You'll have to tell us whether you're drifting towards wanting more controlled or softer ride, which can have a bit to do with conditions of roads, amount of curvy roads, and your driving habits.
There's also whether you'll never have a rear cargo load, always have some stuff back there, or will also be hauling or towing something more than a couple hundred lbs. more than rarely.
The extra weight, including riding with a few passengers, makes a stiffer shock closer to ideal whether it be load in the front or rear. Soft shocks with a load will have too little control. Hard shocks without a load will feel rough.
AFAIK, Monroe discontinued the Sensa-Trac regular shocks (non-coilovers). The closest they have to OEM that would be good quality is their OESpectrum:
http://www.monroe.com/en-US/e-catalog/37122
Those are roughly equivalent to the KYB Excel G. I disagree that the Excel G are not hard/stiff, they are also meant to be an OEM equivalent while KYB's monotube Gas-A-Just and Monomax are their two stiffer offerings.
Changing shocks on these vehicles is pretty straightforward and easy as far as repairs go. There can be issues, like my lower rear bolts had the nuts severely rusted on to the point that I had to break them off and buy new bolts, but that's just a general brute force dealing-with-old-vehicle rust issue, I'm sure your friend can do them as there are no surprises although some people had to move the pollution control cannister above the rear left shock to get the bolts out, but it too is just bolted on and I managed to do mine without unbolting by just having the right size ratchet extension or wrench, whatever it was.
If you have rear end sag that you'd like to correct then that opens another can of worms related to rear shock choices. There are a lot of topics about these issues that you can find with a forum search.
