Dennis makes a bad impression on the new school principal and as a result, is not allowed to pitch in the championship baseball game.Dennis makes a bad impression on the new school principal and as a result, is not allowed to pitch in the championship baseball game.Dennis makes a bad impression on the new school principal and as a result, is not allowed to pitch in the championship baseball game.
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Did you know
- TriviaThis is the last time in the series that John Wilson explicitly says he is not the original Mr. Wilson and had bought the house from George several weeks earlier. John makes one more allusion to this in "Junior Astronaut" when he says to Dennis "I wasn't living here last year," but George Wilson is never mentioned again for the rest of the series.
- GoofsNo credit listed for Dennis' teacher Miss Elmore.
- ConnectionsReferences To Tell the Truth (1956)
Featured review
The most important of all the episodes in the entire series.
Dennis Mitchell (I mean, as portray'n by Jay North) was never a "menace". That was always just a piece of malicious slander. He was always not only spiritually good, but spiritually perfect--and that is what earned him his nickname--from jealous onlookers who always throw their darts at the perfect (as one of the Psalms says)--like "Mr. Wilson" in this series (both of the actors--but most especially Joseph Kearns--who portrayed Mr. Wilson), and, like Donna Reed in the episode of her own series (Season 3, episode 3, called "Donna Decorates", Sept. 29, 1960) in which Jay as Dennis is a guest-character. He does nothing wrong, ever, at any time--but she--Donna Reed--does everything wrong--and then turns around and winces, as though the paint can that she herself had just dropped and spilled on the floor, was Dennis's fault (just because he was there on the premises), or as though the drapery that she herself had put up incorrectly, was Dennis's fault (again--just because he was merely there on the premises)--and a half-dozen similar instances of a malicious person mistaking his or her own rampant malice and jealousy for an innocent person's "fault"--and this is the way it is, through the entire "Dennis the Menace" series. But in this one episode of that series that I am reviewing here, which, I say above, is the most important episode in the entire series--"The New Principal", Season 4, episode 7, Nov. 11, 1962--the truth about what Jay North really is, is allown to shine through the usual thick layers of malice that surround the lad almost all of the time throughout the entire four seasons of the series (with the sole exception of this one episode). In this episode, his new principal unfairly goes about to "punish" him, and the "punishment" is that he is depriven of his position as pitcher on the baseball team. His father is out of town on a sales or business trip. Every grown man who knows him--the storekeeper, the pharmacist, and even Mr. Wilson who is ordinarily quite contemptuous and mean to him--and who hears from him (and the boy tells it merely casually) what the principal did--resolves that he will be his stand-in "father" just for the purpose of going down to the school that day and interceding with that principal (since the actual father is out of town). Each of the three men goes to the principal--not expecting to find the other two men there, too--each of whom has introduced himself as being "Dennis's father". Why is it the most important episode in the entire series?--because it is the episode--the only episode--that allows the lad's true nature to shine forth and be seen by all--in other words, the only episode in which it is seen that this boy was actually a saint, worthy not only of no contempt from any grown-up at any time, ever, but worthy of solemn devout veneration, at all times--and that is why each of the three men was impelled to do as he did, and in doing so, glorified the boy as being the perfect saint that he in fact always was (And just by the way: this episode echoes one of Margaret Mary O'Brien's youthful cinemas of sixteen years earlier--the best cinema--it just so happens--ever to be produced by Hollywood.)--Margaret Mary Bernetta-Titlebaum
- rmtitlebaum
- Mar 10, 2019
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Details
- Runtime30 minutes
- Color
- Aspect ratio
- 1.33 : 1
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