... or at least chivalry.
Beaver comes home with a black eye, courtesy of Violet Rutherford, daughter of Ward Cleaver's colleague, Fred Rutherford. Wally helps Beaver try to cover up the black eye with their mother's makeup, but it doesn't work that well. Ward and June immediately notice Beaver's "white eye" at dinner, but what they don't know is that it was a girl who punched Beaver.
When Beaver is asked what he did in response, and he says he ran away, Ward's fatherly pride is somewhat wounded, and he decides to give Beaver some boxing lessons. Ward then tells Beaver to confront the bully and give him as good as he got, still not knowing the assailant is a girl. When this fact later comes to light, Ward and Fred Rutherford go out to stop Beaver from following Ward's advice. Will they be in time? Watch and find out.
This was a bit of a prototype episode. It's the first appearance of Richard Deacon as Fred Rutherford, Ward's stuffed shirt blowhard of a colleague, and the second appearance of Judy Hensler, a taunting overbearing girl in Beaver's class. In the middle of the episode Judy is having a conversation with an unnamed plump boy who never stops munching on his candy bar during their discussion. This is not Larry Mondello, Beaver's best friend for three seasons on the show, but he clearly is a first draft of the same character. Violet Rutherford will later be played by Veronica Cartwright, both a few times in this series and later in "The New Leave It To Beaver" in the 1980s.
It's interesting how three of the four Cleavers had best friends who were annoying people, definitely not on anybody's side but their own. Ward's best friend was Fred Rutherford, Beaver's best friend was Larry Mondello, and Wally's was the most famous wise guy of them all - Eddie Haskell.
