Monk takes on a very personal case when he notices that Inspector #8 has been getting lax in her job of looking over the shirts he buys. Thinking she must be in trouble, he goes to investigate and finds himself roped into proving the innocence of her son, Pablo Ortiz, who went to prison a year ago for the murder of model Clea Vance.
This episode contains examples of the following tropes:
- Absence of Evidence: Monk proves that fashion model Natasia Zorelle's death could not be suicide as the police thought on first examination of the crime scene. She was wearing lipstick, yet there were no traces of lipstick on the glass she supposedly drank from to overdose on sleeping pills.
- Ascended Extra: Scott Adsit appears earlier in "Mr. Monk Gets Fired" as an unnamed forensic medical examiner, and appears here as a major character with the same job and role with the police department. According to the official episode guide, the character's return was a late addition to the script.
- Back for the Dead: Well, back for the going to prison. Howard Gordon returns from "Mr. Monk Gets Fired" only to be locked up for tampering with evidence and being an accessory to murder.
- Berserk Button: Julian Hodge launches into a tirade when the buttons on his designs are worn even the slightest bit crooked, making him a kind of neat freak with a very short fuse. It leads to Monk discovering that one time, his rage was so strong he beat a model to death for showing up at a show drunk.
- Blackmail: When Gordo realizes that all the forensic evidence says Julian Hodge murdered one of his models, he decides to blackmail him into paying him to get rid of the evidence.
- Can't Kill You, Still Need You: Unlike most blackmailers on the show who end up dead for their troubles, Gordo remains unharmed by being the able to sabotage the evidence against Hodge through his position.
- Chekhov's Gun:
- Monk bluffs Pablo Ortiz into revealing he can't read English by telling him something false about him in a news story and seeing that he fails to catch it. A few minutes later, he shows Natalie a picture of Clea Vance's body, which was lying next to an alarm-trapped emergency exit door. The killer had to have been able to read English, or he would have taken the exit door rather than sneaking back through the kitchen.
- Gordo mentions in his first scene that he's retiring, after having just made a lot of money working in real estate. It later turns out that this windfall he's referring to is actually the bribe he solicited from Hodge to bury the evidence incriminating him in the murder.
- Chekhov's Gunman: Forensics tech Howard Gordon turns out to be responsible for framing Pablo Ortiz for the murder that Julian Hodge committed, and was willing to obstruct justice again by mislabeling new "evidence".
- Clear Their Name: Monk gets pulled into proving Pablo Ortiz didn't kill Clea Vance.
- Detective Mole: Fashion designer Julian Hodge killed his model Clea Vance, and later kills her roommate Natasia Zorelle when Monk becomes suspicious. He got away with the first murder due to Gordo, the forensics investigator, soliciting a bribe from Hodge to set up a sometimes delivery boy as a fall guy.
- Disproportionate Retribution: Hodge is a perfectionist with a very hot temper, such that when one of his models appeared at one of his shows drunk, he viciously beat her to death with his fists.
- The Dog Bites Back: Hodge spends a lot of screentime insulting Natalie's clothing and her looks. When Stottlemeyer arrests him, she gleefully describes the unflattering prison clothes he'll be wearing.
- Evil Brit: Hodge is the culprit and he's played by Malcolm McDowell. Self-explanatory, really.
- Evil Counterpart: Julian Hodge to Monk. Like Monk, he's got a great eye for detail and is a Control Freak, but unlike Monk, Hodge's default reaction to anything that isn't to his liking is anger rather than misery or exasperation.
- Freeze-Frame Bonus: When Inspector #8 shows Natalie the fan letter Monk sent her, the third paragraph is an exact copy of the second paragraph.
- Graceful Loser: Despite behaving as a rude, obnoxious bully throughout the episode, on top of having committed some monstrous acts, Hodge is surprisingly gracious when he's finally caught. (Maybe it's in part because he's happy his blackmailer is finally getting his comeuppance.) He accepts the news calmly, doesn't try to run or resist arrest, and tells Monk something that, coming from him, has to count as a grudging compliment: "So it's true what they say? You can never judge a person by how they dress."
- He Knows Too Much: Hodge comes to Natasia's home and kills her to make sure she can't inform on him to the police, who are getting uncomfortably close to the truth about Clea Vance's murder.
- Hypocritical Humor: During a fashion shoot, Julian Hodge asks one of the people working nearby to put out his cigarette because the smoke is annoying him. The guy promptly points out that Hodge is smoking himself.
- Innocent Inaccurate: Though Monk is brilliant, he doesn't follow modeling and is presumably unaware of the seamier aspects of it (aside from those that come to the police department). When he sees four models throwing up backstage, he warns Natalie not to eat the food, assuming that it's spoiled or contaminated. The more likely explanation is that the models have eating disorders as a result of their job and were purging.
- Mama Didn't Raise No Criminal: Maria Ortiz insists that Pablo didn't kill anyone, despite the mountain of evidence against him. Actually, it turns out she's right; he was framed.
- Neat Freak: Julian Hodge could match Monk himself in his compulsion towards keeping things straight. It even becomes a plot point. When he flies into a temper at Julie for messing up the collar on one of her outfits, Monk looks at the case file again and notice that whoever killed Clea Vance straightened out her collar after he killed her. This leads him to pronounce that Hodge is "the guy", making Natalie terrified for her daughter's safety.
- Never Suicide: Julian kills Natasia by overdosing her on pills, and making it look like she committed suicide. Monk doesn't buy it, noting that her fingerprints are on the glass, but her lipstick isn't.
- Noodle Incident: After the Cold Open, we see Monk worrying about Inspector No. 8 while he's at a murder scene. While distracted, Monk determines that the victim's wife is the culprit, as her long skirt would have prevented her from playing a cello, as she claimed she was doing in her alibi. Why she killed her husband is never revealed.
- "Not So Different" Remark: A rare example of a hero applying it to the villain. Monk realizes that Hodge is the killer when he realizes the two of them share the same compulsions towards cleanliness and symmetry.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Inspector #8 (Maria Ortiz) is usually scrupulously careful (which is why Monk loves her work so much), so when she begins giving a pass on less-than-perfect shirts, Monk suspects something's wrong. He's correct; she's grief-stricken over her son Pablo being sent to prison.
- Orgy of Evidence: Monk is convinced that Pablo Ortiz is innocent of murdering a fashion model in spite of the fact there's an orgy of forensic evidence against him. This turns out to be because the orgy of forensic evidence is actually against Julian Hodge, who had bribed the lead forensics tech into mislabeling the DNA evidence.
- Poor Communication Kills: After Monk says he thinks Julian Hodge is a murderer, Natalie quickly gets Julie back to their apartment. However, she doesn't tell Julie why she rushed her out, so she returns that night on her own to be in the fashion show, scaring her mother and forcing Natalie and Monk to crash the show to find her.
- The Runaway: Julie takes off for the fashion show with a large baggage of clothes, without Natalie's consent. Naturally, Natalie gets upset — especially given Monk's suspicions that Hodge is the killer.
- Til Murder Do Us Part: The woman mentioned in Noodle Incident murders her husband. Why? Who knows?
- Skewed Priorities: Monk’s primary concern for this episode is making sure Maria Ortiz is able to focus on her job and make sure he gets his preferred button-up shirts made. Even when he finds out the reason why she’s so upset, he prompts her to try getting back to work. Of course he takes her son’s case more seriously when he realizes Pablo is innocent. However, he still tries to rush her back to work after Pablo is released.
- Stalker with a Crush: Nastasia Zorelle, Clea Vance's roommate, claims that Pablo stalked her roommate.
- Varying Competency Alibi: The murder took place next to an emergency exit, yet the murderer didn't use it—he went through several other rooms, running the risk of being seen. The only possible reason for this is that the murderer saw—and could read—a sign which warns that the emergency exit would activate an alarm. Yet the main suspect can't read English, so he can't be the murderer.
- Wicked Cultured: Mrs. Hammond, a murderer Monk catches as an afterthought to the main case, is a classical cello player. Her husband/victim was also a classical musician.
- What You Are in the Dark: Invoked when our heroes set bait for Gordo to prove that he tampered with the evidence. They give him some of Monk's hairs, claiming that they found it at the crime scene and suspect that they might be from Hodge. When Gordo tells them, on the record, that the hairs belonged to Pablo, he's incriminated himself and opened himself up to be arrested for perjury and falsifying evidence.
- You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: When Julian hears that the police have been talking to Natasia Zorelle, he kills her to keep her from talking about her role in covering up Clea's murder.
- You Just Told Me: A variant. Monk and co. use this method to expose forensics expert Gordo's part in framing Pablo for the Clea Vance murder. Monk, Stottlemeyer and Disher bring Gordo down to the scene where Clea was killed, and present to him some newly discovered hairs that they allege might be Hodge's. Gordo takes them down for testing. When he shows up at the fashion show and says under oath that the hairs are Pablo Ortiz's. Stottlemeyer promptly tells him he's under arrest as an accessory to murder. It turns out the hairs they gave him earlier had been Monk's own hair, as they'd already suspected Gordo's complicity and wouldn't actually test the hairs if he was guilty.
