TV Land will be honoring some of the greats of television, some from the golden age of TV, some from just a few years back, and even the greats of tomorrow? How's that? Well, look at the line up: Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner, the creators of 'The 2000 Year Old Man' among other comic gems, the cast of 'Everybody Loves Raymond,' a salute to Farrah Fawcett by the other 'Charlie's Angel' stars, and with a wink toward the future, a celebration of 'Glee.'

The Annual TV Land Awards will be taped in Los Angeles on Saturday, April 17, for broadcast the following Sunday, April 25 at 9 PM ET on TV Land. Scheduled to appear are the 'Raymond' gang -- Ray Romano, Brad Garrett, Patricia Heaton, Doris Roberts; two of the 'Angels' -- Cheryl Ladd and Jaclyn Smith; and 'Glee' cast members Jane Lynch, Dianna Agron, Jayma Mays, Jessalyn Gilsig and Kevin McHale.

I was going to post this interview with Carl Reiner that Conan O'Brien did on The Tonight Show last night anyway, but it's an added bonus that the clip also includes Snoop Dogg, who listens to Reiner auditioning to sing on one of his CDs. I never really thought I'd ever include the words "Carl Reiner" and "Snoop Dogg" in the same sentence.

For some reason I thought that Henry Gibson was a lot older than 73, but the character actor with the huge resume passed away from cancer at that age yesterday in Malibu.

One of the more famous TV credits on that resume was Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In, the influential 60s comedy show that no one under 30 has ever seen. He also appeared in shows like Bewitched, The Beverly Hillbillies, Deep Space Nine, Coach, MacGyver, Evening Shade, Sisters, Newhart, Magnum, P.I., and Simon and Simon.

More recently, TV fans know him from his many appearances as a judge on Boston Legal and his voice work on King of the Hill (he played Bob Jenkins). He was also in several movies, including Magnolia (he played Thurston Howell???), The Nutty Professor, Nashville, The Blues Brothers, Wedding Crashers, and a ton of others.

It's time for another TV list! Everybody loves lists, right? This one has AOL picking the best TV shows of the 1960s.

As usual, it's a list that will get the debate going. Shows that without a doubt deserve to be on the list: The Twilight Zone, The Dick Van Dyke Show, Star Trek, The Andy Griffith Show, I Spy, and Bewitched.

Shows that without a doubt don't belong on the list: The Flying Nun, Hogan's Heroes, and The Mod Squad. Sure, I enjoyed those shows when I was younger, but I really don't think they belong in the "best" category (I'll let you debate another show on the list, Batman - great or just "campy" great?)

So I was watching The Andy Griffith Show marathon that TV Land seems to air every other day. This isn't my complaint, as I would watch that show every day of the week (as long as they're the black and white episodes and not the color ones, but that's another rant). No, my complaint is about the commercial that ran during the marathon.

The promo isn't online so I'll have to describe it. The narrator talks about how times change (with a montage of how phones have evolved over the years), how tastes change (a montage of different foods that people have eaten over the decades), and how we've changed (a montage of different hairstyles you might have had since you were a kid). The point of all this is that things change, but ... change is good! And that's why it's good that TV Land has a bunch of reality shows instead of classic TV shows, because things change and that's where viewers are now in their lives.

The last episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show aired on June 1, 1966. It was an actual ending to the show too (with clips!), as Alan Brady decided to create and star in a TV show of the autobiography that Rob Petrie was writing since the start of the show. Alas, that episode isn't available online, so here's one of the best episodes of the show, and one of the best sitcom episodes of all-time, period (in my opinion).

1. I really enjoy Suze Orman's show (it's a major part of my Saturday night, which tells you a lot about my social life), especially the "Can I Afford It?" segment, where viewers call in to get her OK to buy something like a sports car or a Lear jet or a coffee maker. But I was wondering, what if someone called in and asked, "Suze, I don't have a job and I have student loans to pay off, but I'm thinking about buying 100,000 copies of your latest book, can I afford it?" What would she say then?

2. Two different TV shows in the past week, one a news program that had an analysis of the election and one a design show, used the phrase "do the math." I don't want to do the math. That's why I got into writing.

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.