Recap / Monk S1E2 "Mr. Monk and the Psychic"

It appears to the world that psychic Dolly Flint located the body of Katherine Ashcombe, deceased wife of SFPD Commissioner Harry Ashcombe. Monk, knowing Dolly has tried to "assist" investigations before and botched them, is not convinced. He starts thinking that maybe Harry had something to gain from his wife's death. But if that's truly the case, then how did Dolly find the corpse of a woman she'd never met?

This episode contains examples of the following tropes:

• The Cuckoolander Was Right: Turns out Dolly's prediction about Sharona meeting a British guy whose name starts with "D" was completely true, as Sharona meets a Brit named Daniel at the end.
• Domestic Abuse: It's implied that Ashcombe isn't exactly the nicest man, at least not to his lover. In fact, he badgered her to get an abortion when she was pregnant with their child.
• Dramatic Irony: In order to trick his wife into speeding her car towards a death trap, Ashcombe lies to her over the phone that her beloved puppy was hit by a car and is hanging onto life... whilst it's locked in his car, unscathed.
• Dumpster Dive: Adrian lays down the gravel he found on the paint mixer in a hardware store, only for someone to activate it and send it flying. The search for it leaves Adrian and Sharona... OK, just Sharona, to search for it in the dumpster after noticing an employee sweeping. The dive becomes pointless when Adrian realizes the gravel actually landed in his hair.
• Faking the Dead: In order to catch Ashcombe, Monk, Dolly, and the rest of the gang make it look like Harry murdered Jennie Zeppettelli when she came to his house and tried to bury her in his backyard.
• Fiction 500: Adrian describes Katherine's family money by saying she was "richer than Canada".
• Forced Miscarriage: Ashcombe forced his mistress, Jennie, to get an abortion in order to hide his infidelity. Dolly claims that Jennie's spirit tells her that she can at least be Together in Death with her child when she helps Monk trick Ashcombe into confessing.
• Freudian Slip: In the climax, Monk's plan is to make Ashcombe fall for this trope. When Dolly pretends her psychic powers let her know that the seemingly dead Jenny was supposedly killed by Ashcombe, he finds himself trying to prove his innocence by discrediting Dolly's powers, confessing that he put her in the scene of the accident.
• Gold Digger: It becomes clear as the episode goes on that the thing Harry loved most about his wife was her bank account.
• GPS Evidence: Monk finds a piece of gravel in Harry's tires that matches the gravel in Dolly's driveway. He even confirms with a store who asks the manufacturer that this gravel is only in a couple driveways in San Francisco.
• Inheritance Murder: In addition to her family money, Katherine had a $2 million life insurance policy. But Harry couldn’t collect on it until she was declared dead, and a mudslide buried her car and corpse. Since it would look bad if he just “happened” to stumble across it himself he set Dolly up to find it instead.
• It Was with You All Along: Monk sends Sharona on a Dumpster Dive to find a small, black pebble that went flying inside the hardware store... only to find it lodged in his hair.
• Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics: Stottlemeyer attempts to argue that there have been cases in the past of psychics helping the police in investigations, but Monk brushes it off as there simply being so many so-called psychics making so many guesses that a few of them would end up being right by sheer luck.
• Make It Look Like an Accident: With the help of a couple small ramps, Harry makes it look like his wife died in a car crash after speeding down a wet road. Of course, Monk is not fully convinced.
• Not Me This Time: Monk knows Dolly Flint's a Phony Psychic, but as it turns out she had nothing to with the death of Ashcombe's wife and really did believe she found the body because of her supposed psychic powers. It turned out Ashcombe set Dolly up to find the body for him after drugging her.
• Phony Psychic: Dolly Flint, naturally.
• Shaped Like Itself:
  Monk: It's a small pebble. It's about the size of a... small pebble.
• She Is Not My Girlfriend: Daniel asks if Sharona and Monk are together, a question that has her almost break down from laughter. Monk isn't as amused.
• Shout-Out: The line Hello, Dolly!.
• Something Only They Would Say: Played with. Dolly seems to hear Jenny's spirit say now she can be with her unborn baby Abigail, who she was forced by Ashcombe to abort. Ashcombe is blown away that Dolly would know something only he and Jenny knew, and Monk claims Dolly has to be an honest-to-goodness psychic to know this. As it turns out, the reason Dolly would know this is because Jenny told her before-hand, as part of their plan to oust Ashcombe.
• Spotting the Thread: Monk starts to figure things aren't what they seem when he sees Dolly Flint adjust her car seat (pulling it forward to match her height) as she drives away from the scene.
• Til Murder Do Us Part: Katherine Ashcombe gets murdered by her husband Harry.
• Tragic Keepsake: Played with. Ashcombe already starts getting rid of all his wife's belongings, because he doesn't want them around to remind him of her. He claims it's only natural for grieving widowers to do this, but Monk begs to differ (he did quite the opposite for Trudy). This clues in Monk that Ashcombe didn't love his wife.
• Unwitting Pawn: Dolly had nothing to do with the murder nor is she an actual psychic. Ashcombe set Dolly up to find the body of his wife so she could be confirmed dead. She pays him back by helping with Monk's Engineered Public Confession alongside Ashcombe's ex-mistress.