Directed by Michael Zinberg
Written by Hy Conrad
After Marissa Kessler (Kate Orsini), the Gold Rush lottery girl, announces tonight's winning lottery numbers, she's murdered by a mugger, six stabs with scissors.
But when Monk gets on the scene, he determines that it couldn't have been a random mugger. Natalie's there to assist Monk. One of the producers sees Natalie and decides to cast her as the new lotto girl.
Natalie gets off to a rocky start. Once she figures out how to turn on the number ball machine, the numbers 25, 52, 7, 32, 10, 17 come up, and she ad-libs for each of them, charming the viewers. Natalie's a hit.
On their way to interview Malcolm O'Dwyer (Malcolm Barrett), a "lottery fanatic," Natalie's interrupted by several fans. Monk is jealous of all the attention Natalie's getting, and complains about it to Dr. Bell (Héctor Elizondo).
The lottery fanatic has a very detailed algorithm for picking numbers, but he's not actually interested in winning. Stottlemeyer and Disher leave the lottery fanatic's apartment as Monk and Natalie are coming in. Stottlemeyer characterizes the suspect as "a very colorful dead end."
At the next drawing, Natalie unwittingly gets sound guy Billy Logan (Greg Pitts) fired. Soon after, Billy visits the lottery fanatic, who is quite happy to be visited by anyone involved with the lottery. Unfortunately, Billy's there to murder the supposed dead end. Billy leaves a suicide note that just reads "Tired of losing."
Of course Monk doesn't buy it. Given Malcolm's prolixity when writing about the lottery, Monk finds it odd that his suicide note would be so concise.
After Monk mocks Natalie while investigating the lottery fanatic's alleged suicide, they get into an argument. Monk gives Natalie an ultimatum: she can be the lotto girl or she can be his assistant, not both. Natalie decides to quit as Monk's assistant. Natalie crosses the yellow police tape and runs past her fans.
Later, at the Potrero Men's Club, Billy finds Stottlemeyer's locker and replaces the captain's lottery ticket with a ticket that he knows will win the $212 million jackpot. The winning numbers are 25, 62, 12, 15, 33, 54.
Stottlemeyer wins and so does Eugene Maddox (Brian Keith Russell). The two winners receive big cardboard checks on TV. But because Stottlemeyer knows Natalie, the lottery commissioner (Dinah Lenney) determines Natalie and Stottlemeyer cheated. So Natalie's fired, and Stottlemeyer's prize payment is suspended.
Having nowhere else to turn, Natalie visits Monk in his apartment and has him watch a news report about the lottery scandal.
Stottlemeyer and Natalie bring Monk to the lottery drawing set, where Monk spots a Corona Heights cap and figures out what happened. Billy replaced six of the number balls with balls painted with metallic paint rather than acrylic paint, so that the microphone's magnet would pull those six balls up one after the other. Marissa caught Billy rigging the game, so he killed her so she couldn't tell anyone.
On the day Billy rigged the machine for his friend Eugene to win, he got fired, throwing a wrench in his plan: the same numbers would keep coming up, because Billy would be unable to unrig the drawing. So Billy framed Stottlemeyer for lottery cheating to distract from Eugene's fraudulent win. Stottlemeyer and Disher arrest the actual cheaters at a fancy hotel.
This episode contains examples of the following tropes:
- Acquired Situational Narcissism: Natalie's newfound fame as the lotto girl causes her to grow noticeably more egotistical.
- The Alibi: Malcolm's alibi, that he was by himself in his apartment watching the lottery drawing on the night Marissa was killed, is not quite airtight. That he can recite that night's winning numbers by heart only proves he knows the winning numbers. However, combined with everything else, it seems to be good enough for Stottlemeyer to rule him out as a suspect.
- Borrowed Catchphrase: Natalie co-opts Monk's "You'll thank me later" catchphrase. She later refashions it as "Try your luck, you'll thank me later."
- Chain of Corrections: When Natalie and Monk are discussing Garfunkel at the end (Stottlemeyer had explained Monk's issues with Natalie being the lotto girl by saying that he's Garfunkel now and can't take it), they go through a chain of misunderstandings, because Monk doesn't know who Simon and Garfunkel are. He confuses them first with Garfield and later with Simon of Alvin and the Chipmunks.
- Continuity Nod: To demonstrate that his work as a consulting detective is more important than Natalie's work reading lottery numbers, Monk references the case of "the killer astronaut."
- Cry into Chest: After the lotto scandal breaks, Natalie comes to Monk in desperation, hoping he can prove she didn't cheat and keep her from going to jail. After a broken apology for her diva-ish behavior earlier, she leans on him, nearly in tears, begging him to help her. Monk is uncomfortable but allows it.
- Destination Defenestration: Malcolm O'Dwyer is killed after Billy throws him out of a window.
- Easy Come, Easy Go: Stottlemeyer, one of two players holding a ticket with the lucky numbers, wins millions of dollars. But he only "won" because Billy planted the ticket in his locker to throw suspicion off himself and onto Stottlemeyer and Natalie. His plans to buy a boat will have to wait.
- Frame-Up: After getting fired and losing access to the lottery building, Billy was forced to use Stottlemeyer and Natalie as patsies for the lottery machine being rigged.
- He Knows Too Much:
- Marissa Kessler was killed because she knew Billy was tampering with the lottery machine.
- Billy also killed Malcolm because he had a picture of him with with his collaborator in the cheating scheme.
- Immediate Self-Contradiction: Monk goes on a rant about how easy it is to just read a number and call it out by doing so with Dr. Bell's calendar, only for him to mess up the number on the calendar by reading it upside down.
- Improvised Weapon: Marissa was killed with a pair of scissors Billy had grabbed while chasing her.
- Jerkass Has a Point: While Natalie has a right to take on her new lottery girl job if she wants to, Monk is at least right in pointing out that his own job as a consulting homicide detective is more important, and that Natalie can't juggle her new job with being his assistant. It's just that these points come across as him being envious rather than logical.
- On the other hand, Natalie, despite becoming a bit of a diva about the whole thing, also makes a good point. Monk often treats her very poorly, most notably by trying to short change her paychecks. A lot of people would have quit sooner than she did.
- Last-Second Word Swap: When Monk complains to Natalie about her working the lotto, he claims if it wasn't her, the studio would have "hired some other bim-" and stops short. When Natalie asks him to finish that sentence, he says "... bimportant person".
- Never Suicide: Monk realizes Malcolm didn't kill himself when he sees that he only put in one of his contact lenses.
- Not So Stoic: Stottlemeyer, ordinarily a very serious and deadpan person, beams widely and jumps around with glee when he wins $106,000,000 midway through the episode, after losing for years.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Monk hates being touched and normally won't allow it, but when Natalie leans on him after the scandal breaks, close to tears, he lets her, despite being stiff with discomfort the whole time.
- Out-of-Character Alert: Given that Malcolm writes about the lottery at length, Monk deems it unlikely his suicide note would be just three words.
- Pursued Protagonist: In the opening scene, screaming lottery announcer Marissa Kessler is chased out of her workplace in the middle of the night by an armed, shadowy figure. She makes it to her car, but he smashes through the window, forcing her to duck out the opposite door. The pursuer yanks Marissa down as she climbs a nearby fence and stabs her to death as she pleads for her life. The killer retrieves the evidence of lottery-rigging from Marissa's body, but police forensic experts find some metallic paint on her fingers which helps clue in Monk.
- Suicide Note: Billy leaves behind one for Malcolm that reads "Tired of losing". Monk figures a man who writes as passionately and at length as Malcolm did would have put more into a suicide note then that.
- Shout-Out:
- Several to Simon & Garfunkel, and also one to Garfield, who "hates Mondays." Monk doesn't actually know who Simon & Garfunkel are.
- Monk realizes someone was murdered when only one of their contact lenses is in their eyes, like Columbo did in Murder, A Self Portrait.
- Unprocessed Resignation: Presumably Stottlemeyer's resignation from the San Francisco Police Department after winning the lottery. After he leads Monk to discover who the real lottery cheat is, his superior officer probably regarded the resignation as null and void. In a sense, Natalie's quitting as Monk's assistant is also unprocessed, since Monk just takes her back without comment after she's fired as lotto girl. Though that could also be understood as satisfying Monk's ultimatum. Regardless, Stottlemeyer and Natalie returning to their jobs serves as a Reset Button that restores the show's status quo.
