Homeless Beaver and Impotent Wally Starred in Depressing ‘Leave It to Beaver’ Reboot
Leave It to Beaver was one of the most wholesome sitcoms of the 1950s, so when producers decided to bring back its beloved characters for a 1983 made-for-TV movie, of course they decided to screw the original by creating a depressing future for Wally and the Beav.
No one gets it worse than Theodore Cleaver, given name of the titular Beaver. After a mandolin plucks a mournful version of the show’s happy-go-lucky theme song, the opening scene repeatedly kicks Beaver in the crotch. First, his wife boots him from their house for good, slamming the door in his face when he asks for a trial separation instead of an out-and-out divorce. He’s about to drive away, but the car belongs to his father-in-law who demands its return. As he forlornly leaves on foot, the lawn sprinklers turn on and soak him.
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With nowhere else to turn, the homeless sad sack has to take a bus to move back in with his mother. He’s still wearing the same dorky baseball cap he had as a kid.
As for big brother Wally, the guy who starred on the high school sports teams and dated the prettiest girls in town? He’s married now, but he and his wife, Mary Ellen, have no kids. They’re trying, but Wally can’t deliver the goods, as it were. Looks like the perfect Cleaver boy isn’t so perfect after all.
Hugh Beaumont was in poor health during filming, so they killed off father Ward Cleaver, leaving June as a lonely widower. Is her life any better when Beaver moves back in, and she has to scold him for drinking milk out of the bottle?
The supporting characters also grew up to be failures. Eddie Haskell is even more of a slimeball than he was as a teenager, running a shoddy construction company that screws up the foundation of Wally’s new house. Rather than brushing it off, Wally grabs Eddie by the neck before slugging him right in the bread basket.
Beaver’s pal Larry Mondello joined some kind of weird cult, and now dresses in robes and a turban. Someone, somewhere, should probably be offended, but I’m not sure who.
Then there are Beaver’s kids. When his soon-to-be-ex gets accepted into veterinary school in Italy (what?), she dumps their two boys to live with Beaver. The oldest, played by obnoxious Corey Feldman, is a jerk to his little brother in ways that Wally never was. The younger kid is a chip off the old block, destined to be another deadbeat unless Beaver can get his act together.
The depressing made-for-TV movie got terrible reviews, but like sitcom reunions Return to Mayberry and Rescue from Gilligan’s Island, it got huge ratings. It was enough for the fledgling Disney Channel to greenlight a new Still The Beaver series. Disney must have known viewers wouldn’t tune in every week to watch a bunch of losers, so Beaver transformed into a responsible single parent. Honestly, he's funnier as a deadbeat.
Wally and Mary Ellen magically had a 10-year-old daughter, retroactive virility that was never explained.
Improbably, the sitcom, now called The New Leave It to Beaver, was popular on both the Disney Channel and its second home, TBS. More than 100 episodes were produced, but that didn’t keep it from making TV Guide’s 2002 list of the 50 Worst TV Shows of All Time.
