BW Manilowe

It's in the obit I linked to, that he originated the role of Conrad Birdie in Bye, Bye Birdie. I think it also said he received a Tony Award nomination for the role. I think the movie actor's name is also in the obit. And Dick Gautier was a very talented guy. I remember him from Get Smart through the 1970's & beyond.

If you're a Gloria Estefan fan, she sings the theme song to the ODAAT reboot. And it's available on iTunes (& probably other legal music download sites). But if you're not a fan, don't let that keep you from watching the reboot; I've read a lot of good things about it.

Dick Gautier, best known for playing Hymie the Robot in Get Smart, dead at age 85. http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/dick-gautier-dead-get-smart-actor-was-85-964369

As you said, in the case of everybody whose character wasn't there & probably should've been, the absences were likely due to unavailability. Rumer Willis played Max's now wife, Sabrina; since she won Dancing with the Stars awhile back, she's been in more demand for various projects. Good for her, bad for H50. And yes, of course, Sabrina's going to Madagascar with Max--they just got married. Ian Anthony Dale (Adam) recently got married in real life; it may have been around the same time the ep was filmed, but I can't remember. Julie Benz (Abby) & Michelle Hurd (Renee Grover) have roles in other shows (Training Day & Blindspot, respectively) that were also filming at the same time &, obviously, schedules just couldn't be worked out (like when they couldn't work out Scott Caan's schedule when the milestone do 150 was filming so he could be in it & meet his other obligation at that time). I know it doesn't mean as much but, for what it's worth, they did manage to get the character of Sgt. Duke Lukela's wife, Nalani, into the goodbye party scene (& she's only been in 1 other scene--when Chin runs into the Lukelas, while wearing only a very small towel, in a hotel lobby after locking himself out of his & Abby's room--& is played by Dennis Chun's real life partner, Laura Mellow). But she lives in Hawaii, so...

Showrunner Peter Lenkov talks to Entertainment Weekly about the departure of Masi Oka's character, Medical Examiner Max Bergman (whose last ep, at least as a regular, airs this week/tomorrow night). Contains some slight spoilers regarding who the new Medical Examiner will be. http://ew.com/tv/2017/01/12/hawaii-five-0-masi-oka/

S5 premieres Tuesday, March 7th at 10PM Eastern Time. http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/lists/tv-premiere-dates-2017-guide-924143/item/tv-premiere-dates-2017-january-924100?utm_source=twitter&utm_source=t.co&utm_medium=referral

You mean Leo's funeral? You said wedding. And yeah, actor availability (& budget issues, as well) probably played a part on some actors/characters not being there for events you'd expect them to. Like Dulé Hill & Elisabeth Moss (Charlie & Zoey) were filming the first seasons of their subsequent shows (Psych & Mad Men) at the same time as S7 of TWW.

They've been running previous seasons in weekend marathons, yeah. So it was a repeat from last season.

Oh but they haven't gotten rid of Abby. The actress who plays her has a role (I think recurring, but it's still another gig) in another CBS show that premieres early next month. Peter Lenkov has said Abby will be around as Julie Benz (the actress)'s schedule allows.

There was also a more recent sequel, My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2. I think Nia was an Oscar nominee for writing the original, & it (& probably the sequel) was produced by Tom Hanks' wife, actress (among other titles) Rita Wilson.

Lisa's a 4-time Olympic Gold Medalist in Women's Basketball (Atlanta, Sydney, Athens & Beijing games) & she played for the WNBA's Los Angeles Sparks from 1997-2009, where she played on 2 championship teams & was also a 2-time MVP & an 8-time All-Star, among other awards. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisa_Leslie

Brooke used to co-host Dancing with the Stars with Tom Bergeron. I think she was also a contestant on it before co-hosting it.

I think the point of having Adam in the ep was that they could because Ian Anthony Dale was available (among other reasons, the show he was also in, on TNT, has already finished filming & airing their most recent season of eps & they got cancelled after that, so this was their last season), this was 1 of the S7 eps Scott Caan was apparently contractually allowed to opt out of (He gets 5 per season & that was, like, #3 or #4 for this season... I think. Next week is Ep 13 of 25 for the season, so Scott should be around most of the rest of the season.), & they wanted to remind the audience his character, Adam, & Kono were still married. It sounded as if Abby was watching Sara. I heard Chin tell Steve, or maybe most of the team, at 1 point that Sara was upset or disappointed that Chin had to go into work, after they just got back from Mexico, because of the car dealer case, but that Abby had offered to take Sara to the beach while Chin was working. So Sara apparently wasn't disappointed/upset anymore & she was OK with going to the beach with Abby instead of being home with Chin. As far as I heard, Danny was supposed to be out of town with his girlfriend since about S4 or S5, Melissa (who was introduced as using a pseudonym, Amber, because she was hiding from an ex-boyfriend or ex-husband who had abused her--& the ex then showed up in, an ep in like, S5 [or maybe S4], because he found out where Melissa was & he wanted her back, & she & Danny were off on another romantic weekend on the island at the time & Danny was stabbed & seriously wounded by Melissa's ex when he found them & tried to take her back).

Abby is the female cop from San Francisco they introduced towards the end of last season (S6). She was supposed to be observing how Five-0 operated/working with them because the SFPD had started/was going to start a similar task force & Abby was going to either run it or be involved with it in some other way. Only that turned out to be a cover for what she really was doing: Ingo Rademacher's recently recurring character, the brother of the HPD Internal Affairs guy who had it in for Chin & was killed by Chin's brother-in-law Gabriel, was using Abby to try to get something on Five-0 so they'd have to shut down or end up in jail (presumably because his brother who was on HPD died while working a case involving the team members). But that got complicated after Chin & Abby fell in love with each other. And Abby's now working with HPD instead of Five-0, & she & Chin are supposedly living with each other. But we haven't seen Abby, except I think briefly in the S7 premiere ep, because Julie Benz, the actress who plays Abby, also has what's supposed to be a recurring role in CBS' new show Training Day (I'm pretty sure based on the Denzel Washington movie for which he won his 2nd Oscar), which is supposed to start airing in early February &, as such, has been filming recently.

They haven't announced a replacement yet, but I'm assuming there'll be 1 since Medical Examiners are kind of/pretty important to cops. I'm betting it'll be the Dr. Noelani Cunha character--the female Medical Examiner the team worked with earlier in the season, when Max was on his Doctors Without Borders sabbatical. She was also in 1 of the last couple of eps before the Christmas/New Year's break, the ep where the boy/young man kept remembering a teenage girl getting killed & he had PTSD because of it (& it ended up his mom hit the girl with her car, & buried her while the kid was in the car). Dr. Cunha was the character who confirmed for Max & the team the now exhumed remains were of the girl involved in that boy/young man's situation. And I kind of thought that scene was maybe supposed to be a "passing of the torch" between Max & his successor, though not necessarily including Five-0 since the team had already worked with her while Max was on his Doctors Without Borders sabbatical at the beginning of the season.

And WE TV is airing a marathon of all of the Will & Grace episodes including Debbie Reynolds' character, Bobbi Adler (Grace's mother), from 11AM-5PM Eastern Time (10AM-4PM Central) TOMORROW (Saturday, January 7th).

Country music acts Big & Rich & Cowboy Troy are slated to perform at Trump's Pre-inaugural gala on January 19th. The "Rich" part of Big & Rich is country singer John Rich, who won The Celebrity Apprentice in 2011. http://people.com/music/big-rich-cowboy-troy-to-perform-at-trumps-pre-inaugural-gala/?xid=socialflow_twitter_peoplemag

"You're terminated." Then he said something about heading for/going to the chopper to (I think) the first elimination, & he said something different after "You're terminated." the other time.

It appears 1 of the few Republicans I've actually met & like, former US Senator Dan Coats, R-IN, (who was also my Congressman when my hometown was in the Indiana 4th Congressional District--we got redistricted to the Indiana 3rd in 2003--& who was also US Ambassador to Germany in the Bush 43 administration) is about to become Trump's Director of National Intelligence (or is it National Director of Intelligence--that title confuses me). Or so says our local NBC station. Finally, somebody who doesn't freak me out, or have the potential to. http://www.fortwaynesnbc.com/article.html#!/135889/6665ce411d8f423406e127da749da401

Maks & Peta are parents. Son Shai Aleksander Chmerkovskiy was born this morning in NYC, according to E! Online. http://m.eonline.com/news/812383/maksim-chmerkovskiy-and-peta-murgatroyd-welcome-a-baby-boy

President Bush 43 (George W) & Laura Bush will be attending Trump's inauguration. https://mobile.twitter.com/HallieJackson/status/816347478056456192?p=v

I did a little research regarding the part of your post I bolded above (& now I'm gonna have to go back & research part of it again, because I forgot that part when researching before). Lynn Swann was host of TTT from 1990-91. He wasn't the first African American host of a game show, however. That honor (apparently) went to a singer named Adam Wade, who hosted a game show on CBS (which I actually remember watching as a kid) called Musical Chairs which ran for 95 episodes in 1975, against such fare as the daytime drama Somerset. I researched because I originally thought Burton Richardson had been the first African American game show host (& on this show). https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musical_Chairs_(1975_TV_series) Now I wanna go back & check if TTT actually was his first game show announcing gig or not. I'm pretty sure his announcing résumé was in the stuff I read about him, but I wasn't paying attention to that; more to the issue of whether or not Lynn Swann was or wasn't the first African American game show host. I do know Burton Richardson also announced for both the original & reboot versions of The Arsenio Hall Show, besides all the game shows he's done, though. OK... I went back & researched again. Burton's first announcing gig... period... is listed on his IMDb page as being with the original The Arsenio Hall Show, which premiered in 1989 & ran through 1994. The first game show he announced for was TTT; I think IMDb says he did that in 1990 (while he was also doing The Arsenio Hall Show; it was probably easy since most game shows only tape on weekends & his other gig was during the week). http://m.imdb.com/name/nm0724457/filmotype/self?ref_=m_nmfm_2

Robert Lighthizer has been picked as Trump's US Trade Representative. http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/robert-lighthizer-picked-trump-s-u-s-trade-representative-source-n702536

In case anyone's interested, over this holiday weekend the White House posted to their YouTube channel/page/whatever it is a video (apparently a complete video) of the recent "Celebration of the Obamas" music special that aired on BET. It's actually called Love and Happiness: An Obama Celebration. The running time--YouTube says it's 1:21:33 (1 hour, 21 minutes, 33 seconds)--may dissuade some/many, but I'm posting the link for anyone who wants to see it (maybe you missed it/forgot it was on) or see it again. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=CuzLdMPbKl8