TVSquad

A roundup of TV people from in front of the camera and behind the scenes who have passed away.

• Michael Pate: He was a veteran Australian actor who appeared in many TV shows over the years, including Batman, The Rifleman, The Time Tunnel, The Rat Patrol, Matlock Police, Hondo, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Disneyland, The Wild Wild West, Daktari, Get Smart, The Man From U.N.C.L.E., Zorro, Wagon Train, Alfred Hitchcock Hour, Lassie, and a ton of westerns. He was also the first person to play the Felix Leiter character, in the 50s TV version of Casino Royale. He appeared in several movies, including Houdini, Major Dundee, The Silver Chalice, Howling III, Return of the Gunfighter, PT109, McClintock!, and Sergeants 3. He died of complications from pneumonia at age 88.
  

A roundup of TV people from in front of the camera and behind the scenes who have passed away.

• Earle Hagen: He was a legendary, Emmy-winning composer of music for TV shows, including the themes to The Dick Van Dyke Show, The Andy Griffith Show, I Spy, That Girl, Gomer Pyle, USMC, Make Room For Daddy, The Mod Squad, and Mike Hammer ("Harlem Nocturne"). He also worked on the music for many movies, including Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Monkey Business, Daddy Long Legs, Carousel, Let's Make Love, Compulsion, Don't Bother To Knock, and There's No Business Like Show Business. Hagen died at age 88 in Rancho Mirage, CA.

A roundup of TV people from in front of the camera and behind the scenes who have passed away.

• Warren Cowan: He was a veteran publicist who had an incredible list of clients over the years, including Lucille Ball, Frank Sinatra, Judy Garland, Tony Curtis, Steve McQueen, Natalie Wood, and Joan Crawford. He was the father of journalist Claudia Cowan and stepfather to Melissa and Sara Gilbert. He died of cancer in Los Angeles at age 87.

A roundup of TV people from in front of the camera and behind the scenes who have passed away.

• Bill Idelson: He is probably best remembered as Sally's longtime boyfriend Herman Glimscher on The Dick Van Dyke Show. He also wrote for the show and several others over the years, including The Andy Griffith Show, M*A*S*H, The Bob Newhart Show, Happy Days, The Odd Couple, Bewitched, Get Smart, The Ghost & Mrs. Muir, The Twilight Zone, The Flintstones, and many others, and acted on dozens of shows since the 50s, and even played the son on the Vic and Sade radio show. He died from complications from a hip injury at age 88.

A roundup of TV people from in front of the camera and behind the scenes who have passed away.

• Bud Molin: He was a film editor who worked on several TV shows, including the Sheldon Leonard-produced The Dick Van Dyke Show, The Andy Griffith Show, and I Spy, as well as projects with Carl Reiner, including the movies The Jerk, Oh, God, The Man With Two Brains, and Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid. He also worked on I Love Lucy. Molin died in Rancho Mirage, CA at age 81. (That's him on the left, with Desi Arnaz and Dann Cahn.)

Welcome to TV Squad Lists (formerly 'The Five'), a feature where each blogger has a chance to list his or her own rundown of things in television that stand out from the rest, both good and bad.

TV usually gets the writing profession wrong. I've never understood why, since shows and characters are written by writers themselves. Maybe they think they have to dumb it down for the general audience. That's why you have writers like Jessica Fletcher, who just sits down at the typewriter and the words come out fine and she mails it off to her publisher. This happens all the time on television. And have you ever noticed that when you hear the writing that a writer character has done on a show it's almost always terrible? Why is that?

After the jump are six writer characters on TV that were done correctly.

Happy Valentine's Day! I hate February 14th.

But it's a fine day for all you sickening happy lovey-dovey couples to hold hands and skip around your garden and have dirty dirty sex. Below are 5 great TV couples who are probably celebrating the day this way. Well, at least four of them.

1. Rob and Laura Petrie (The Dick Van Dyke Show): Has there ever been a married couple on television that had the chemistry that Dick Van Dyke and Mary Tyler Moore had? Hell, they both even have three names! You could tell they loved each other and cared for each other, and you could imagine they were intimate, even if they did have those damn separate beds.

So I was watching an episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show this weekend. What does this have to do with Buffy The Vampire Slayer/Firefly mastermind Joss Whedon? Read on.

The episode I was watching was "Scratch My Car and Die," the one where Rob buys a new sports car and Laura accidentally scratches it while shopping. Watching the credits (I often watch the credits to see who was in an episode and then I run to the comptuer to check the IMdB to see what else they've done, if they're still alive, etc) I noticed that it was written by someone named John Whedon. Now, Whedon isn't the most common name, and he did work in television, so I checked and...yup, it's Joss Whedon's grandfather! He wrote another episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show and also wrote episodes of Leave It To Beaver, The Donna Reed Show, The Wonderful World of Disney, and several episodes of The Andy Griffith Show (though it's hard to figure out how many exactly with the IMdB's odd credits system).

Whedon died in 1991.

The Dick Van Dyke Show is my favorite show of all-time, so my ears always perk up when I hear a new DVD of material from Van Dyke is coming.

But this isn't from that show, it's actually footage from other TV shows that Van Dyke was on before The Dick Van Dyke Show started in 1961. Dick Van Dyke: In Rare Form will contain sketches and performances that Van Dyke did on The Pat Boone Chevy Showroom in 1958-59. The names of the routines give a hint at what we'll see: "Babysitting Father," "Mailing A Letter On A Windy Corner," "Daddy's Little Girls," "The Pet Cats," "Sneaking In," and "The Tennis Champ." You can tell they'll include a lot of Van Dyke's pantomime and slapstick skills, and I bet he incorporated some of these sketches into his own show later.

The DVD will be released on March 27 and will cost only around $15.00, so you have no excuse not to get it.

1. Just when I thought Dr. Phil was the most annoying person in the McGraw family comes...oh, wait, Dr. Phil is still the most annoying person in the McGraw family, but the other night I was watching that HGTV special where they show the White House being decorated for the holidays, and it was hosted by Robin McGraw. She has all the personality of a used bar of soap.

Last year I introduced the term "fanesia" on this blog. It's a word that means "fan amnesia," those moments of a TV show that you simply forget ever happened, because they're illogical, hurt the show, or just make you feel bad and/or angry. I think it's time for another five:

1. Toby was the leak (The West Wing): I don't know what happened here. Whether the character was written off because actor Richard Schiff wanted to leave or NBC wanted to cut some payroll, the way it happened was a real kick in the stomach to longtime fans of the show. Not only that Toby would leak info about a secret military plane (he wouldn't), but that President Bartlet would just fire him so coldly and bring up their history in such a nasty way. Sure, these two butted heads many times, but it was always out of caring and love for each other. Great to see Bartlet pardon him as his last act as President and invite him to the opening of the library, but still. Aaron Sorkin must have thrown something at his TV when this happened.

In my mind, Toby just quit the White House to go teach at Columbia.

This is a list of the TV shows I could never live without. If I was able to own and watch only five TV shows on DVD (or tape), these are the five shows. My desert islands discs, as they call them.

The interesting thing to me about this list is that these five shows are NOT my five favorite TV shows of all-time. They're in the top 10, sure, but I found making that list that I know only looked at the ones I liked, the quality, but since these were the only five shows I could have (and I'm trapped on that damn island - hope there's electricity), then I'd want a mix of shows to entertain me. A balance of comedy and drama.

What shows would you pick? Remember, you can never watch any other shows ever again.

1. The Dick Van Dyke Show: OK, so the first show on my list just so happens to also be my favorite TV show of all-time. This show is timeless, it's extremely well done, and Rob Petrie is the reason I became a writer, so it has to be number one.

One day, while sitting around the palatial TV Squad offices, a notion came to mind. What would happen if you took all of today's technology and applied it to classic television shows of yesteryear? Would The Fugitive's Richard Kimble be acquitted of his crime after the DNA evidence proved that he didn't kill his wife? Or, would The Mary Tyler Moore Show's Ted Baxter be a better anchor if he had access to all of the day's news via the Internet?

Taking that notion one step further, here are five shows that would have been vastly different if modern technology were applied to them.

The Dick Van Dyke Show: No more schlepping into the city for Rob Petrie; not when he could write his scripts from his home desktop computer. And, if he got tired sitting at his desk, he could grab his WiFi laptop and continue to write from the local Starbucks. He would still need Buddy and Sally, of course, but he could pass ideas to them via Instant Messenger. When they were all done with that week's script they could have a video conference with Alan where changes could be made via NetMeeting.

We all know the story: a TV show will recast a major character (because the other actor wanted more money or they wanted to go in another direction with the character or some other reason), and many times it's not as good. But that's not always true (it's not even true in the most famous example given, Bewitched, but more on that below). Here are five recasts that actually worked out.

1. Noel Neill (The Adventures of Superman): Neill took over for Phyllis Coates after Coates played Lois Lane in the first season only, and she's really the one we remember from the show.

1. The Dick Van Dyke Show: This timeless classic not only revolved around the domestic lives of Rob and Laura Petrie in New Rochelle, but also around the writing staff of The Alan Brady Show, a hit variety show out of New York City. I think this show still holds up, even compared to classic modern comedies.

2. Sports Night: Before The West Wing, Aaron Sorkin created this really well written and snappy look behind the scenes of a Sportscenter-like TV show. Basically, it was The West Wing at a TV station, which is one of the reasons I'm so looking forward to Studio 60 this fall.