The series finale of LEAVE IT TO BEAVER has always struck me as a cop-out. The Cleavers reminisce over a family scrapbook and we see flashbacks to different scenes from the series' past. Of course, it is much harder to do a proper finale than it is to just film brief connecting segments and fill the rest of the half hour with flashbacks. But it wouldn't have been half as bad if the flashbacks had made better sense. As it is, the scenes that are flashed back to - Beaver and Wally chatting as they fill the bathtub with water in a effort to simulate having taken a bath, or Beaver and Larry surreptitiously reading Larry's sister's diary - would never have actually been photographed. So the scrapbook functions here as a sort of poetic conceit. The scenes seem to have been chosen haphazardly rather than for being particularly significant milestones in Beaver's and Wally's lives.
The episode's saving grace is the final image of Beaver and Wally, now almost full-grown men, gleefully playing with a windup toy in their room. The image leaves us with the eternal joys of childhood and returns us full circle to where this delightful series first began.
The episode's saving grace is the final image of Beaver and Wally, now almost full-grown men, gleefully playing with a windup toy in their room. The image leaves us with the eternal joys of childhood and returns us full circle to where this delightful series first began.