Line #39 YMMV/LeaveItToBeaver


1	* EnsembleDarkhorse: Wally, in later seasons. In fact, Tony Dow ended up becoming so popular that the writers started writing episodes in which Wally would get into the schemes and scrapes that Beaver would usually get into, with Beaver becoming more of an observational character.
2	* FridgeBrilliance: June Cleaver as SilkHidingSteel and more than just a one-note housewife stereotype, when one gets to thinking that she probably raised a young Wally by herself while Ward was in WWII in the Navy Seabees and probably used public transportation or walked around with a young child.
3	* SugarWiki/FunnyMoments: Many, but of particular note is this one after the boys' trap for Lumpy gets Mr. Rutherford instead:
4	-->'''Wally:''' "We didn't mean to hurt Mr. Rutherford."\
5	'''Beaver:''' "Yeah, we called 'meathead' and he came running out."
6	* SugarWiki/HeartwarmingMoments:
7	** Beaver (to Wally): "I'd rather do nothin' with you than somethin' with anyone else."
8	** And anytime Eddie does something nice.
9	** When Beaver and Wally surprise Ward with a new hunting jacket. He thought they had bought some expensive high-end baseball equipment at the Abernathy Potts Sporting Goods shop, but it turned out they used the money they saved to buy him a new duck hunting jacket. As Ward is wearing his new jacket, June tells him it must be hot inside the house with that jacket on, and he tells her he's not uncomfortable in the least. To put that in perspective, the money they paid to buy that hunting jacket for their dad would be somewhere over $400 in 2019 money. That is why Ward is so concerned and angry at first when he finds out Beaver and Wally are spending the money they earned instead of saving it, and then they even withdrew $10 more -- and that's why he is so moved when he finds out what they bought and who they bought it for.
10	* HilariousInHindsight:
11	** In the episode "Water, anyone?", everyone was aghast that Beaver was actually selling water to people! Mind you, it wasn't so much that he took advantage of inside knowledge that the water main would be shut off or that he was selling it out of a bucket on his wagon, but merely the fact that one person could be low enough to sell water to another person! How [[Creator/DennisMiller Evian spelled backward]] of them!
12	** After playing ne’er-do-well juvenile delinquent Eddie Haskell for years, Ken Osmond went on to a respected career as a police officer.
13	** As if Wally's hideous jelly-roll hairstyle in "Wally's Haircomb" weren't cringeworthy enough, the incessant music leitmotif played when Wally admires himself (a ridiculous jazzy raunch-sax rock snippet that only a clueless corporate executive could have thought was worthy) ices the cake even more strongly.
14	** In "Community Chest," Beaver asks Ward if everyone at his office wears a suit and tie every day. Ward confirms they do, and that it "wouldn't look right" to run a business wearing "sports shirts and sweaters." Which is exactly the kind of "business casual" office wear popularized by Silicon Valley tech start-ups in the 2000's.
15	* HoYay:
16	** Whenever Beaver would express his [[GirlsHaveCooties disgust for girls]], he'd confess that if he were ever to get married, it wouldn't be with a girl. Unless he meant "girl" as in a female child within his age range and thus not an adult woman, there's no way to interpret this line other than with Ho Yay subtext. Granted, this show was in TheFifties, when same-sex relationships were still [[ValuesResonance under public stigma]], and Beaver was just a naive prepubescent kid who [[GirlsHaveCooties believed in cooties]].
17	** In "Dance Contest", Wally has to prepare for his homecoming date by rehearsing the "Cha-Cha" dance in his bedroom, complete with an audio tutorial. When Beaver and Larry come into his room while Wally is in the bathroom, they test the record out and start dancing to the tune together, going hand-in-hand with each other.
18	* MemeticMutation: Not this show entirely, but it along with ''Series/TheFreshPrinceOfBelAir'' gave birth to the iconic line "DO I LOOK LIKE A WHITE GUY NAMED WARD!?" Spouted by Uncle Phil in reference to this show.
19	* NewerThanTheyThink: For a show that supposedly defined UsefulNotes/TheFifties, it sure came along awfully late in the game. In fact it ran longer in UsefulNotes/TheSixties (three-and-a-half years) than it did in the '50s (two years, three months). What it ''really'' defined was the childhoods of most Baby Boomers (the generation born 1946–63), which is remembered as "the '50s" for convenience because in the '60s they were busy doing ''important'' things like being hippies or getting drafted or protesting on campuses, not being cute little snot-nosed scamps saying "golly" or "willikers".
20	* SugarWiki/MomentOfAwesome: Near the end of [[TheFilmOfTheSeries the film]], Mrs. Cleaver finally tells Eddie Haskell to "cut the crap."
21	* OnceOriginalNowCommon: Some of the DarkerAndEdgier episodes of the series, depicting alcoholism, divorce, and Beaver's Hispanic friend, are quite tame by today's standards.
22	* RetroactiveRecognition:
23	** [[Series/PetticoatJunction Uncle Joe]] ran an alligator farm that Beaver and Wally visited in one of the first episodes.
24	** [[Series/TheAndyGriffithShow Floyd the Barber]] gave Wally his first shave.
25	** [[Series/HogansHeroes Major Hochstetter]] was a conniving milk salesman who used Wally as his stooge.
26	** Gene Reynolds directed three episodes. Reynolds is best known as co-creator and executive producer of ''Series/LouGrant''.
27	** Allan Manings wrote two episodes. Manings is best known as co-creator and producer of ''Series/{{One Day at a Time\|1975}}''.
28	** Clifford Goldsmith wrote an episode. Goldsmith is best known for creating ''Radio/TheAldrichFamily''.
29	** William Schallert played Mr. Bloomgarden in "Beaver's Short Pants".
30	** Veronica Cartwright played the recurring character Violet Rutherford as well as Peggy [=MacIntosh=] in "Don Juan Beaver".
31	** Barry Gordon played Chopper Cooper in "Beaver's House Guest".
32	** Majel Barrett played Gwen Rutherford in "Beaver and Violet".
33	** Ryan O'Neal played Tom Henderson in "Wally Goes Steady".
34	** Marta Kristen played Christine Staples in "Wally and Dudley".
35	** Tim Matheson played Michael Harmon in "Tell It to Ella" and "The Clothing Drive".
36	** Barbara Billingsley went on to play the Nanny in the original [[WesternAnimation/MuppetBabies1984 Muppet Babies]] series.
37	** Season 3's "Wally the Businessman" (in which Wally gets hired selling ice cream) marks the acting debut of future ''Series/ItsALiving'' star Ann Jillian[[note]]credited by her birth name of Anne Nauseda[[/note]] as one of the young girls buying ice cream from Wally.
38	* UnintentionalPeriodPiece:
39	** ''Leave It To Beaver'' is what pretty much everybody (who wasn't there) thinks middle-class suburban life was like in the 1950s. The book ''The Way We Never Were'' by Stephanie Coontz begins with a takedown of shows like this: "Contrary to popular opinion, ''Leave it to Beaver'' was not a documentary."
40	** In "Baby Picture," Beaver and Judy get into an argument after she claims her mother said her baby picture looks "just like Shirley Temple." Beaver counters that Shirley Temple isn't a baby, but "a grown-up lady on television." This would have been a reference to the star's eponymous anthology show "Shirley Temple's Storybook" (basically a precursor to ''Series/FaerieTaleTheatre''), which aired concurrently with ''Leave it to Beaver'' at the time. Nowadays, Shirley is almost exclusively remembered as a baby-faced child star of the 1930's - mostly due to the Shirley Temple VHS box set infomercials that aired throughout the late 1990's into the early 2000's - and few other than diehard fans of Temple are even aware that she HAD a television show in the 1950's.
41	* ValuesDissonance:
42	** The show mined a lot of humor from the fact that Ward and some of Beaver's friends had parents that disciplined them with physical abuse, with the kids worrying increasingly about "getting hit" by their parents [[CantGetAwayWithNuthin once they heard about the trouble they caused]]. Something that was a lot more common during that era.
43	--->'''Beaver:''' Larry gets a quarter for just being quiet when his dad gets home.\
44	'''Ward:''' Well, that's not the way my father kept me quiet.\
45	'''Beaver:''' Oh, yeah. You had a hittin' father, didn't you?
46	** Beaver's status as a [[FreeRangeChildren free-range child]] can come off as this to modern viewers. He is mostly left unsupervised, is allowed to wander town with friends or by himself, hangs out with adults his parents don't know, and they are often unaware of where he is except that he is "out." Keep in mind Beaver is '''eight''' at the start of the series.
47	** The plot of "Sweatshirt Monsters" in Season 5 revolves around Beaver and his friends buying sweatshirts with pictures of monsters on them. All of the kids' parents dislike the shirts, forbid the kids from wearing the shirts to school, and Beaver in fact gets sent home from school for wearing his. But from a modern perspective, the monster images are ridiculously inoffensive and would very likely be allowed in a 21st-century public school, and it makes all the adults look like humorless killjoys.
48	** In "My Brothers Girl" it was revealed that Mary-Ellen was using Beaver's crush on her to get to Wally so she could ask him to a dance. When Beaver finds out, his feelings are obviously hurt. Ward tries to comfort him, but when June finds out, instead of being angry with her, she says she's proud of Mary-Ellen for what she did and says that's a scheme many girls her age use. Never mind the fact that her youngest son was used and had his heart broken by said girl! Plus Mary-Ellen was never forced to apologize to Beaver for hurting him, but basically got away with everything AND got her date with Wally!
49	** In "Beaver's House Guest," Beaver's camp friend stays over. When Ward and June find out his parents are divorced, not only is that a topic they find too mature to speak about in Wally's presence (who, at the time, is a sophomore in high school), but they feel that this friend is a bad influence simply for ''mentioning'' that his parents are divorced and talking to Beaver about his family. Interestingly, there is also a lot of ValuesResonance in that episode, since it comes out that the parents are using their son to get back at each other and his mother is using him for emotional support when she's had a fight with her ex-husband.
50	** In "Beaver, the Sheepdog," a female classmate and her GirlPosse insult Beaver by comparing his unruly hair to that of a sheepdog. This causes Beaver to become self-conscious, especially when the teasing carries on for days and his own friends start in on the jokes. Despite Ward giving him some ValuesResonance advice about the other kids just wanting a reaction and they'd stop if he wouldn't let them know it bothers him, Beaver instead goes with Eddie Haskell's advice--which is to insult the girls back. He tries out a few, and makes the ringleader of the GirlPosse cry. This is treated as the very worst thing he could have done. All his friends throw him under the bus when a teacher walks comes running to see what the commotion is, and even though Beaver explains it was in response to ''her'' teasing ''him,'' he's made to write an apology letter while nothing at all is said about her behavior. In the 21st century, the DoubleStandard comes off as deeply unfair, particularly since it's heavily implied that Beaver is being punished specifically ''because'' he insulted a girl, and not because his response was inappropriate overall.
51	* ValuesResonance:
52	** The episode "Beaver's I.Q." contains this conversation:
53	-->'''Beaver:''' Girls've got it lucky... They don't have to be smart. They don't have to get jobs or anything...\
54	'''June:''' Well, Beaver, today girls can be doctors and lawyers too, you know. They're just as ambitious as boys are.
55	** While the show was notoriously late to giving speaking roles to people of color in any of its episodes - and even when they eventually did it being a maid played by Kim Hamilton (for the episode "The Parking Attendants") - the use of the character in the episode would have been seen as progressive for the time. Eddie and Wally casually converse with the maid in the kitchen about parking cars at Mr. Langley's party, sounding very much like equals. Wally is shown being polite and respectful to her, while Eddie even makes an attempt to impress her with his usual arrogant bravado (claiming to have parked cars for the governor and an Indian diplomat), sounding almost flirtatious in doing so. Near the conclusion of the episode, when Wally tells Eddie off for screwing up the parking job and for being a "big, dumb, stupid loudmouth," the two exit the frame but the shot lingers for a just a few seconds longer on the maid - still in the kitchen, looking directly at the camera, and seemingly amused by everything she's just overheard. It may not say much for the show overall, but it at least was the start of attempt and was a sign that things were starting to change in terms of representation on television.

Context YMMV / LeaveItToBeaver