Leave It To Beaver: The Complete Series Review

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QUICK DVD STATS:
Number of Episodes -- 234 (Plus the Original Pilot Episode)
Number of Discs -- 37 (Single-Sided)
Video -- 1.33:1 Full Frame (B&W)
Audio -- Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono (English only)
Any Bonus Stuff? -- Heck, yes! (Details below)
Subtitles? -- No (But each of the episodes is Closed Captioned in English)
"Play All" Option? -- Yes
Are These Episodes Complete and Unedited? -- Yes! (With a very minor "but"; details below)
DVD Distributor -- Shout! Factory (The set is copyrighted by NBC Universal)
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On June 29, 2010, a very pleasant thing happened -- something that many people probably didn't think would ever happen in their lifetime -- the audio and video company "Shout! Factory" released to the public "LEAVE IT TO BEAVER: THE COMPLETE SERIES", a spectacular 37-Disc DVD collection that includes all 234 episodes of what I consider to be one of the best and most rewatchable television series of all-time.
And Shout! has treated The Beav with expert care too, make no mistake about that fact. These 234 shows (plus the pilot episode, entitled "It's A Small World", which is also included in this mega-set) look and sound fantastic on these DVDs. All of the episodes were filmed in black-and-white, and the restored B&W prints that are presented in this collection are sensational.
To quote Brian Ward, the producer of this DVD boxed set:
"These episodes are complete and look better than you've ever seen them before. They've been restored and remastered from the original film elements. I've honestly never seen 50s television look this good. For those that bought the original seasons 1 & 2 released a couple years ago, these are leagues above those transfers. They really are something." -- Brian Ward of Shout! Factory; January 27, 2010
These shows do, indeed, look gorgeous on these DVDs, but I will add this note about the video quality --- The majority of the episodes in Season 1 and Season 2 of this set appear to me to have pretty close to the same video quality as the Universal DVD releases of those two seasons which came out in November 2005 and May 2006 [Season 1; Season 2].
Those two Universal sets have pretty good overall picture quality too, but most of the scenes that were filmed indoors are peppered with an abundance of grain. The scenes shot outdoors, however, look perfect and free of almost all grain.
This Shout! set mirrors those Universal video characteristics for the first two seasons, with the indoors footage being speckled with much more film grain than is found in any of the last four seasons. There are exceptions to this though, with one exception being the first-year episode "Brotherly Love", which looks quite a bit better in this Shout! set than it does in the 2005 Universal release, with less grain visible in the Shout! version.
Some of the shows from Season 1 also look darker on the Shout! DVDs when compared to the Universal edition (particularly the episode "Captain Jack"). So it would certainly seem as though Shout! has not used the exact same prints of the shows that Universal worked with in 2005.
But once I got to Season 3 of this Shout! set -- WOW! Simply magnificent in all respects! Almost all of the grain in every episode has been completely eliminated for the final four seasons. It's remarkable how blemish-free these new high-definition DVD prints look. Almost as if they were filmed yesterday. They look that good.
The highest praise I can muster goes to the Shout! people for taking the time and effort to do this classic TV sitcom the "DVD justice" it richly deserves.
One of the things that I immediately noticed when watching some of the episodes from Seasons 3 through 6 (which were filmed after the Cleavers moved into their new house on Pine Street in Mayfield) was the chair in the living room, the one in which dad Ward Cleaver is often seen sitting while reading the newspaper.
The chair's bold and unique fabric looks particularly bright on these remastered DVDs. The pattern practically jumps right off the screen, illustrating just how superb these DVD transfers really are. It might even be a good idea to wear sunglasses when watching those living-room scenes from now on. :)
Each episode is presented complete and uncut, just as they were originally aired on network television in the late 1950s and early 1960s. The average length per episode is about 25 minutes and 45 seconds.
A few episodes clock in at about 24:55. But then there are still others that exceed 26 minutes. So, I think it's probably safe to say that these episodes are just about as complete as we're ever going to get.
And Shout! DVD producer Brian Ward has also assured fans that all of the episodes in this set are uncut -- "The episodes are complete" were Mr. Ward's exact words on May 26, 2010 (via a post Brian made at the Shout! Factory Community Forum).
There is, however, one small section of one episode that is missing. And I'd be willing to bet that it's missing by pure accident. It's the preview (or "teaser") that was originally aired at the very beginning of the episode "The Black Eye". That short preview, narrated by Hugh Beaumont (which is when we hear Hugh say, "And that's our story tonight on Leave It To Beaver"), is nowhere to be found in this Shout! set. It is there, however, in the Universal 2005 DVD set.
The reason I said it's missing by "accident" is because of the way the order of most of the show openings for Season One have been rearranged. The short preview scenes that were part of the first-year episodes were (I think) originally aired PRIOR to the opening titles. That's the way they are presented in the 2005 Universal DVD set anyway.
But in this Shout! set, the majority of the preview clips are shown AFTER the opening credits. There are seven exceptions, however. The following seven episodes are presented as they originally aired, with the teaser coming prior to the opening titles: "Music Lesson", "The Perfect Father", "The State Vs. Beaver", "Beaver Runs Away", "Party Invitation", "The Bank Account", and "Lonesome Beaver".
This is a real mystery to me. I can't figure out why in the world the people who were responsible for remastering these episodes would have decided to reverse the order of the teasers and opening credits for about 80% of the first-season episodes in seemingly willy-nilly fashion, while choosing at the same time to leave the teasers where they should be in the first place (at the very beginning of the show) on 7 of the 39 episodes. It doesn't make a bit of sense. It almost looks like somebody at NBC Universal was being deliberately spiteful.
~big shrug~
Anyway, my guess would be that when someone was fiddling around with the chronology of most of these show-opening segments, somehow the preview/teaser clip for the "Black Eye" episode was never re-inserted and was inadvertently cut out completely.
Here's another oddity that I noticed about the first-season previews -- In this Shout! set, the preview segment for the episode "Brotherly Love" is completely different from the one that can be found on the 2005 DVD. The narration by Hugh Beaumont is identical in both DVD versions, but the video is totally different. Weird, huh? I had no idea that more than one preview segment existed for any of the episodes in Season 1. (It kind of makes the 2005 Universal DVD set for the first season of LITB seem a tad more valuable now, since there's something unique about a portion of it.)
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THE SHOW:
"Leave It To Beaver" premiered on CBS-TV on Friday, October 4, 1957, and continued on network television for a total of six seasons, finishing up in 1963. Each of the six seasons consisted of exactly 39 episodes, a hefty number when compared to current seasonal standards.
CBS carried the show for the first season only. For the final five years, "Beaver" was a part of the ABC-TV schedule.
The LITB storylines were always very simple and uncomplicated, which is probably a big reason why it is so charming and appealing. No major earth-shattering disasters ever befall the Cleavers. Nobody ever gets hurt (except an occasional scraped knee), the parents (Ward and June) rarely fight about anything serious and never threaten to leave each other, and above all, these characters really seemed to care about each other, without getting too sappy about it.
All of the above-mentioned traits helped make "Leave It To Beaver" what it was each week in 1957, and what I believe it remains today: a good, clean, fun, uncomplicated half-hour of entertaining television.
Starring Jerry Mathers as Theodore (Beaver) Cleaver, Tony Dow as his brother Wally, Barbara Billingsley as June, and Hugh Beaumont as Ward, the excellent cast of "Leave It To Beaver" was a well-chosen group in my opinion.
While it's true, I suppose, that the acting was a bit on the "stiff" side on many occasions, I still think that this ensemble did quite well on this show. A sense of true believability and realism finds its way quite comfortably into each of these episodes.
Toss into this cast grouping the very funny Richard Deacon, who portrayed Ward's friend and co-worker, Fred Rutherford, plus Ken Osmond as the ever-sarcastic Eddie Haskell, Frank Bank as Clarence "Lumpy" Rutherford, Rusty Stevens as Larry Mondello, and all of Beaver's and...Read more›

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