Here’s Why ‘Leave It to Beaver’ Ended Early
The Beaver was only in second grade when Leave It to Beaver made its sitcom debut in 1957. By the time the show finished its final season in 1963, Theodore Cleaver had grown into an awkward teenager. With big brother Wally finishing his high school career, the show ending its run made sense. But according to series star Jerry Mathers, the show nearly kept going into the Beav’s young adult years.
Leave It to Beaver aired on two different networks, but it was an ABC property for the majority of its run. After the show’s sixth season, the network looked at current trends among popular shows and decided to implement some changes over at the Cleaver house. For one thing, it wanted to produce the show in color. Makes sense — everyone was making the switch. ABC also proposed a more radical shift: It wanted to make each episode an hour long.
“At the time, we had two days of rehearsal and three days of filming, which gave us a lot of what made it so well-written,” Mathers told the Buffalo News in 1983, as reported by MeTV.
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Because filming in color was in its infancy, that kind of schedule would have to be thrown out the window. “Due to the technology of color, we were going to have to eliminate the two days of rehearsal and film it in six straight days,” Mathers explained. “The producers really felt that would jeopardize the quality of the show, and they said, ‘We’ve had a good show, we’ve been on for six seasons; why try to squeeze two more years out of it and sacrifice quality?’”
Consider the decision a dodged bullet for other reasons as well. Leave It to Beaver’s charm was rooted in its goofy little kid adventures, with Mathers proving a believable misfit who couldn’t help but find trouble. That adorable scamp wasn’t so cute by the time he stumbled into puberty, however. His greasy-haired, high-school mishaps might have just seemed sad.
But probably not sadder than Still the Beaver, a 1980s syndicated reboot in which the producers seemed intent on kicking the Beaver while he was down. While Wally gets married and becomes the upstanding adult you always imagined he would be, Theodore is a certified loser, divorced, unemployed and forced to move back home with mom June Cleaver. (Father Ward was dead.) To make matters even worse, producers cast Corey Feldman as Beaver’s son.
Mathers hated the reunion TV movie, Still the Beaver, that the revived show was based on. “The writing was weak,” he told the Hickory Daily Record per MeTV, “and Beaver was giving up as the world fell apart around him.”
It was a sad ending for a beloved sitcom character. The sadistic rendering of Beaver’s fate may be the reason TV Guide ranked Still The Beaver as the 39th worst show of all time.
