Monk is in the middle of another case when an apparent serial killer strikes — one with a bizarre M.O. of killing the victim six ways. The FBI steps in to take control of the case, completely disdaining Monk's deductive skills. Can the detective prove himself worthy against the high-tech style of Agent Derek Thorpe?
This episode contains examples of the following tropes:
- Alliterative Name: The murdered street musician is named Cyrus Canning.
- All Your Powers Combined: A non-superpowered variant occurs when all of the members of Team Monk contribute to catching Dr. Leven, each using their unique skills:
- Monk is the one who actually solves the crime by focusing on Jean Garnett's murder and piecing together the clues that Leven left behind.
- Natalie sparks Monk's "Eureka!" Moment about the murder and, given her knowledge of San Francisco, is the only person in the room who can correctly identify the gold-leaf cake that Jean ate—and, more importantly, the restaurant where it came from.
- Disher's performance as an undercover street musician proves that the FBI's theories about the murder are ridiculous and finally gets Agent Thorpe to pay attention to Monk.
- Stottlemeyer gets to perform the coup de grace by grabbing Agent Keao's expensive electronic device and hurling it at Leven as he tries to flee, knocking him to the ground.
- Artistic License – Law Enforcement: In real life, the FBI would never be given jurisdiction over this case unless the killer had crossed state lines while committing the crime, the crime was committed during a federal offense, or the murder was a political assassination.
- Badass Boast: A rare example where someone else does the boasting. After Agent Thorpe dismisses Monk from the case, Stottlemeyer outright tells him that he's wrong about Adrian. Thorpe scoffs that they're sitting on top of $500 million of the latest crime-solving equipment in the world—is Monk really smarter than all of that? Stottlemeyer just smiles and says "Yes"—and, of course, he's ultimately proven right in the end.
- Call-Back: The song Randy sings when pretending to be a street musician is the slam song he wrote about Stottlemeyer, when he temporarily quit in "Mr. Monk Goes To The Dentist".
- Character Development: In "Mr. Monk and the Sleeping Suspect," Stottlemeyer was extremely reluctant to back up Monk's theories about the case and only did so through gritted teeth. By now, though, he's openly boasting about Monk's amazing mind and declaring that Adrian's worth more than all of the FBI's high-tech gear.
- Contrived Coincidence: Dr. Leven just so happens to take Jean Garnett, his date and first victim, to a restaurant that is the only place in the entire city which makes a one-of-a-kind dessert that an autopsy would reveal, allowing the detectives to track his whereabouts. And when Team Monk does see that dessert, Natalie just so happens to have eaten it in the past, allowing her to instantly identify the restaurant in question.
- Criminal Mind Games: Invoked by the "Six-Way Killer," who calls the police to taunt them with cryptic messages and references about his plans to kill again. It's all a bluff to keep them focused on the murder of Cyrus Canning and thus not pay attention to the real crime he's trying to cover up.
- Cruel and Unusual Death: Just listen to the medical examiner tell it:Medical Examiner: Blow to the back of the head, knocking him unconscious...
Natalie: Oh, no.
ME: Petechial hemorrhaging, indicating suffocation...
Natalie: Oh, no.
ME: Small puncture wound, injected with poison...
Natalie: Oh, no!
ME:...plus four stab wounds, two gunshots to the chest, and tire tracks across the upper torso.
Disher: So the cause of death was...?
ME: Pretty much everything. - Do Not Go Gentle: Jean Garnett, the killer's first victim, did her best to fight back against him, and was even able to grab his glasses before she fled his car. Despite being beaten to the point of death, she also had enough strength to rush into a nearby gas station before collapsing, allowing the police to find her and eventually solve the crime.
- GPS Evidence: In a kind of two-step process. The gold leaf cake in Jean's stomach would have revealed what restaurant she ate at before she died (since it could only be ordered at that particular place), and since it was expensive enough for Dr. Leven to pay with his credit card, it would point directly to him.
- Grand Romantic Gesture: Dr. Leven tries to impress Jean Garnett by ordering her a gold leaf cake—billed as "the world's most romantic dessert"—on their dinner date. In a twist of fate, that very cake ends up doing him in; he realizes that if Jean's stomach contents are analyzed after her death, the cops will be able to identify where they ate, so he tries to throw the police off with a second murder.
- Ironic Echo: Derek Thorpe declares that their high-tech approach to the case, not Monk, will be the thing to catch the killer. At the end, when the culprit tries to flees, Stottlemeyer grabs the electronic recording device from one of the agents and throws it at him, knocking him down and allowing him to be captured.Stottlemeyer: Hey, you were right! One of your gizmos caught the killer.
- Jerkass: Agent Thorpe marches onto the scene as a pushy, demanding blowhard that treats everyone who works with him as though they are beneath him, doesn't listen to good advice, and lambastes everyone around him at the drop of a hat - with No Indoor Voice - even for just doing their jobs.
- Jurisdiction Friction: The FBI takes over a serial killer case and starts bossing Captain Stottlemeyer and the other main characters around, with the lead agent Derek Thorpe being a raging asshole to them.
- Ludd Was Right: The episode intentionally invokes the story of John Henry in regards to Adrian Monk vs. the technologically supplied FBI agents. However, given how over the top the FBI acts, it's likely this was more of a parody of modern crime dramas, such as CSI. In the end, the escaping bad guy is caught thanks to a high-tech hand-held device... that Stottlemeyer threw at him.
- Not Good with Rejection: The characters don't figure out the killer's motive for killing Jean Garnett and starting this whole mess, but the viewer sees the two drinking in Dr. Leven's car, him getting frisky, her telling him no and then fleeing from the car during The Summation.
- Offing the Annoyance: Stottlemeyer jokingly makes a comment to this effect when the FBI agents have Randy pose as a street musician to lure the serial killer. The problem is, Randy sings terribly (and he's singing "I Don't Need a Badge"):Stottlemeyer: There's a flaw in your plan.
Agent Thorpe: What's that?
Stottlemeyer: Well, the first person that attacks him might not necessarily be your serial killer. It might be me. - The Password Is Always "Swordfish": A surprisingly heartwarming example occurs when Julie helps Monk set up an e-mail account on her computer. When told he has to choose a password, Monk immediately selects "Trudy". Julie tells him that anyone who knows him could guess that code and urges him to pick another one...but upon seeing how reluctant he is, she smiles and agrees to go with "Trudy," much to Monk's delight.
- Rasputinian Death: How else can you describe being bludgeoned, suffocated, poisoned, stabbed, shot, and crushed with a car in that order?
- Science Is Useless: The police were very embarrassed when they surrounded and almost arrested a guy brandishing a deadly harmonica, based on predictions made by state of the art computer systems. Of course, why the FBI had taken over a routine homicide case like this is beyond belief.
- Screw This, I'm Out of Here!: When Disher and Special Agent Thorpe confront Dr. Leven over his glasses, he knows the jig is up and tries to run. Thankfully, Stottlemeyer throws the device Special Agent Keao has been using throughout the episode into the doctor's back, knocking him down for the cops to catch.
- Serial Killer: Subverted. It appears that there is a new one in town with a modus operandi of killing their victims in six different ways, and they plan to kill again. However, this story is one the killer made up to divert attention from the murder of his date, and he wasn't planning to kill again.note
- Serial Killer Baiting: The FBI gets Randy dressed up as a street musician with incognito agents surrounding him to take the killer down when they strike. Not only is the plan flawed because, as Stottlemeyer basically says, someone else may go after Randy just to shut him up, it's a disastrous failure, as the person who approaches while pulling something from his pocket turns out to have just been going for a harmonica to join in with him. Then, seeing as how the whole "Six-Way Killer" thing was a Red Herring, the whole effort is made completely pointless anyway.
- Serial Killings, Specific Target: A doctor kills a random street musician in one particularly gruesome way - bludgeoning him over the head with a crowbar, then suffocating him with a plastic bag, injecting him with a vial of poison, stabbing him four times with a knife, shooting him twice with a revolver, and finally crushing him with a car and leaves a note saying he'll kill again. The agents decide he has something against street musicians and act accordingly, but actually it was a red herring to divert the police from the murder of his date.
- Shockingly Expensive Bill: Crossing over with Freeze-Frame Bonus. During The Summation, we get a brief shot of Dr. Leven paying his restaurant bill with a credit card, and we can see that the meal came out to $653.80, with Leven paying a $200 tip on top of it—meaning that a dinner for two people cost over eight hundred dollars.
- Smokescreen Crime: The killer takes out a street musician in a gruesome way so that the police will be drawn away from his girlfriend's death so that incriminating stomach contents that could lead back to him will be destroyed. This works because the killer is a doctor, meaning he knows anatomy, and that the stomach contents dissolve within 36 hours after death.
- Suspect Is Hatless: This is how Stottlemeyer feels about the psychological profile that an FBI computer conjures up for the Six-Way Killer (it claims that he has a special hatred of street musicians); he outright remarks that he's never seen a psychological profile be anything more than obvious guesswork, especially if it's coming from technology. The end of the episode proves that Stottlemeyer was right, as Dr. Leven chose a victim completely at random to distract the cops from the murder he was actually trying to hide.
- Take That!: To CSI and other shows like it; Monk outwits the FBI's state-of-the-art computer technology, just to demonstrate that it is actual thinking and thought processing that closes cases, not computers and flashy technology.
- There Is No Kill Like Overkill: The reason behind the title — a killer takes out a victim by hitting him in the back of the head with a crowbar, suffocating him with plastic, poisoning him, stabbing him, shooting him, and then running over his body with a car. It turns out this murder was a massive Red Herring to get the authorities entirely focused off a woman he'd also killed so that way they would not perform an autopsy on her, as doing so before the contents were naturally emptied would lead them to discovering evidence that could eventually point back to him.
- Villain Ball: The fact that the killer gave a 36-hour deadline. If he had said a week, or even two days, that would have been long enough for the contents to dissolve with plenty of time between the dissolution and the solving of the crime. Possibly justified in that he was determined to keep the entire medical examiner's office occupied until his first victim's stomach contents were totally gone—had he given a longer timeline, it's possible that one of the coroners would have decided to at least finish up with her and thus expose the truth.
- Woken Up at an Ungodly Hour: Monk calls Natalie when he wins at solitaire on the computer. He states the time as being 2:55 am.
- Working the Same Case: Or rather prevented from working the same case. Thorpe orders Monk to drop the murder case he's helping Stottlemeyer with at the beginning. Once he's fired from the alleged serial killer case, he grasps the connection between them.
- Would Hit a Girl: Dr. Leven was willing to beat his date to death.
