Monk's personal and professional lives cross when Sharona suddenly begins seeing a bloody man — a man only she sees and who disappears without a trace before she can show anyone else. Although it initially looks as though Sharona is going insane, the mysterious man turns out to be connected to a deadly plot.
This episode includes examples of the following tropes:
- Association Fallacy: Sharona admits to Dr. Kroger that if she is going insane, that she would never forgive Monk, presuming that somehow working for him caused it.
- Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: At first, Meredith Preminger seems like a very friendly and supportive writing professor. However, she turns out to be a manipulative woman who murders her husband and tries to gaslight Sharona in case she figures out the truth.
- For Want Of A Nail: If Sharona didn't have the habit to use scrap paper as one might use Styrofoam peanuts, the handwritten first draft of her story might not have survived.
- Gaslighting: Sharona's writing professor Meredith Preminger tries to discredit her sanity by having her lover, a security guard named Denny Graf, pose as a dying man with a knife in his blood-soaked chest and a screwdriver sticking out of his ear, stating "Douglas is worried about you", and then have him disappear when she tries to show him to Monk: Thrice. Turns out, she is doing this because Sharona has written a mystery story which was about a woman who kills her husband by feeding him tomato soup laced with a toxin that can emulate a heart attack, which Meredith and her lover have decided will be helpful to use against her husband, and thus cover their tracks in case Sharona gets suspicious. To make Sharona really think she's going crazy, Denny copies her keys and uses them to enter her house and move things around, including stealing a copy of the story she kept for herself.
- Instant Illness: It's one of the things that make Monk suspicious of Sharona's breakdown. Varla mentions that, in all her years working as a nurse for the mentally disabled, she's never seen someone start having full-blown hallucinations all of a sudden like that.
- It Runs in the Family: Sharona's father went insane and spent the last years of his life confined to a room, which makes Sharona very nervous when she seems to start having delusions. This is exploited by Denny mentioning her father the first time he appears to her.
- Make It Look Like an Accident: Sharona's writing teacher murders her husband using a poison Sharona mentioned in her story that will make it look as though he had a heart attack.
- Mirror Scare: Denny Graf sets one up at Dr. Kroger's clinic in as part of the Gaslighting attempt.
- My Eyes Are Up Here: Varla says this so often, it could almost be a Catchphrase.
- Offscreen Teleportation: Apparently Denny Graf is a ninja on top of being a security guard, as he is able to leave places like Dr. Kroger's bathroom unseen, even without enough time to actually do so.
- Revealing Cover Up: Meredith triying to discredit Sharona as a potential witness by gaslighting her backfires because Sharona is a close companion of Detective Monk.
- Sassy Black Woman: Varla, Sharona's temporary replacement.
- Sitcom Arch-Nemesis: This episode marks the start of Adrian's grudge with Harold Krenshaw. It all started over a petulant squabble on how the magazines in Dr. Kroger's waiting room should be arranged on the rack.
- Skewed Priorities: When Sharona is informed that Meredith stole her story idea, she's upset about the plagiarism before Monk reminds her of the murder.
- Tampering with Food and Drink: Meredith kills her husband by putting carbolic acid into his soup.
- You Can See That, Right?: Sharona thinks she's losing her mind after she starts seeing a bloodied man with a screwdriver in his ear and knife in his chest, only for him to vanish without any evidence he was ever there when she goes to get help from Monk. The first couple times he only appears when Sharona is alone, but eventually he shows up while she's in the middle of a talk with her writing teacher. Sharona asks the teacher if she can see him, but she says she can't. She actually does; both she and the man are in on a plot to commit a murder and ruin Sharona's credibility as a potential witness.
