DVD Review: Leave it to Beaver: The Complete Series

This is because I have been married to a Leave It to Beaver fanatic. He has, since the early 1980s, attempted to capture each episode via the ancient medium known as videotape. This has resulted in the accumulation of crates of disintegrating VHS tapes with episodes in no particular order and peppered with plenty of (now) hilarious post-disco era commercials. The arrival of clean, tidy, commercial-free disks that take a minimum amount of cabinet space is cause for celebration.

A lag time of nearly five years has elapsed since the release of the first season of this classic TV show and the complete boxed set. Season three was just released in June. The only way to get the entire six seasons (at this time - season four is out, but five and six, who knows when?) is to purchase the box set.

Leave It to Beaver was a shared family event in our household. (Call it Forced Family Fun.) Although our kids likely thought the premise was lame, we hoped they would glean a few life lessons from the show.

Starring Barbara Billingsley at June, Hugh Beaumont as Ward, Tony Dow as Wally, and Jerry Mathers as the Beaver, Leave It to Beaver follows the life of Beaver Cleaver from second through eighth grade. The original series aired from 1957 through 1963, producing an astounding 234 episodes plus pilot. Add to it the fact that each show is nearly 25 minutes long (today's sitcoms are right around 20 minutes) and nearly each one is a timeless classic.

Decidedly unsophisticated in nature, our boy Beaver is growing up in middle class, baby boom America. We don't know the exact setting, but there are references to the midsection of the country mixed in with an occasional palm tree in the background and discussions of surfboards and the beach. Although raised in this bucolic setting, Beaver consistently manages to get himself into some sort of trouble - getting his head caught in an iron fence, losing his haircut money and cutting his own hair (with disastrous results), looking for a "spanking machine" in the principal's office, smoking coffee then old cigarette butts in a Meerschaum pipe - all minor blips in today's world but a big deal to a kid like Beaver.

Beaver tends to be a follower, with a cast of friends who make sure he gets into trouble, like Larry Mondello (Rusty Stevens) and Gilbert Bates (Steven Talbot). His brother Wally is a hunky heartthrob of a boy and a chick magnet, with Eddie Haskell (played with delicious mischievousness by Ken Osmond) to lead him away from the straight and narrow.

Parents Ward and June Cleaver are strict without being stern and there is always a moral at the end of each episode. What is most striking about the 'family' is how natural they appear. Barbara Billingsley and Hugh Beaumont are sometimes playful, sometimes sassy, trading barbs and inside jokes and could pass as a Real Life married couple. While they don't look like either each other or either parent, Tony Dow and Jerry Mathers act like real brothers, occasionally fighting and making up. Beaver idolizing his older brother and Wally protecting his younger brother is believable as well.

As with most TV series, the best episodes are the first three seasons, when Beaver is most particularly naïve. He's also the cutest during this time. Seasons four and five aren't perfect but they're not bad. By season six, when the storylines are stretched to the limit and Beaver is ready for high school, he's no longer cute or believably 14 years old. Wally looks to be in his mid-20s, and we see June morph from the attractive and snappy young mom in high heels and pearls into something more matronly. By contrast, Ward ages nicely through the duration, picking up only a little temple gray hair.

The boxed set comes with a DVD of interviews and outtakes with cast members.

Okay, so it may be simple and a wildly inaccurate depiction of life in the late '50s/early '60s. But for a sitcom with the perfect mix of humor and tenderness, you can't beat Leave It to Beaver.