Did you ever notice that when Larry Mondello isn't talking Beaver into doing something wrong he's always eating, whining or complaining?

In a few recent episodes, he complains about his appendix. Somehow, he comes from an unhappy family and uses eating as a defense mechanism. If he stayed on the show for all six seasons, would he have talked Beaver into doing drugs?

I don't think that even by the 6th season of LITB they would have mentioned drugs on TV. However, I sure agree that Larry's characer was the type who would have drawn Beaver into that type of thing.

It always seems funny that most of Beaver (and Wally's) friends were not exactly the "straight arrow" type! Gilbert, Richard, Eddie and Lumpy were all very different from the Cleaver boys!

It seems like Wally and Beaver were the normal ones out of their groups of friends. Yeah, it seems like Larry (or any of Beav's other friends) could convince him into doing things that are wrong.

Each one had their times. Larry in convincing Beaver into playing catch with Ward's autographed baseball, Whitey into convincing Beav to climb the soup bowl billboard, and Gilbert into making foolish faces in their school pictures. So Beaver always listened to his friends, who usually would bail out on him once he got into trouble.

Whitey always seemed the most "innocent" of the group, and he even got Beaver into trouble, as you point out.

And don't forget Richard breaking the window and saying he was Beaver! :D

Oh, I forgot about that one. Also, when Larry convinced Beaver to take that car Ward built with the boys out. Then he bailed out and left Beaver to take care of the mess. There was also the time when he convinced him to use Ward's tools, and they drilled a hole through the wall.

I had some memories of these things myself. Once my friend and I were playing catch and the baseball went into the neighbor's yard at his house. The neighbor was nasty and hated people in his yard. Well, he through the ball into the yard by mistake and said that his foot hurt. So he sent me wearing his jacket (so they would think it was him) into the yard to get the ball. Well, the neighbor saw me and told my friend's parents about it. My friend pretended it was him to keep me out of trouble.

I guess in my case I was lucky not to have a friend who bailed out like Beaver had.

Most of the time I get madder at Beaver than at Larry because Beaver is so gullible and will let Larry talk him into anything. You would think that the first couple times one of his friends got him in trouble Beaver would have learned from it but he was still being coerced into things by the last season.

Originally posted by Mijada
Most of the time I get madder at Beaver than at Larry because Beaver is so gullible and will let Larry talk him into anything. You would think that the first couple times one of his friends got him in trouble Beaver would have learned from it but he was still being coerced into things by the last season.

I think they used that plot many times because they ran out of ideas. But at certain points in the later years they used plots that Beav was too old for that would have worked much better in the earlier seasons.

Although Larry is one of my favorite characters in the show, he can be annoying sometimes. Like in "The Pipe," after he gets Beaver to smoke, he says something like "we shouldn't be doing this Beaver!"

Oh, my friend is just like that. Once he made me show him my attic which we weren't supposed to go into. Once we were up there, he was like "Michael, you shouldn't have asked me to come up here". I was like "You made me do this!" and he was like "You could have stopped me!". That reminded me of these episodes.

LOL! Larry is always doing stuff like that! I think "In the Soup" was the only time Whitey got him into trouble. And, like Mijada mentioned, it was almost always Beaver's own fault. I can't imagine how the kid could be so gullible! :D

Oh I was! Three years ago this war obsessed idiot in class pretended he signed me up for war and I believed him:eek:

I guess we all have stuff like that happen. But it is still funny that ALL of Beaver and Wally's friends were that way!

And that Beav continued to listen to his friends bad influencing up until he was 13, at the end of the show.

In spite of his misdeeds and bad manners, I've always felt sorry for Larry. His home seemed to be quite dysfunctional and maybe even a bit abusive. Larry didn't seem to have the touch of arrogance that Eddie, Lumpy, and Gilbert did that helped them justify bad choices. Larry often appeared unhappy with himself even while he was doing something wrong. Larry's unseen father and sister sounded like ogres and his onscreen mother didn't seem much better. It was nice to see her take up for Larry and encourage him in the episode "Larry's Club", but even that turned into a discussion of how everything Larry did made her nervous. In any case, Mrs. Mondello fell quite short of a Mom who "made things seem not so messed up" like June Cleaver. I think if Larry would have had any parental figures in his life who acted like they really cared about him, he wouldn't have done half of the bad things that he did.

BTW, refresh my memory about something. An adult Larry Mondello was shown briefly in the TV Movie "Still The Beaver." (I don't know if it was the original actor or if he appeared on any episodes of the TV Show.) He joined some kind of cult where he changed his name and was going to be given a wife. Does anyone remember exactly what he had joined?

Poor Larry.

Originally posted by duluthduke
LOL! Larry is always doing stuff like that! I think "In the Soup" was the only time Whitey got him into trouble. And, like Mijada mentioned, it was almost always Beaver's own fault. I can't imagine how the kid could be so gullible! :D


Whitey also got Beaver into trouble in the episode about Beaver's compass and how far his father walked. Whitey didn't act up too much, but when he did, he could be pretty obnoxious.

Wally was 17 before the end, and he was still letting himself be talked into malfeasant activities, such as using Ward's new car to push Lumpy's old heap with a low battery.