The School Picture

[Scrabjan1]

When they take the photo Miss Landers is completely blocking the boy on the left. Also if only Mr. Baxter took another photo like they all do.

[stevea]

Also, this plot is EXACTLY the same as Sweatshirt Monsters. If this had been a modern show, Beaver could have made a video of Ward's lecture with his smartphone and saved it for Sweatshirt Monsters. I wonder if it's the same writer (just saw that Connelly and Mosher wrote this one, so probably yes.)

[Scrabjan1]

Then in a few episodes later he's best friends with Gilbert, the rat.

Just like School Picture and Sweatshirt Monsters, two more episodes are very similar. In Beaver's Freckles he's teased about having freckles and comes down to dinner with makeup and powder on his face. Ward, June and Wally are supposed to ignore his face but Wally can't and Beaver runs upstairs. In Beaver, the Sheepdog, Beaver is teased about his hair and comes down to dinner with his hair all greased up and again they try to ignore this look. Wally laughs out loud at him. Both episodes are equally ludicrous the way they act at the table.

[stevea]

The idea for Beaver's Freckles and Beaver, the Sheepdog probably came from another similar one--the one where Wally had the pug-nose device (because Gloria Cusak, later Julie Foster, teased him about his pug nose). Of course, Wally would never go so far as to use sandpaper on himself, or use Glama-Sheen.

[tdr]

Originally Posted by Scrabjan1

Beaver's Freckles...Beaver, the Sheepdog.

These episode are good at considering the sensitivities of kids at that awkward age, and how it can be the new fad to attack another kid 'where it hurts.' I have a suspicion this might be worse today in some settings, because kids today don't call each other the epithets by race or ethnicity as they--we-- still did 40-50 years ago. So they probably go for other things that make them different. I think this has a parallel with older kids and young adults in "trash talking" and such things, and how there's so much name calling to someone who just disagrees. Consider the viciousness of recent political races, toasting the death of a Supreme Court Justice, and all that, and then the window smashing and assaulting inauguration ball attendees with mace and beer just for doing what they were doing. So it appears if no manners or restraint are taught and enforced at a young age, that's a spiraling situation that can get dangerous.

And then there's the age-old lesson, "Don't dish it out if you can't take it." In "Beaver's Freckles," Lumpy started calling (the almost freckle-less) Beaver 'Freckles' as payback for Beaver's refusal to stop calling him Lumpy. And in "Beaver the Sheep Dog," both Beaver and Shirley needed that lesson emphasized. But the tag scene, in which Beaver reads his apology letter for Wally, just results in the conclusion "Girls sure are sensitive" by Beaver, after Wally tells about Mary Ellen starting to cry because of the way he was looking at her. Wally doesn't do what might be expected and remind Beaver of his own sensitivity about his hair. Also, there's no indication that the teacher that was all over Beaver about 'picking on a girl' even was informed that that girl had been calling Beaver a sheep dog, which led him to take bad advice and coin some insults. So if she did continue to plague Beaver, he was probably too afraid to retaliate.

[stevea]

Probably the ultimate episode about the awkward age is "Nobody Loves Me". Well written...well acted...the Beaver is the perfect age for it. Kids that age are very sensitive...and CAN be awkward...and are considered by many too old to cry, but really aren't. Ward and June kind of ad libbed dealing with his problem, and did it perfectly.

I agree about manners. One thing parents should do is "civilize" their children. Look at children in public places. Many parents aren't doing it. Do we ever hear "We don't scream in public", "We talk quietly in public", "We say please and thank you"? Rarely. So these uncivilized kids end up in school, then in college, then in society. They never learned how to behave, be civil, so we see the outlandish behavior.