name as her previous actually tangerine-colored dog. As it turns out, it's not coincidence: Kyle is trying to shoehorn and recreate the events that match Dianne's suicide note so it looks legit.
- A Deadly Affair: A brief call Kyle makes to his mistress gives the audience an explanation as to why he's doing this in the first place. (Kyle also said earlier that he works for Dianne's father, which also helps illustrate why he doesn't just leave Dianne for said girlfriend.)
- Death Glare: When Dianne sees her old suicide note and realizes the implication that her husband exploited it, she gives him the most disgusted glower, grossly sickened that he would go through all this gaslighting to turn her tragedy into a golden opportunity to kill her.
- Embarrassing Nickname: Monk's nickname was "Captain Cool" because he constantly defrosted the refrigerator.
- Embarrassing Old Photo: Stottlemeyer is on stage at Monk's class reunion when an old photo pops up on the screen of him in riot gear facing protestors, and causing the whole crowd to loudly boo him.
- Exact Words: When Stottlemeyer tries to justify his actions as a riot cop during a protest rally, he claims the protesters didn't have a permit. One person yells "Yes, we did!", to which Stottlemeyer retorts that it had expired at noon. A slide then showed that the time during the incident was 12:06.Stottlemeyer: Like I said, it expired at noon.
- The Friend Nobody Likes: Monk discovers that nobody at the reunion remembers him — he was just that "weird guy" that Trudy was dating. They don't even remember what his name was, and when he tries to tell them it was "Monk", one girl says "No, that's not it".
- Goodbye, Cruel World!: Dianne had written a suicide note in her youth, and her husband Kyle had found it when they were moving. Kyle then reenacted moments from the note to fit today so that when he killed her, the police would be none the wiser (the note was in her handwriting after all). It's also why Kyle had to kill Katherine: she had seen the suicide note twenty five years ago, and would've known something was off when the police released the note to the public.
- He Knows Too Much: Kyle had to kill Katherine Rutherford because she was the only person besides him and Dianne who knew about the suicide note, and thus could have pointed it out to police when the note was made public.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: Kyle's plan involved meeting Monk in order to replicate the exact events of Dianne's before her suicide attempt in college. What he doesn't know is that Monk is is a detective with a knack for catching murderers and attempted murderers.
- I Hate Past Me: Played with. Stottlemeyer isn't so much ashamed of his past as a young police officer so much as he is secretive. Justified, as everyone who remembers his past is less receptive to him the instant they find out.
- Make It Look Like an Accident: Katherine's death is made to look like she had slipped on the beads of her necklace and fell down the stairs. Stottlemeyer notices three inconsistencies with the story though: one, the elevator was working so she wouldn't have taken the stairs (she thought it wasn't thanks to a false note made by the culprit); two, none of the beads of her necklace rolled away when she supposedly slipped on them; and three, her so-called necklace was too small for her neck.
- Manipulative Bastard: Kyle is frighteningly manipulative at staging his wife's "suicide". From the moment he found the note, he meticulously planned to exploit it in order to kill her and get away with it. He would shoe-horn anything he could to make events match the note, from adopting a new "Tangerine" dog to letting his wife accidentally break the glass over the campus map. All the while, he would pepper in a few "she's been depressed lately" to witnesses for good measure. If it weren't for Monk connecting him as Katherine's murderer, he would've gotten away with it.
- Never Suicide: An interesting variant in which the death that is meant to look like a suicide hasn't actually happened yet. Kyle plans to kill his wife by throwing her off the balcony of her hotel because he stumbled upon a suicide note she had written in college and figures it is good cover because the note is already in her handwriting.
- Not What It Looks Like: Invoked by Stottlemeyer when an Embarrassing Slide of him as a riot cop at a protest rally pops up and everyone boos him, saying that the entire story can't be told by a single photograph. It then changes to another photo, one showing Stottlemeyer manhandling protesters.
- Overly Long Gag: During the presentation, there's a (rather mean-spirited) gag of everybody being familiar with Trudy after all these years, but not remembering "that guy she went out with" (Adrian) and writing off Natalie when she tries to inform them her boss was Trudy's then-boyfriend.
- Slipping a Mickey: Kyle drugs Dianne's drink to make her woozy and thus easier to throw off the balcony. It doesn't entirely work; she's still able to put up enough of a fight to survive until the cops get there.
- Smash Cut: When the pin is discovered under Katherine's body, Disher exclaims that he has seen it before, but can't remember where. It then cuts to Monk fussing with his own pin.
- Staircase Tumble: Kyle kills Katharine Rutherford by shoving her down the stairs.
- This Looks Like a Job for Aquaman: Monk's eidetic ability to remember what someone wrote on his back may seem like the world's most inapplicable superpower. But towards the climax, Monk finds himself saving Dianne's life by remembering what she wrote on his back, as it narrows down the hotel she and her murderous husband were staying at.
