Say it isn't so. Two of my favorite panel members on reality shows are getting ready to hang up their dancing shoes: Blake Shelton ("The Voice") and Marc Cuban ("Shark Tank") are ready to say goodbye. Shelton has announced this is his last season. When he and Adam Levine were judges, they were snide and funny with each other. When Levine left, I thought, how is this going to work? No need to worry. It turned out fine for contestants and viewers and great for Shelton. He met his now-wife Gwen Stefani when she became a judge. Shelton has an easy charm. As a coach, he cared and gave good advice. He was on the show the longest and had the most wins. He is country-western, but he coached in other genres and got it. Sometimes, he would play the hay seed, which he is not. He pretended he did not know popular songs and acted as if he never heard of a state where a contestant was from. He always had a solo cup in his hand, sometimes filled with liquor and other times water. He did not allow any substance to get in the way of judging. He would act angry when he lost a contestant and laugh like a jackal when he won.

Mark Cuban is my "Shark Tank" hero. He can be honest but isn't mean, like Kevin O'Leary often is. The only time he will be curt is if he feels a product is like snake oil. When that happened, they would not get a Cuban cigar; they would get a lecture on how wrong the product was. If he decided to work with them, they got his full attention. He is a billionaire but he recalls selling trash bags when he was a kid to buy basketball shoes. Now, he owns a basketball team. He said that with his daughter headed to college, he wants to spend more time with her. More important than the products he buys is his latest project: He has started a drug company that slashed prescription prices. Boy, does America need that.

Patrick Duffy is headed back to "The Bold and the Beautiful" to play Steven Logan, father of the Logan girls. When Duffy's real-life wife died in 2017, he felt romance was over. He was wrong. He and Linda Purl from "Happy Days" are a couple. COVID brought them together. They were on a group chat during the early stages of COVID and clicked. They bonded over their love for cooking. Then, the conversation shifted from talking about sourdough bread to more personal things. Duffy, feeling smitten, wanted to see what their true feelings were. He drove cross-country to be with her and they have been together since. Duffy is a sweetheart. Several years ago, his parents were murdered when their bar was robbed. Duffy, a Buddhist, says that his faith got him through it. He has said he will always miss his parents, but Buddhism allowed him to handle it.

To find out more about Lynda Hirsch and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.