Wally Cleaver - Home Life

Home Life

Though there are four bedrooms in the Cleaver house, Wally and Beaver share a bedroom. Their bedroom is a principal setting on the show. Wally spends his time in the bedroom at a small desk doing school assignments, the boys entertain their friends in the bedroom, and the room is often the scene of Ward's disciplinary lectures. Though Wally sometimes warns Beaver he will suffer some sort of physical punishment from Ward ("Dad's gonna clobber you!"), such punishments never occur.

Wally is rarely seen doing regular chores around the house. He sometimes clears the dinner table for his mother (i.e., he carries a few dirty dishes to the kitchen), and in one episode is seen drying dishes. But the typical chores of a teen boy (mowing the lawn, carrying out the trash, washing windows), apparently are not his. After school time is spent practicing sports, and, once home, Wally spends most of his time doing schoolwork in his bedroom. In one episode, however, Ward is out of town and Wally is asked to play the man of the house. He carves the roast at dinner and monitors Beaver's behavior.

Many episodes have a very brief "after school" scene in the kitchen between June and Wally. Wally arrives home and finds his mother preparing dinner; he regales her with teenspeak banter about the day's events at school. Then, as Wally leaves the room with a parting bon mot and the canned laughter kicks in, the camera catches June's bewildered, dazed, or amused facial expression.

A few episodes deal with Wally's teen taste in hairstyles and clothing. In one episode, he infuriates his mother by wearing his hair in a greasy "tango dancer" style and in another episode he irks both his parents when he buys a garish suit in a men's wear store.