This is a good Christmas episode. For one it establishes the Christmas present Monk never opened from Trudy which would become prominent in the series finale, and it's has such great acting and character development.
The stuff with Alice Westergren is good, although personally if I wanted to really go for it, I would've made the revaluation that the reason she poisoned and killed Detective Robbins was because he left her when she revealed that she was pregnant. It would've been a much more deeper and honest reason why she did it, plus it would've been a great parallel between Settelmeyer being officer who does care about the people he's affected, as oppose to detective Robbins who left a woman pregnant and alone and didn't care about her. It would've been a great parallel if the had done something like that. But the episode as is, it's still great, the comedy works, the dialogue is nice, and it's just a sweet reminder of how good people can be around the holidays, even in troubled times.
The stuff with Alice Westergren is good, although personally if I wanted to really go for it, I would've made the revaluation that the reason she poisoned and killed Detective Robbins was because he left her when she revealed that she was pregnant. It would've been a much more deeper and honest reason why she did it, plus it would've been a great parallel between Settelmeyer being officer who does care about the people he's affected, as oppose to detective Robbins who left a woman pregnant and alone and didn't care about her. It would've been a great parallel if the had done something like that. But the episode as is, it's still great, the comedy works, the dialogue is nice, and it's just a sweet reminder of how good people can be around the holidays, even in troubled times.