When Monk first goes upstairs with his mother-in-law, he hesitates when he wants to look in at his late wife's bedroom. The bedroom has a door that opens into the room and swings to the right. At the end of the story, he garners the courage to enter, this time the door opens in but swings to the left.
When Dwight Ellison starts to call the police after Monk figures out the scam on the game show, he can be seen pulling his phone out of his jacket twice.
When Monk and his mother in law are speaking upstairs, just after he closes the door to Trudy's room, there is a wedding picture in a matted silver frame behind Monk's left shoulder in the 3/4 shots, but then during a close-up of Monk in this conversation, the frame is brown and the matted image is of at least one person, likely a man wearing an ivory sweater. This switches back and forth a couple of times.
Lizzie drives a late model Audi. Like all modern cars, Audis have two separate hydraulic brake circuits. Cutting one brake line would only disable one of them, leaving the car with enough stopping power to at least slow down. Cutting a rear brake line, as Roddy did, would have the least effect, since approximately 70% of braking is done by the front brakes.
The car crash occurred at 7:39 pm on May 2 in the Los Angeles area and the crash was a night scene. In early May in the Los Angeles area, this would be less than 5 minutes after sunset, and it would still be nearly full daylight and certainly not a black sky at this time.
On several of the questions, Val and Monk both ring in and their buzzers can be heard simultaneously. However, Jeopardy! and similar game shows invariably have "lockout"-type buzzer systems that prevent more than one buzzer signaling at a time. These systems prevent a person from ringing in before the question has been completely asked. Also, all game shows have a time limit on how long you can take to answer questions (in Jeopardy! for instance, it's five to seven seconds).
The fact that Lizzie Talvo finds a road where she can gain such a high speed before she hit the brakes the first time is almost impossible. Most people's first step when getting in a car is to depress the brake. If a car is in a driveway the person will likely brake in the driveway. It's unlikely anyone would get on a road and travel at such a high speed on a winding road without braking. The brake line should have been cut enough where she would have noticed a problem or it gave out before then.
When Monk and Dorfman are at Val Birch's house, they find an unlocked door and open it. Monk claims that going in would be Breaking and Entering. Not so! There was nothing to break to enter and going in would have only been simple trespassing... not even a real misdemeanor.
Under California law, it would have been trespassing and would have been a real misdemeanor.
Under California law, it would have been trespassing and would have been a real misdemeanor.
Monk says the police didn't check out Lizzie Talvo's death because it wasn't a criminal investigation. Her car went off a road for no reason, and even a casual check would have revealed that the brake line was cut rather than frayed. There would have been an investigation.
Unless the accident was suspicious in some way, there would not have been an investigation. No one would have checked the brake line to see if it was cut.
Unless the accident was suspicious in some way, there would not have been an investigation. No one would have checked the brake line to see if it was cut.
When Monk finds the discarded video tape cassette, he makes a point of keeping it on the assumption it may be important to the case. However, he makes no effort to keep the envelope it was in, which might itself have provided some much-needed information for the case (e.g., fingerprints).
The answering machine message that Monk hears at the house of Val Birch says that the Mercedes "640" has arrived. There is no Mercedes Benz 640, nor has there ever been one. There is however a BMW 640, so it is possible that the dealership also carries the BMW brand and Monk wrongly assumed that it was a new Merc that Val had ordered.