All through the earlier seasons of LEAVE IT TO BEAVER, we saw Jerry Mathers' Beaver Cleaver tricked and goaded into all kinds of silly situations by the challenges, dares, and bragging of his friends (and even, occasionally accidentally, by his own father -- the pedometer episode . . . .). But the show did depict Beaver as maturing or, at least, getting older if not always wiser. Here the writers throw us right back to the much earlier story-line of the episode (from three or four seasons before) with those gross, monster-oriented shirts, and how all of the boys promise to wear them to school, and -- of course -- Beaver is the only one silly enough to actually do it.
Except that here, because of his age, you start to realize that Beaver may just be a little . . . what we used to politely call "slow". Abandoning what little common sense he has, plus the best advice of his brother Wally (Tony Dow), and the orders and advice of his own father (Hugh Beaumont), he dresses in his ordinary school clothes for a really important award ceremony at the school, all because of the bragging of his team's star-player (Kim Charney) -- and, naturally, Beaver is the only one to actually do what the swell-headed "star" says he's going to do (i.e. not wear a suit to the ceremony). And all of a sudden, it all falls into place in terms of the vision of the producer/creators of the show -- Beaver is, indeed, a little "slow," although this is the episode where HE begins to realize this and overcome that handicap.