The detectives in San Macros, Captain Alameda and Lieutenant Plato, are thinly disguised versions of Captain Stottlemeyer and Lieutenant Disher. Alameda has the same mustache as Stottlemeyer and Plato is Spanish for "dish" or "plate". Additionally, Alameda and Plato wear the same suits that Stottlemeyer and Disher are wearing.
This is the start of a recurring trope (more common to see in the series of Monk novels by Lee Goldberg), where every police department that Monk consults for has equivalents of Stottlemeyer and Disher. The novels "Mr. Monk Goes to Germany" and "Mr. Monk Is Miserable" are good examples of this.
This is the start of a recurring trope (more common to see in the series of Monk novels by Lee Goldberg), where every police department that Monk consults for has equivalents of Stottlemeyer and Disher. The novels "Mr. Monk Goes to Germany" and "Mr. Monk Is Miserable" are good examples of this.
The coroner says the victim's blood was hypertonic. If you drop a red blood cell (RBC) into water that's more salty than human blood, the salty water sucks a lot of water out of the cell, which then shrivels (hypertonic). Drop the RBC into pure water and the cell swells with excess water (hypotonic). Drown in saltwater and blood returning to the heart from the lungs is hypertonic; drown in freshwater and you get hypotonic return blood.
Mr. Monk, in his refusal to drink anything but Sierra bottled water, refuses a can of Coca-Cola that Sharona bought him from a vending machine because he can't be certain where it was bottled. In fact, Mexico is the largest consumer, per capita, of Coke, and Mexican Coke is highly prized in the U.S. because it's made with cane sugar rather than high-fructose corn syrup.
Tony Plana, who played the Mexican police chief here, also played the villain on another USA Network original, in the show Psych (2006) in "No Country for Two Old Men (2013)".