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.

(S07E07) Too often when a show reaches an anniversary, like say 100 episodes, the producers feel the need to mark the occasion with an extraordinary entry. That was what happened with Monk.

To commemorate the 100th episode, they created Mr. Monk's 100th Case, and using a show within a show format, celebrated Adrian Monk, a modern day Sherlock Holmes. San Francisco's defective detective

Thank goodness it all worked! I was afraid we were going to get a clip-laden, down-memory-lane type of show with nothing remotely intriguing. No, writer Tom Scharpling and company were more clever than that.