The year 2016 continues to deal devastating blows. Actor Ron Glass has passed away at the age of 71. He had been battling various illnesses, and ultimately succumbed to respiratory failure.

Glass was someone who meant something to a lot of different people. To many of us geeks, he was Shepherd Derrial Book on Joss Whedon’s cult favorite space western, Firefly, and the movie that followed, Serenity, a soft-spoken older man with a mysterious past and seemingly infinite wisdom and guidance to offer. For those who are a little bit older, Glass was Detective Ron Harris on 164 episodes of Barney Miller, which ran from 1976 to 1982. His work there was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award in 1982, going up against fellow Barney Miller star Steve Landesberg, two stars on M*A*S*H, and Taxi stars Danny DeVito and Christopher Lloyd, with Lloyd taking home the award.

Abe Vigoda, best known to audiences as the backstabbing Tessio in The Godfather and as Fish, the world weary yet witty and haggard cop on television’s Barney Miller, has died at the age of 94. Vigoda died at his daughter’s house in Woodland Hills, California in his sleep.

Because of such two high profile roles in his career, it seemed as if Vigoda had done a lot more than he actually did, but it was on the strength of those two aforementioned roles and also a memorable stint in the 1980s cult classic Joe Versus the Volcano, that made Abe Vigoda a household name. He also had obvious elements that helped create his legend, his colorful name for one and then his rubber faced, tall and limber physicality, with a voice straight out of Italy’s old country mixed in with that New York kind of flavor.