While running errands with Natalie and Julie, Monk witnesses a gang murder. The FBI put him in witness protection and take him to a log cabin out in the middle of the woods. Stottlemeyer insists on coming, and Natalie is dragged along reluctantly after she arranges for Julie to stay with friends. Natalie starts wondering if Monk has bad karma, especially when Monk believes that a murder has happened in town.
Meanwhile, Randy has a new girlfriend and a weird set of circumstances. Every time he gets fortune cookies, they mysteriously come true.
Tropes for this episode include:
- Actor Allusion: Monk's alias Frank Conway could be an allusion to Tony Shalhoub's role as Kevin Conway in A Civil Action.
- Accidental Truth: Randy says all of his uncles are deceased; in a later episode, one of his uncles is murdered. Though it could be him trolling Hayley, who is trying to get him to believe in fortune cookies.
- All Is Well That Ends Well: Thanks to the hitmen compromising their location, and getting killed, Monk's witness protection is lifted and Tommy Win doesn't attempt to assassinate him again, presumably because the attempted murder charges stick harder. Natalie also concludes that Monk's karma doesn't make mysteries happen wherever he goes; it directs him to the murders, so he can solve them and catch the killers.
- Artistic License – Law Enforcement: The witness protection program is run by the US Marshals, not the FBI and they most likely wouldn't take the witness to within a driving distance of where they live.
- Bad Liar:Monk: Are we lost? I-I have to know. Are we lost?
Natalie: We're... (Stottlemeyer mouths "NO!") ... not lost.
Monk: Oh, my God! WE'RE LOST! - Bitch in Sheep's Clothing:
- Hayley is working for the mob and doesn't actually have feelings for Randy. She's just using him so that the gang can kill Monk.
- Kathy tries to pull the same card by pretending she's a caring, grieving wife during the investigation of her husband's death, even though she earlier established herself as a greedy woman who goes out of her way to listen to country music when she knows he hates it.
- Busman's Holiday: Natalie and Stottlemeyer comment on the fact that Monk seems to encounter murders wherever he goesNatalie Teeger: Everywhere you go, every time you turn around, somebody is killing somebody else.
Captain Stottlemeyer: That's true.
Adrian Monk: What?
Captain Stottlemeyer: There was the time you went on vacation, and then on the airplane...
Adrian Monk: These things happen!
Captain Stottlemeyer: And that stage play...
Adrian Monk: It happens!
Natalie Teeger: To you! - Call-Back:
- Monk and Stottlemeyer have encountered Grooms, who before worked in the ATF.
- Stottlemeyer cites all the incidents where Monk happened to stumble upon murder, even when on vacation. See Busman's Holiday for specifics.
- Captain Obvious: Randy morosely predicts that his new girlfriend will break up with him after he returns to San Francisco and arrests her for conspiracy and attempted murder.
- Corpse Temperature Tampering: Hearing thunder, Kathy electrocutes her husband, planning to put his corpse into his boat and claim he was hit by lightning. But when the expected rain fails to arrive, she immerses his body in ice for a day and puts him out the next night. The coroner confirms that he died a day later than he actually did, but Monk makes the connection between the screams he heard and the bags of ice.
- Correlation/Causation Gag: Monk is adjusting a car's bent antenna, which snaps off in his hand with an unusually loud bang. Monk looks in confusion at the antenna for a moment, then looks to his left and sees Tommy Win with a gun, and his latest victim dropping to the ground.
- Didn't Think This Through: If Kathy Willowby wasn't so disdainful of her husband's fishing habit, she might not have missed a couple of crucial details that tipped off Monk and then Deputy Coby that he wasn't fishing on the lake when he was supposedly hit by lightning - such as pushing his boat onto the lake without dressing him in his "lucky fishing hat", or the brand-new lures that Monk saw him buying.
- Electrified Bathtub: Kathy Willowby kills her husband by throwing a radio into his bathtub.
- Famous for Being First: The day before his birthday, Stottlemeyer ruefully reflects that he was the youngest officer in the history of the SFPD to make detective, but somewhere his career stalled and instead of being the deputy commissioner, he's still a precinct captain chiefly known for being "the guy who knows how to find [Monk]."
- Freeze-Frame Bonus: Posters from martial art movies can be seen at Randy's apartment. He was shown to be a fan in the previous episode.
- Fresh Clue: Kathy tries to put her husband in his boat for her Make It Look Like an Accident below. However, the storm stops before she can, so she buys as many bags of ice as possible and covers Martin in the ice to give the coroner a false time of death.
- Honey Trap: How the Chinese mob learns Monk's location.
- Hypocritical Humor: Agent Grooms is the agent in charge of Monk's witness protection, and there is a scene where they stop at a convenience store for supplies and gas. Grooms tells the others to not draw too much attention to themselves... while wearing a very attention-grabbing three piece suit in a small town in the middle of the woods. Natalie calls him out on this.
- Jerkass Has a Point: Stottlemeyer calls out Grooms's refusal to investigate the clues that Kathy Willowby murdered her husband, but Grooms points out that his priority is keeping Monk safe, and a local murder is a job for the county sheriff, not the FBI. He promises to call the sheriff's office in the morning, but refuses to drive out to the Willowby house that night, or to let anybody else go.
- Knew It All Along: Randy breezily claims credit for "luring" Tommy Win's hitmen into a trap. Monk and Natalie decide not to call him out on it.
- Laser-Guided Karma: Lampshaded. Natalie comes to the conclusion that Monk attracting murders isn't because he's cursed: it's because it helps him find murderers and bring them to justice.
- Logical Latecomer: Natalie is quite baffled that Monk witnesses one murder and then encounters another soon after, and she starts questioning why this happens.
- Make It Look Like an Accident: Kathy plans to make it look like Martin died when his boat was hit by lightning while he was fishing in a thunderstorm.
- Mystery Magnet: Lampshaded. Natalie and Stottlemeyer lampshade that Monk seems to attract murder whenever he goes, and they talk about if he's cursed.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: It was Randy who sent the hitmen right to Monk's hiding spot. To be fair: a) his girlfriend (who was a member of the gang) manipulated him into doing so via making him believe in fortune cookies, and b) the fortune cookies the (gang-owned) restaurant gave him were very, very accurate (because the gang wrote the predictions and then made them happen, and the third prediction was actually about Monk getting into danger).
- Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: Tommy Win sending hitmen to the cabin ensure that Monk's witness protection is broken. Which means he can return to San Francisco, and the evidence against Win for murder and attempted murder is even stronger since Randy's girlfriend is one of the gang members.
- Not So Above It All: Natalie is revealed to believe in karma and superstition. To be fair, even Stottlemeyer has been wondering just how Monk finds murder everywhere he goes.
- For all her bellyaching about murder following Monk wherever he goes, she joins in on the interrogation of Mrs. Willowby, picking up Stottlemeyer's line of questioning about her late husband's life insurance policy and whether it had a double indemnity clause that paid double for a death occurring through an act of God.
- Police Are Useless:
- Stottlemeyer cites this as the reason that he goes along to the cabin because he doesn't trust the FBI agent assigned to protect Monk. Additionally, the same unit had several witnesses killed under their watch, and the locals know the place as "the FBI cabin". Agent Grooms doesn't inspire that much confidence, with how he can't blend in with the locals and disconnects the phone when Monk tries to prove a murder happened right next door. At the end, however, he manages to shoot one of the two hitmen that arrive to kill Monk, with Stottlemeyer killing the other.
- Averted with Deputy Coby when he hears the plausible explanation that Kathy murdered her husband. He arrests her after the shootout and plans to do a full autopsy on her husband's body.
- Reasonable Authority Figure: Stottlemeyer proves to be one. When they hear a blood-curdling scream from the other cabin, and hear Kathy playing country music that her husband hates in the house, he breaks the "no phone calls" rule to see if her husband will come to the phone. When Kathy claims he's in his boat, they all know she's lying since they can see he isn't there. Deputy Coby becomes very interested in the answers to the questions Monk is asking about the death of Kathy's husband.
- Red Baron: Discussed. Stottlemeyer and Natalie debate on calling Monk the Prince of Darkness. Monk asks them to knock it off and not call him that because "that's how rumors get started".
- Running Gag: The FBI is terrible at protecting witnesses:
- Past witnesses who were under Wit Sec in the cabin have died;
- Monk and co were able to evade Agent Grooms;
- Everyone in the town calls it "The FBI cabin" to the point where even Stottlemeyer gets annoyed.
- Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!:
- Stottlemeyer helps Monk expose Kathy for murdering her husband and ignoring Agent Grooms' orders to not leave the cabin or make phone calls.
- Randy thinks he's doing this when going to the cabin to "save" Monk from an unknown danger. It turns out he accidentally lured Monk's would-be-assassins to the cabin.
- Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: Randy receives two (fake) fortunes that come true because the gang wrote them and orchestrated events. When he gets a third one saying that a friend is in danger, he tries unsuccessfully to call the cabin, then speeds off to help. Randy realizes belatedly that he caused the danger in question when the hitmen show up.
- Skewed Priorities: When Randy realizes that his girlfriend used him to kill Monk and they all survive the shootout, he worries more about the fact that she'll dump him after he arrests her for "conspiracy and attempted murder".
- The Summation: Monk and Randy are trapped in the Willowby cabin, as two thugs with automatic rifles are firing at them from outside, pinning them down. Under fire, Randy looks at a fortune cookie that lured him here, and Monk notices scorch marks around a power outlet. They shout in perfect unison, "Oh my god! I've got it! Here's what happened!" Then they dive into their separate summations, which overlap and the black-and-white flashbacks jump back and forth.Deputy Paul Coby: My head is spinning! Which one are you listening to?
Captain Leland Stottlemeyer: Neither one. - Sure, Let's Go with That: Randy's assertion that he led the hitmen into a trap. Natalie and Monk decide not to tell him the truth.
- Unwitting Pawn: Randy gets fooled by his girlfriend into revealing Monk's location to the hitmen.
- You Have GOT to Be Kidding Me!: Natalie's word-for-word response when Monk deduces that the woman in the cabin adjacent to theirs killed her husband.Natalie: Can't I take you anywhere?!
