Speaking Of Spanking...
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ShareSpeaking of spanking, it’s also a little uncomfortable hearing wonderful louse Eddie Haskell surprised (in ‘The Broken Window’) that Ward didn’t hit Wally and Beaver for breaking the window. His father, he says, would give it to him ‘right across the puss’. He seems more confused that anything by Ward’s lenience, which adds a slight depth to his (hilarious) fawning falseness towards authority figures. (June wreaks a little petty vengeance of her own on Eddie in ‘The Perfect Father’, giving him mayonnaise that she knows he’s allergic to.)
By the middle of season one, Ward and June have been established as somewhat haughty and mildly judgmental towards their neighbours—something that rarely gets mentioned as it’s portrayed (part of the show’s strength) rather than explained (as is the dim-witted ‘tell-don’t-show’ fashion now). ‘The Broken Window’ gives some good examples of this, as well as a mention of d-d-divorce when a salesman presents a marriage breakup as providing a good opportunity to buy a house. It also lets us see a bit of an argument between Ward and June brewing over the dinner table; Wally complains when it stops that ‘it was just getting good’. (The episode also provides a good chance in some driving scenes to see June’s ‘hollow’ neck that the producer’s felt the need to cover—leading to the the nigh-omnipresent pearls she wore).
In ‘Lumpy Rutherford’, Ward’s fathering techniques seem mostly about reliving his own childhood, chuckling self-indulgently at his own childhood recollections of dealing with a bully while the kids obediently listen. When it’s all done, Ward’s story of luring a bully into an alley lined with barrel hoops (both he and the kids revelling in the talk of bloody noses and injuries) has essentially instructed his kids to commit assault, which they then do, lining a driveway with barrel hoops and getting bully Lumpy Rutherford’s father (played by Richard Deacon, Mel Cooley of The Dick Van Dyke Show fame) all banged up and police-bound.
Aside from Ward’s self-indulgent fathering, we also get to see his smug pleasure when he hears that Mr Rutherford’s had a fall (‘he’s the kind of friend you enjoy seeing fall down once in a while’), general indifference to his friends (he clearly finds Rutherford dull), suburban facade (the social interaction that’s more show than real) and self-righteous posturing (giving sage advice after clearly not giving much of a damn about what he’s listening to).
There’s also nice hints of awareness of changing methods of parenting; after June reprimands Ward for telling violent stories and ‘giving them ideas’, Ward replies that ‘kids today don’t think that way. With modern psychology all their aggressions have been siphoned off into other things ... like finger-painting’. Similarly, in ‘Cleaning Up Beaver’ June wonders when Beaver will outgrow being ‘sloppy’. Ward replies, ‘Oh June, that’s not the modern approach. You can’t wait for kids to outgrow things ... you have to send them to orthodontists, psychologists, they’ve even got experts to tell children how to play. No self-respecting parent would dream of relying on nature’. (These sly comments always remind me of an obnoxious brat on an episode of the somewhat more ‘hip’ 77 Sunset Strip, ‘The Lady has the Answers’ from 1961: ‘You can’t spank me ... Who spanks kids these days? Wanna stifle my initiative? Wanna build up my aggression?’)
As for the kids’ perspective, it’s episodes like ‘The Party Invitation’ that really allow the show to create its own sense of authentic childhood concerns without stretching too far for either drama or comedy. Here Beaver is worried that a girl likes him and when he’s invited to her party he’s upset that he’ll be the only boy there (‘she looks awful - like a girl’ is how he describes the young lady). Silly as this seems, the show doesn’t reduce his problem to some idiotic concept or smug ‘he’ll get over that’ grinning. It recognises that, for a kid, this is a big deal and a stage of life real enough to be treated with care.
Of course, this creates some problems when Beaver tries to get out of it (Wally does a great impression of Ward over the phone) and the scene of Ward more or less forcing Beaver to go to the party evokes parental control and childhood powerlessness nicely, without going needlessly into some big confrontation or show of unfairness. And, nicely, as soon as Ward and June find out why Beaver didn’t want to go, the show doesn’t try for cheap laughs out of some generation gap: they immediately understand that it’s pretty tough for Beaver to be at an all girls party and feel pretty bad about the whole thing.
It’s this sense of seriousness from the perspective of a child that makes the show so strong. It’s a warm show that isn’t afraid to take seriously just how much a boy doesn’t want to kiss a bunch of girls, without being too knowingly clever about how that may change in a few years.
For infamous stereotypes, they’re all really fairly rich as characters. I always get a kick out of any reference to Ward’s childhood, which come out in brief and casual mentions, and Ward often views his children through his own experiences. There’s something evocative, humanising, and even a little sad, in Ward’s implied childhood: not the circumstances themselves (Ward had a ‘real mean father’, June says in ‘The Broken Window’), but simply that this generic ‘50s family-man ever had a childhood. Somehow it humanises the pursuit of the comfortable security of suburban life and consumerism that we’ve all discovered is essentially false and now so easily regard with public suspicion.
If Ward’s childhood seems another world entirely, its image is summoned briefly in a charming finalé to ‘Beaver’s Short Pants’. While June’s away, Aunt Martha stops by to look after the household and decides that Beaver would look just spiffy heading off to school in an old-fashioned short-pants suit. Just before the final commercial break, Beaver’s heading off to school for more teasing about his outfit when he’s covertly called over to the garage by Ward, who’s snuck outside with Beaver’s regular clothes. Helping Beaver change, Ward pops Beaver’s old-fashioned cap for convenience on his own head, giving him the air of a childhood conspirator, a boy of the past rather than the slightly stuffy father we’re used to. Beaver notes, a little surprised, that he’s ‘almost like one of the fellas’, something that seems to please Ward immensely.
Sharing this odd moment together, the cap still suggesting the boy Ward once was, Beaver cements their camaraderie with an appropriate show of ‘50s-era father-son affection: he extends his hand for a handshake.It’s a slightly sad moment that seems to mark out clearly the gap that prevents the two ever truly bonding as comrades, the memory of a young boy that still lurks inside Ward, and the confines and changing nature of father-son affection. I know more than a few men of the Leave It To Beaver generation who still remember the pain of the moment when freely expressed physical affection with their father was replaced, often by formal announcement, with a handshake.
In this light, it’s an authentically warm moment when Beaver then pulls Ward closer and kisses him on the cheek before leaving for school, and rare emotion crosses Ward’s face as he seems to realise that they’ve briefly shared a moment outside of their normal roles. Ward grabs his generic briefcase and generic umbrella and heads of to his unspecified generic job, the old-fashioned cap of his childhood still resting for a moment on his head.
