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Fight for Your Right To Party
Sharona returning to Monk
by Danny Gallagher, posted Mar 25th 2009 9:05AM
The final season of the show that made USA famous for something other than playing non-stop reruns of Wings is turning into a reunion special. Or should I say a special reunion? Bitty Schram, the actress who played Sharona, Adrian Monk's original partner in fighting crime on Monk, will return for an episode sometime during the show's eighth and final season.
This will mark her first appearance on the comedy-mystery since she mysteriously disappeared from the show halfway through the third season. It should also make for an interesting close to a series that has redefined the way the higher channels on the dial create and produce their own series.
I've really missed Sharona since she left the show. No disrespect to actress Traylor Howard. She has done an excellent job as Natalie Teeger and saved it from certain doom when Sharona jumped out of the script. Schram left the show in the middle of the third season because of contract problems, creative differences or whatever reason producers pulled out of their random fishbowl excuse generator.
But Sharona brought an interesting ying to Monk's yang. She had a tough emotional exterior but also served as a great force of exasperation to Monk's constant edginess. She was the B.A. to Monk's Hannibal, only with far less jewelry and a lesser likelihood of getting your ass beaten to death with your own ass for making fun of her jewelry.
Her reappearance will not only bring closure to a great series, but could reignite some abandonment issues and other clinical problems for ol' Monky depending on when she returns. Monk is the closest my TV has come to creating a pure schadenfreude comedy. The more whacked out Monk becomes, the funnier the show will be. Here's hoping Monk is a drooling fetal ball by the time the final credits roll.
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