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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.

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The Peacock network is relying on a defective detective to prop up its summer ratings; USA Network’s obsessive-compulsive detective, Monk, played by Tony Shaloub, will move from USA to NBC for its seventh season, scheduled to start in July.

The one-hour dramady, which has flourished on USA, has been airing reruns on NBC along with its companion show, Psych, for about a month and doing decent numbers. The move from USA to NBC for the summer half of Monk’s season is a big show of faith by the NBC parent network in the show, which has also done well in DVD complete season sales.

There is, of course, a risk that the show could do poorly and fade from memory as a result, although it is more likely that the show would just move back to cable netlet USA if it doesn’t perform well on the broadcast net.

So far, there is no word on whether the new, third season of Psych will join Monk in the NBC jump, or if it will remain on USA. Keep in mind, SAG and AFTRA continue to hold the looming threat of a possible actors strike, which could begin as early as June, could shut production back down in Hollywood on these and all other shows.

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In a decision related more to ratings than the writer’s strike, USA Network has announced the cancellation of the sci-fi drama, THE 4400. A show that focuses on the idea of what might happen if all the alien abductees who’ve disappeared over the past century or so were all returned at once, many of them displaced from the times and people they once knew, slipped in the ratings last summer and was among the lowest-rated original hours of programming on USA.

For about three seasons, THE 4400 was a part of many people’s summer viewing habits, as reliable as a bunch of plumbing fixtures; but the summer series lost steam, perhaps due to running all 13 of its episodes each season over the summer, rather than adopting the “seven in the summer, six in the winter” schedule favored by more-popular USA hits like Monk, Psych and Burn Notice.

USA’s The Dead Zone, based on the Stephen King bestseller which chronicles the psychic adventures of Johnny Smith, a school teacher who gets into a car accident, spends a decade in a coma, and awakes with supernatural powers to foretell the future, which was at one time one of USA’s top-rated hours of original programming, was cast aside as well; the Dead Zone’s ratings were roughly the same as The 4400’s.

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With four shows in the Top 10 this past week, it seems America’s catching up to my eclectic summer viewing tastes, if only a bit. More specifically, USA Network rocks!

The four shows USA had in the Top 10 have all been personal faves for a while now. The ol’ reliable standby, MONK, is still strong even though showing signs of age as a concept.

Completely fresh and addictive in its second season, PSYCH is the perfect companion piece to MONK, with a talented, appealing cast. Shows like this make me wish USA offered longer seasons to these hits.

BURN NOTICE has a slightly grittier edge but still dwells in the same space of action-comedy-mystery that MONK and PSYCH occupy.

And WWE RAW is great, mindless summer fare. It’s also the place where you might see the most creative use of a safety utility knife.

I’m a bit disappointed that viewers seem to be abandoning THE 4400, which is smart science fiction; however, I’m surprised THE DEAD ZONE is still hanging around, considering how terrible Anthony Michael Hall is in filling in for Christopher Walken, who breathed first cinematic life into the role for the Stephen King-inspired character.

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