Question for the Old Folk
Friday, April 22nd, 2005 08:32 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rolanni'way back in the Dark Ages, when I was young and impressionable and watched television, there was a show called "Leave it to Beaver." It was goopy and sappy (though maybe not quite as goopy and sappy as, oh, "The Donna Reed Show" or "Father Knows Best," or even "The Real McCoys" -- but those were Classics), and focused on the doings of the Cleaver family, which consisted of a ditzy-but-compassionate Mom (June), a wise-and-firm-but-compassionate Dad (Ward), older son Wallace (Wally), and younger son Theodore (The Beaver). In addition to the family, we had two other recurring characters: Beaver's buddy, Lumpy; and Wally's buddy, Eddie Haskell.
Eddie was not a nice kid: he was hypocritical, manipulative, dishonest, and spiteful -- for starters -- and embroiled Wally in all kinds of trouble. This was his purpose in the Plot, if I may be so bold, of the Beaver episodes -- to introduce problems which Wally would then have to Rise Above/Solve (sometimes with Dad's help, sometimes not) and thereby Grow. I have no problem with Eddie's place as a Plot Device.
But.
I wonder -- and not for the first time -- about the relationship between Wally and Eddie. It was made clear that Eddie was skilled enough at manipulation that he was able to pull a certain amount of wool over the eyes of the firm-but-compassionate parents. But Wally, though naive, wasn't an entire dunderhead. He knew Eddie wasn't a good kid; he knew his life would be a lot less trouble-free if it lacked Eddie's influence and yet -- he continued to hang out with him, to confide in him and to bail him out of his worst scrapes.
So, today's question, for fifty bucks and the blender: Why? What was the glue that held Wally and Eddie together?
Eddie was not a nice kid: he was hypocritical, manipulative, dishonest, and spiteful -- for starters -- and embroiled Wally in all kinds of trouble. This was his purpose in the Plot, if I may be so bold, of the Beaver episodes -- to introduce problems which Wally would then have to Rise Above/Solve (sometimes with Dad's help, sometimes not) and thereby Grow. I have no problem with Eddie's place as a Plot Device.
But.
I wonder -- and not for the first time -- about the relationship between Wally and Eddie. It was made clear that Eddie was skilled enough at manipulation that he was able to pull a certain amount of wool over the eyes of the firm-but-compassionate parents. But Wally, though naive, wasn't an entire dunderhead. He knew Eddie wasn't a good kid; he knew his life would be a lot less trouble-free if it lacked Eddie's influence and yet -- he continued to hang out with him, to confide in him and to bail him out of his worst scrapes.
So, today's question, for fifty bucks and the blender: Why? What was the glue that held Wally and Eddie together?
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Date: 2005-04-22 06:52 am (UTC)My guess would be proximity. It's been a looooong time since I saw the show, but IIRC Eddie lived pretty close. There's also the possibility that Eddie had some qualities (at least to outside eyes) that Wally wished that he possessed. Eddie seemed amazingly self-confident and only Eddie decided what Eddie was going to do. Wally was a pretty wishy-washy guy as a teen, so those traits may have seemed pretty attractive.