Tather than pile on sitcom jokes, Leave It to Beaver tries to capture directly and honestly that strange childhood perspective that’s just starting to make sense of the world, even though the sense it makes isn’t the same as any anyone else’s. Its pace is slow and charming and its simplicity, while it might be seen by some as a negative, comes from its clear understanding of exactly what it is.
Looked at directly, rather than through the veil of modern TV’s placebo edginess and normalcy-anxiety, Leave It to Beaver is neither overly ideologically stilted (certainly no more than other shows of the time) nor especially generic as a sitcom. There’s plenty to criticise and change about lingering traces of conservative ideology, but little, if anything, is gained by turning key elements of the past into unexamined and disproportionate scapegoats, especially when doing so simply helps us leave our own modern ideological limitations unexamined.
Obviously, life isn’t like Leave It to Beaver most of the world will never experience anything like the life depicted in that show, but it’s probably closer to real life for plenty of modern media consumers than they’d like to admit. God forbid a modern hipster should let loose a chuckle at one of Wally and Beaver’s brotherly mishaps and thus irrefutably acknowledge dull suburban roots or ambitions! In this light, perhaps Leave It to Beaver‘s problem in modern society is not that it no longer fits modern social concerns, but rather that it does so too openly. They are little more than a delivery of faux cultural transgression for supermarkets and office watercoolers.
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What else could explain such an rigid aversion to a sweet and charming show like Leave It to Beaver, while conservative dreck like Desperate Housewives and Californication fills up TV screens? Such shows rely on hastily-constructed fabricated ‘edginess’ to blind us to their mundane run-of-the-mill social cores. In modern ‘liberal’ society, however, we currently see the reverse: the public persona is defined by images of transgression, self-expression, personal liberation and ‘enjoyment’, while back in private spaces, the regular conservative social structures remain secretly unchallenged. Where those in oppressive totalitarian regimes must obey the dictates of political conformity in public spaces, their private spaces may be opened up to functions of secret change, rebellion and transgression.
#Leave it to beaver episodes series#
The pilot episode is included on the season-one DVD. Shout! Factory released Season 3 on June 15, 2018, and the complete series set was released on June 29, 2018.Whenever someone mentions Leave It to Beaver in order to summon images of stilted ’50s ideology and conservative sitcom hokeyness, I’m always reminded of Slavoj Zizek’s notion of public behaviour in ‘liberal’ Western societies.
Universal Studios Home Entertainment has released seasons one and two of the series on DVD Region 1.
It featured Casey Adams as Ward Cleaver, and Paul Sullivan as Wally Cleaver. TV Land re-aired it on October 6, 2013, as part of their twenty-four-hour marathon to commemorate the show's 50th anniversary. The pilot, titled "It's a Small World", aired on April 23, 2005. The show was televised from Octoto June 20, 2011. The series comprises 234, full-screen, black-and-white episodes, excluding the pilot. The show was created by Amos 'n' Andy writers Joe Connelly and Bob Mosher. Leave It to Beaver is an American television situation comedy about an inquisitive and often naïve boy named Theodore "The Beaver" Cleaver (portrayed by Jerry Mathers) and his adventures at home, in school, and around his suburban neighborhood.