The brilliant, subversive jerkiness of Eddie Haskell

[mahatmakanejeeves]

Media • Perspective
The brilliant, subversive jerkiness of Eddie Haskell

By Paul Farhi
Reporter
May 19, 2020 at 5:00 AM EDT

Eddie Haskell was a sneaky little rat, a two-faced suck-up and a tinpot bully. A punk who stirred up trouble. ... We loved him for it.

The brilliance of Eddie — an indelible character for baby boomers in their youth, thanks to endless black-and-white re-reruns of the foundational sitcom “Leave It to Beaver” — lay in the way he differed from virtually any other child or teen characters on TV: He was a bad kid, with little effort made to redeem or rehabilitate him.

Ingeniously portrayed by the actor Ken Osmond, who died on Monday at the age of 76, Eddie was as much a metaphor as a supporting character on a gentle family series. He embodied the kind of personality that children first encounter on the playground but then again throughout adulthood: the obsequious work colleague, the backstabbing boyfriend, the smarmy politician. Real life has a lot of Eddie Haskells.

When Eddie was born, TV had no box for him, certainly not on a wholesome show aimed at the children of wholesome American families. The good guys on TV sitcoms were the cardigan-wearing dads and pearl-clad moms — Robert Young on “Father Knows Best,” Danny Thomas, Andy Griffith, Donna Reed, Ozzie and Harriet Nelson — who cajoled and counseled their wayward offspring back onto the straight and narrow, all within about 25 minutes. The kids were never mean or bad; they were just a little … confused.

Osmond’s Eddie was an antihero, singular because he was subversive — Bart Simpson long before “The Simpsons” were born. On every episode of “Beaver,” he could be counted on to instigate a scheme that would invariably land Wally or the Beav in hot water, like the time he persuaded Wally to play a practical joke on Lumpy by hitching a chain wrapped around a tree to the rear axle of Lumpy’s car. The mildly disastrous consequences of Eddie’s devilry predictably set up the big moment at the end of the show in which Ward or June Cleaver would distill an important Life Lesson from the experience.

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[no_hypocrisy]

1. And there was nothing like the loud, mocking laugh of Eddie Haskell at his own jokes.

He made the show watchable. (Sorry Jerry, Tony, Barbara, and Hugh. It was always Eddie.)

[PCIntern]

2. You're almost not going to believe this

My high school was a combination Day/boarding school and we had a fair number of kids boarding from California. One of the guys, a big guy, used to say and I had no doubt that he would do this, but that if he ever saw the actor who played Eddie Haskell on the street that he would knock him on his ass. This guy was so big that none of us had the Temerity to say that that was a really stupid idea And if we had he probably would’ve punched us out. It really was a wild west in school those days, and there was no succor from faculty or staff if someone beat the living daylights out of you. And this was a progressive school, an artsy school, where morality and other-ism was taught. Sheesh. I’m lucky I survived my youth.

[rsdsharp]

3. They made 234 episodes of "Beaver."

Eddie was in less than 100.

[JenniferJuniper]

4. One of the most iconic TV characters of all time

A few months ago a 20 something on my team rolled her eyes and called a suck-up co-worker "a total Eddie Haskell".

That's staying power.

[dem4decades]

5. He was great.

[Norbert]

6. I would have rather Been Eddie than Wally

That may explain something about me. lol

[mahatmakanejeeves]

7. Ken Osmond (1943-2020) as Eddie Haskell in "Leave It to Beaver"

Ken Osmond (1943-2020) as Eddie Haskell in “Leave It to Beaver”;

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