Monk/YMMV

• Broken Base: Holy God, the fights between Sharona fans and Natalie fans.
• Complete Monster: Dale "The Whale" Biderbeck. The man sued Monk's wife with a libel suit, dragged out the case with his lawyers when he realized he couldn't win, and bought the home they sold and used it to stash his porn collection.
• Crazy Awesome: "It's a gift...and a curse." In Mr Monk and the Red Herring, Monk goes to a museum and sees the body of a caveman that supposedly froze to death. Monk determines that he was actually murdered and actually figured out what happened. We never actually get to hear it, but suffice it to say Monk is a really good detective to solve a 30,000 year old murder.
• Critical Research Failure: The group of law students in "Mr. Monk and The Missing Granny" get confused on stuff that should have been learned in high school civics class, much less law school. One example involves failing to save a death row inmate because of confusion over daylight savings time. This example below appears to avert this issue:

Julie Parlo: Hi, I'm Julie Parlo. Uh, where is the FBI? This is a kidnapping. I happen to be a lawyer, so I know that in a kidnapping situation the FBI has jurisprudence.
Lt. Disher: That's only true if your grandmother's been taken across the state lines...
Captain Stottlemeyer: ...or if she's been held for more than 24 hours. And I think you meant to say "jurisdiction." What kind of lawyer are you?

• Crowning Music of Awesome: Both theme songs.
• Dude, Not Funny: Some viewers' reactions to the show's humor and treatment of mentally ill people.
• Family-Unfriendly Aesop: In the subplot for the episode "Mr. Monk Is Stuck In Traffic," Monk reports a trucker for driving crazily on the road, it wasn't the first time the trucker in question did so, and they fired her. She then, during the traffic jam, decides she wants to kill Monk as revenge for getting her fired (and her brandishing a crowbar implies that she is not bluffing), and in order for Monk to evade a potential beating on his part when found by her, he is forced by her to withdraw the complaint by claiming he lied about her speeding as revenge for her turning him down in the hand of marriage. Basically, the moral is that, unless you want to be beaten down and possibly killed by the person you reported, don't squeal, even if the person being squealed on deserved the punishment.
• Flanderization: Disher started out as a skeptical semi-ditz who could be a bit of a jerk, but at least was still recognisably an adult man. Over later seasons, one wonders how a man with the mindset of a teenage rebel with ADD could've become a lieutenant, let alone become a police chief in New Jersey.
  • It's just New Jersey
• Jerkass Woobie: Monk, who treats his friends callously without actually realizing it. Usually the source of an Aesop Amnesia when he learns to appreciate and treat them, especially Natalie, better, which he then promptly forgets next episode.
• Large Ham: Tim Curry's portrayal of Dale the Whale.
• Nightmare Fuel: The episode "Mr. Monk Bumps His Head" ends with Monk quietly giving his summation while thickly coated in bees
• Straw Man Has a Point: In "Mr. Monk Makes A Friend" it's clear that Hal, the "friend" Monk makes, is up to no good. But then he says "when's the last time you hung out with him?" (To be fair, it's difficult to do so...)
• Tear Jerker:
  • The ads for the final season of the show set to Keane's "Time to Go".
  • The final episode is possibly one of these, depending on how emotional you can get. Keep your tissues handy.
  • Any scene when Monk is talking to his dead wife.
  • The scene where Monk's brother admits he never called him after Trudy died because he blames himself for her death.
  • When Monk becomes a temporary foster parent. He begins to fall in love with the child and considers adopting him. However, the child begins to take on Monk's OCD-tendencies, and while telling him a story (Which was a bit like the situation the child was in!) Monk comes to a conclusion and states that the child won't be happy with Monk. The ending was sad, where Monk has to give him up for the kid's own good.
  • The episode with the dogs. It turns out the dog's puppies were proof of an affair and manslaughter, so the murderer-of-the-week comes in to destroy the evidence but Monk talks him out of it. At the end, Monk's selling the puppies but is too afraid to separate them. Someone with a farm comes by and buys all of them, since they have space for all of the dogs and are able to take care of the whole litter.
  • Mr. Monk's Favorite Show certainly counts. Monk explains that the reason he loved it so much as a kid was that it showed his view of the 'perfect family.' A family that he never had.
• The Woobie: Monk's cringing and general pitifulness when being confronted with one of his phobias generate an instant oh-the-poor-thing factor and tend to put one in mind of a small child or bewildered dog; on top of that, cruel minor characters unacquainted with Monk are always around to mock him, stare at him, or try to forcibly make him "get over" his fears. It's almost painful to watch, even when played for laughs as it usually is. (For some reason, neither Monk nor Natalie/Sharona ever bother to explain Monk's OCD, instead describing him as being "particular" or something similarly vague; thus, the other characters are rarely sympathetic to or accommodating of his problems.)