Mr. Monk's 100th episode

"Monk" achieves a rare milestone on Friday - its 100th episode, appropriately entitled "Mr. Monk's 100th Case," set around the framing device of a lurid newsmagazine show, "In Focus," with Eric McCormack playing the smarmy host James Curry.

Our regular cast is watching the show - which tracks Monk (Tony Shalhoub) solving his 100th case, naturally - at Curry's home, and while taking it in, Monk is convinced he's made a mistake.

Where this is going is actually pretty obvious, but there's some fairly inspired comedy. Disher's (Jason Gray-Stanford) girlfriend, who performs crime re-enactments in "Mostly crime shows, junk like this," as she tells Curry, demonstrates her, uh, skills to amusing affect. And there's a classic Monk sequence in which he uses a mini-vac to vacuum his vacuum, and an even smaller mini-vac to clean the other mini-vac.

Special guests from previous episodes also turn up to wax poetic about Monk, including John Turturro, Sarah Silverman, Brooke Adams, Andy Kindler, David Koechner, Howie Mandell and Angela Kinsey. After 100 episodes, "Monk" may be a little pro forma, but it remains a whimsically light confection.

- "Monk:" 9 p.m. Friday, USA.