Tagged: Bitty Schram

Bitty Schram returns for Monk finale!

This is a more welcome announcement for Monk fans than the revelation of the best acne treatments would be among zit-prone teens: Monk’s original assistant, Bitty Schram, is indeed scheduled to return for the series’ final season, which begins airing this summer and will conclude next winter.

Although the appearance will only be for one episode, allowing Schram to take part in the long-running series’ final bow is a class move by USA and the show’s producers. Schram endeared herself to Monk fans in the first two and a half-seasons on the show, but left over money issues and a contract dispute before filming began on the second half of the third season.

Schram was replaced by Traylor Howard’s Natalie Teeger, who has remained with the series ever since.

Start the mourning now: Monk ending

While USA renewed MONK this week for an eighth season, the network also revealed it will mark the final bow for the Tony Shaloub-helmed dramedy. Shaloub has played the obsessive-compulsive detective long enough to make up for being part of NBC’s Wings, which is saying something.

Monk has always been a series on diet pills, producing only 16 episodes per season, and this final season, which begins next summer, in June, will be the same. That’s just as Shaloub and company would have it.

All the key players are still in place for the final season of Monk, including Traylor Howard as Monk’s assistant, Natalie Teeger. No word yet on whether producers will mend fences and bring back Bitty Schram for one final bow as Monk’s original assistant, Sharona Fleming, but one can only hope.