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.

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.