Around the dial

Oh, why don't we start this week at The Horn Section, as Hal returns to the world of Love That Bob and the episode "The Double Date," in which Bob finds himself stuck having to take nephew Chuck (the late Dwayne Hickman) out for his 18th birthday the same night Bob has a date with the delectable Boom Boom Laverne.

At Cult TV Blog, it's "Detectives on the Edge of a Nervous Breakdown," a very, very funny parody of four of the most popular British TV detectives of the 1970s, as seen by the stars of the London comedy club "The Comic Strip." 

Cary O'Dell has a wonderful article at TV Party (courtesy of the Broadcasting Archives) on a Christmas gift boxed-set of the complete Lucy Show, which demonstrates that Lucille Ball's career after I Love Lucy was far from, as one critic put it, coasting on the “fumes” of her past glories.

The tributes to Betty White continue to pour in, and this week it's The Last Drive In, where Joey gives us a clip-filled retrospective of Betty's career. And it was quite a career, wasn't it? And that's not all—

Meanwhile, over at A Shroud of Thoughts, Terence looks at her groundbreaking first sitcom Life with Elizabeth, of which Betty was a co-producer, one of the first women to fill such a role. (Terence also has a great piece on the 50th anniversary of Sanford and Son that you should check out.

At RealWeegieMidget, it's the start of a new blogathon: the Odd or Even Blogathon. Rather than have me try to explain it, why don't I just send you over to Gill's site so you can see for yourself. And Gill, don't hold it against me that I haven't been in the last few. I'll be back again, I promise! 

Finally, Terry Teachout—author, drama critic at The Wall Street Journal, opera librettist, essayist and playwright—died last week at the far-too-young age of 65. You might recognize the name; I mentioned him many times here, and a couple of times in The Electronic Mirror. I never met him, but we corresponded several times through Twitter. He had some very kind things to say about my writing—both the blog and the book, which he had read and enjoyed. He wasn't singling me out for praise; Terry was a generous man, always quick to let people know when they'd said or written something that gave him pleasure, a lesson we could all learn. Whenever I asked him a question, he was quick to try and find an answer, even if it meant tweeting his friends in search of it. His books, like his writing, were elegant and straightforward, a pleasure to read. It's always seemed to me that social media has played fast and loose with the term "friend," but if it's possible to have as a friend someone you haven't met, then he was a friend, and I will miss him. TV