Lessons from Larry Mondello

TV and I go way back. When I was a kid, TV was, at times, if not a good friend, certainly my best one. Hours were wiled away watching reruns of sitcoms from the 50s and 60. I have lately been revisiting Leave It to Beaver, one of my childhood favorites. 

Because the show is so familiar, it’s easy to brush by the factors that elevated it to its iconic stature. There are many, but the well-rounded characters are key. The individual characters have clear personalities and values. Some you admire; some you some you loathe; some inspire a mixed response.  As a kid, I was revolted by Larry Mondello. The feeling has not faded.

Larry is a whiny, self-serving coward and the Beaver’s best, but not good, friend. Larry’s overbearing self-concern can be heard in his sniveling voice, his viciousness revealed in the pleasure he takes from seeing other bullied. Larry is even more odious than the greasy Eddie Haskell, and that’s saying something. 

We profit from bad examples as much as from good ones, and lest we be too hard on Larry, here are three things he has to teach.

First,  it’s hard to be a boy without a dad. Much of the dramatic tension in Leave It to Beaver is born from Beaver’s attempts to please and to emulate his flawed but faithful father. Ward Cleaver looms large in his sons’ lives, and his presence is reflected in their character even when they make comically foolish choices. 

Larry, however, is raised almost exclusively by his delicate, priggish mother. Larry’s dad, we’re told, is gone a lot. In this way, Larry serves as a foil to Beaver. When confronted by a moral decision, Beaver looks to his conscience and sees an imprint of his father. Larry sees only a void. Larry’s conscience is largely missing just like his dad.

Second, it’s hard to be a boy with unmet needs. Larry is a kid with a hungry heart. He is often pictured eating. This explains his portly physique, but his perpetual grazing is a sign of deeper, harder to satisfy hungers. Because no one is there to satiate his underlying appetite for love and validation, Larry approaches the world with a self-centered perspective, scanning for what he can consume.

This includes friendships. Larry flips from champion to bully in an instant because he is rooted in nothing beyond his own quest for gratification. Larry teases Beaver, insults and betrays him. Larry Mondello, whatever he may be, is not stalwart. He is unstable because he thinks the purpose of friendships is to provide him pleasure and a sense of power. If harassing Beaver brings him these, he will harass Beaver. If defending Beaver brings him these, he will defend Beaver.

Third, it’s hard to be a boy dominated by anger. Again and again, Larry sneers at Beaver’s attempts to do the right thing, to do, in other words, as his father would have him do. Larry eggs Beaver on to disobedience and folly. In doing so, he encourages Beaver to abandon his father just as Larry’s father has abandoned him.

Thus he expresses his latent anger at the world, including at Beaver who dared to be born with a good father. Larry’s secret anger makes him repulsive. He urges rebellion and skips out when the consequences of rebellion come. Nobody respects that. We avoid such people. When we do, of course, we add to their reserve of repressed rage.

We can never entirely escape these people. Chiefly, because we are these people. There’s a little Larry in all of us. The question is what to do with him. If we don’t do something, he runs our lives. The best we can do is to acknowledge him. We can see and accept those parts of ourselves that have become weak, needy and angry because we did not get what we needed or because the world has been cruel.  Our inner Larry only grows more powerful when ignored. 

Once we have acknowledge him, we can affirm that his basic intuitions are correct. Yes, he should have had a dad. Yes, his hungers are legitimate. Yes, the world is unfair and his desire for revenge is understandable. We must affirm what needs to be affirmed.

We must also challenge what need to be challenged. We must father our inner Larrys. We must learn to speak to that part of ourselves that is most Larry-like, to instruct it, nurture it toward maturity and virtue.  Only then, can we outgrow Larry’s worst traits, only then can we be, both to ourselves and others, not just a best friend, but a good one too.