Leave It To Beaver

Tony and I have been watching all the Leave It To Beaver episodes on Netflix, as a long term project.  The project got interrupted when Barbara Billingsley died, as for a while, they took the show off Netflix, but it recently came back.  We are in the third season.

I am always impressed with the very high quality of the show.  It's extremely obvious how much care was taken with it.  Unlike so many shows, the characters are consistent, there are not continuity errors all the time, the sets are realistic and the plots are interesting.

The most interesting part of the show to me is how it is basically an instruction in parenting.  I read that in some ways, this was purposeful.  The government actually encouraged the show to demonstrate good parenting techniques.  I think a lot of people just remember little parts of the action, like how the kids are very polite and sometimes call their father "sir" and how the mother wears pearls.  There's so much more there.

The typical episode goes like this---Beaver or Wally get into some kind of trouble.  They try to hide this, or solve it on their own, but their parents find out, and help them sort it out, while emphasizing that the boys should have come to them first.  Sometimes, Ward, the father, loses his cool and "hollers" at the boys, but he's always sorry when he does this.  The parents don't always agree about how to deal with the problems, but they work out a united front out of the earshot of the kids.

The kids are realistic in a low key way.  We laughed with recognition at an episode where Wally was having a teenager day and said everyone was against him, and at one where Beaver simply couldn't resist getting in the last word in an argument with his brother.  The friends of the kids often illustrate other personality types, usually shown to be the result of bad parenting.  We all remember Eddie Haskell, but there are lots of other friends.  Lumpy Rutherford is the result of a alternatingly overly indulgent and then overly strict father, Larry Mondello shows what happens with an absent father and a nervous mother and the almost unbearable Judy Hensler is an obvious example of a spoiled brat.

Despite all these positive points, the show is obvious set in a utopia in most ways.  The small town the family lives in is peaceful and calm.  The Cleaver household is always ultra clean, meals are on time, money is never a serious issue and we sense that Beaver and Wally will go on to prosperous lives.  That's part of the appeal, to me.  I need a vacation sometimes from my real life, in my real house that is messy, with my real life worries about money, college, autism, all that.  Sometimes I'm in the mood to pay a visit to a world unlike my own.  I can sit back and pretend I am June, living a life that I'll never really live.  I'll be quite sad when we finally watch the last episode.  For now, I've got a new little slice of pretend life waiting for me any time I want.

Modern Family

Tony and I have been watching back episodes of Modern Family, and I have been trying to figure out why it is so funny.  There's no denying it's hilarious---the kids came out to see what was up as I was laughing so hard it sounded like I was dying the last time we watched.  But when I really think about it, it's not a terrible original or creative show.  What's the setup?  A man with a much younger wife who is beautiful and has an accent, a dopey, clueless husband with a pretty but non-brain-surgeon daughter, a bright but nerdy daughter and a son as clueless as he is, a gay couple that seem pretty stereotypical to me, and who also serve another stereotype in their hyperactive parenting of their adopted child.  And the plots?  They cover all the classic sit-com happenings.  If identity can be mistaken, it is, if people can overhear what they shouldn't overhear, they do, if meanings can be misunderstood, they are, if a car is near a cliff, it will roll off.  Everything happens as you expect it to happen.

And that's probably the genius.  We are tired of cutting edge or realistic humor.  Modern Family is the anti-Seinfeld, the anti-Roseanne.  It's a flashback to just plain funny, without a cutting edge or a intricate plot.  The show is well casted, the actors are likeable, and you can just sit back and enjoy yourself, without having to think a huge amount.  There's a lot to be said for that.