Monk is called to Mexico by a bizarre case—a young skydiver whose autopsy found that his lungs were full of water. Monk must hunt down the truth behind this odd turn of events while dealing with the lack of help, his own anxieties about local amenities, and the culprit, still at large, who seems more than willing to kill again.
This episode includes examples of the following tropes:
- Bad Export for You: Monk treats one specific brand of water as this. He refuses to drink any kind other than Sierra Springs...even Aqua Fresca, which is owned by Sierra Springs and uses the same water, just with a different label. To the point of dehydration, almost causing his death.
- Can't Get Away with Nuthin': A guy steals Monk's clothes; he gets killed later due to mistaken identity.
- Car Fu: The killer tries to run Monk down in a pickup truck twice. The second time, he ends up successfully hitting someone, but that person is one of the people who stole Monk's luggage and started wearing his clothes.
- Chute Sabotage: As part of his plan to get Monk to Mexico, Dr. Madero picked out Chip Rosatti and gave him a forged coupon for a free skydiving lesson. He then proceeded to cut into the chute to prevent it from opening. That actually ends up biting him in the end, as he didn't wear gloves and left fingerprints on it, which Alameda plans to compare to his.
- The Coroner Doth Protest Too Much: Monk is there because the son of a friend of San Francisco's mayor died while skydiving, but the coroner determined that he had actually drowned—in mid-air. Monk is called in to investigate how such a bizarre death might have happened, but it turns out that the coroner is lying, and tampered with the body after death to support his story in case anyone checked. He goes to all this trouble because he's got an old score to settle with Monk, and wants to lure him out of San Francisco with an unusual death. He had in fact attempted the same thing at least once before (making it look like the work of a wild lion), but this was the first one that the local police didn't just write off as related to the illicit drug trade.
- Death Glare: Sharona shoots a furious look at her boss when Monk tries passive-aggressively to nudge her into drinking tap water when he has entire pallets of bottled water.
- Disney Villain Death: It appears Chip Rosatti died this way after his parachute failed to open while he was skydiving (ouch, by the way), but it's called into question when the coroner finds a pint of water in his lungs, as if he drowned in mid-air. However, it turns out the coroner was the killer and added the water during the autopsy, so ultimately Chip did fall to his death.
- Driven to Suicide: Monk mentions that as a result of the insurance fraud scam Dr. Luis Nivara was running in San Francisco and Monk's subsequent testimony against him, Nivara's wife ended up killing herself. Somehow, despite Monk only providing expert testimony towards a crime that Luis himself is responsible for, Luis decides that his wife's suicide was a result of Monk's actions instead of the fallout from his crimes. He also decides that the multiple murders he commits to entice Monk to Mexico are also not his fault, but Monk's fault for forcing him to kill innocent people as bait.
- Friendship Moment: Despite often being exasperated with Monk, Sharona is in tears when she thinks he's been killed, and euphoric when she figures out that the dead man could not have been her boss.
- Freudian Slip: Monk makes one while giving his summation to Dr. Madero and going insane from thirst:Monk: [Chip Rosatti] was a thirsty victim.
Sharona: Adrian.
Monk: I mean, a perfect victim. - Injured Self-Drag: Monk is summoned to... well, Mexico, thanks to a mysterious case wherein a teenage skydiver apparently drowned in midair. Things go poorly, including someone stealing his luggage. Partway through the episode, he's mistakenly declared dead when the thief gets hit by a car. Sharona realizes it couldn't have been her boss seconds before Monk's arrival; trying to console her, the lieutenant tells her that Monk bravely crawled through a dirty place looking for help. Sharona, knowing that her germophobic boss would rather die, is euphoric at the realization that the dead man wasn't him.
- Kick the Dog: When Sharona offers a college guy $20 for his bottle of Sierra Springs (the only brand Monk drinks), he pours it on a college girl instead. Sharona calls it obnoxious.
- Laser-Guided Karma: Early in the episode, someone steals Monk's luggage and starts wearing his clothes. Because of this, the killer runs him over thinking he was Monk.
- Life Saving Misfortune: Zig-Zagged. One of the locals steals Monk's luggage, including his clothes, which turns out better for Monk than for him, because the killer mistook the thief for Monk. However, the luggage also contained Monk's supply of Sierra Springs (the only brand of bottled water he drinks), nearly killing him via dehydration.
- Locked Room Mystery: More in the sense that the murder seems to be impossible. When Chip Rosatti is brought to the autopsy table, the coroner finds a pint of water in his lungs, indicating he drowned. The impossible part comes in when you consider that Chip was skydiving at the time of his death.
- Mistaken for Racist: When he sees the huge amount of bedding Monk brought, the customs official thinks he's buying into the "dirty Mexican" stereotype. Sharona quickly explains that Monk thinks everyone is dirty.
- Never My Fault:
- When Monk finds out that Dr. Madero was responsible (he had been a doctor in the US who had jumped bail before he could appear for an insurance fraud suit), Madero lunges at him and accuses him of stealing his life, saying that whatever mistake he made was small and should have gone unnoticed. This, from a guy who's murdered 3 people in cold blood.
- Out-of-Character Alert: Sharona thinks a recent hit-and-run victim was Monk until Lt. Plato says the man crawled through mud and trash before dying, something the germophobic Monk would never do.
- Outliving One's Offspring: Monk was called to the case because the mayor wanted his friend, father of Chip Rosatti, to have the best help at finding Chip's murderer.
- Platonic Declaration of Love: When Captain Stottlemeyer gets the (erroneous) report that Monk has been killed, he tells Randy that he will resign if Monk doesn't get a police funeral with full honors (despite having been discharged from the force) and declares, "I'm going to tell you something, Randy, and I'm not ashamed to admit it. I loved that man." A few moments later, he gets the news that it was a lookalike and not Monk who was killed, and his mood flip-flops:Stottlemeyer: I hate that man. I hate that man!
- Revenge: Dr. Madero is actually Luis Nivara, a man who was indicted in an insurance fraud trial thanks to Monk's testimony. Nivara lost his medical license and his wife killed herself rather than live with the humiliation. Madero fled to San Macros, Mexico where he changed his name and began plotting a way to get his revenge on Monk. He attempted to do this by killing a rich teenager from San Francisco who was on vacation in Mexico by making it look like he was the victim of a lion attack, knowing that such strange cases were Monk's area of expertise. When that murder failed to get Monk's attention, Nivara murdered another rich teenager from San Francisco by sabotaging his parachute so he'd die while skydiving and then poured water into his lungs to make his death seem more unusual than it was. Once Monk was in Mexico, Nivara tried to kill him but only succeeded in killing a thief who had stolen Monk's clothes.
- Revenge Before Reason: Nivara might have remained a free man if he had just continued to live under an assumed alias. However, his need for revenge lead him to luring the one man who ended up exposing him to San Macros. For more irony, Monk had never even met Nivara prior to this case and had no idea what he even looked like.
- Run for the Border: Monk is lured to Mexico by a corrupt doctor who wants to kill him in revenge for testifying against him in an insurance fraud case. Said doctor jumped bail, fled to Mexico, and changed his name.
- Similar Squad: The two Mexican cops Monk and Sharona work with in this episode are basically Hispanic versions of Stottlemeyer and Disher.
- Smokescreen Crime: A year before the events of this episode, Dr. Nivara killed a rich kid from San Francisco and staged it like a lion attack to lure Monk to Mexico. When that didn't work due to the case not getting Monk's attention, Nirvana killed another kid from San Francisco and made it look like he somehow drowned in mid-air. This ruse succeeded since the victim's father was friends with the mayor who personally requested Monk be put on the case.
- This Bear Was Framed: Dr. Madero somehow killed another San Francisco rich kid and made it look like a lion attack.
- Translation Convention: The Mexican cops converse in perfect English even in the cold open. In addition to making the episode easier for the show's English-speaking audience to understand, this can also be seen as foreshadowing the theme of the episode: the murders are ultimately about the anglophone American detective(s). Later while talking to the latter, the same characters talk differently, consciously peppering their vernacular with well-known Spanish words, as Californian and Mexican detectives would be expected to use with each other.
- Unknown Rival: Dr. Naderos life was turned upside down by Monk, who never met him personally. In a twist on the usual for this trope, the villain very nearly kills the hero merely through circumstance of him simply being there (a theft of water and Monk's ludicrous stubbornness).
- What Did I Do Last Night?: On the day Monk solves the case, Sharona wakes up with a bunch of beads around her neck. As they are leaving, Lt. Plato explains that men typically give them to women at parties for something dirty enough that he whispers in her ear. Sharona, understandably freaked out, pulls them off.
- Would Rather Suffer:
- A college boy on vacation propositions Sharona. She says she'd rather chew glass. Unfortunately, said college boy happens to be one of the remaining witnesses for the case.
- Sharona uses this to figure out that Monk is alive after he's been declared the victim of a hit-and-run: Lt. Plato said that the dying man crawled through mud and trash looking for help. Sharona excitedly explains that her boss is germophobic and would probably have refused to do such a thing on the slim chance of surviving.
