In just the second episode with Natalie as Monk's assistant versus Sharona as his nurse, there are problems between the two. Natalie needs a higher salary since she is having considerable expenses that come along with the job. Monk's argument is that he is paying her the exact same amount as Sharona. And then Natalie finds out Monk is still paying rent on a downtown office that belonged to Trudy when she was alive mainly because he can't bring himself to clean out that office of her things.
Separately, an expert on the deceased martial arts film star Sonny Chow is on a TV show eviscerating the guy - claiming he was never that talented and that he actually died of a drug overdose. After the show airs a man enters the expert's apartment and attacks and kills him in such a style that appears to be something Sonny Chow would have done. There is hair left behind at the scene that is a DNA match to blood that Sonny Chow had banked in case he ever needed a transfusion. Complications ensue.
Without giving too much away, what makes this episode is that Monk is given an extended period of getting to converse with Trudy. Whether he really is seeing her and talking to her spirit or it is just a coping mechanism given the circumstances, it was very touching.