Leave it to Beaver is perhaps the stereotypical sixties sitcom. The main characters form a typical middle-class family with two kids, mom as a housewife, and dad as a breadwinner. The younger son is the main focus of the show. His is nicknamed Beaver and he gets into enough shenanigans to fill over two hundred episodes. In number two hundred and three, one of his friends has decided to move out of his parents’ place and rent a room of his own. He comes over to Beaver’s to invite him for a dinner. And in doing so he interrupts a game of chess. 1
It never becomes clear who is playing and we see no moves. But the view of the position is quite good and I’m relatively confident is the following reconstruction:2
Clearly, black must be to move. And he’s going to find the going tough. Kf8 is the only legal move, but Bxg5 seems to be a very convincing reply. The position is laughable, of course, but it gets worse. There is another camera angle of the same scene and it shows quite a different position:
Admittedly, I’m not fully sure about the black pieces on the king’s side, but it doesn’t matter. How hard is it to understand that, if no moves are played, the position shouldn’t change? Even if your position is completely asinine! And you should definitely not try to sneak a perniciously rotated board under my bullshit radar! For is editing this? Where is the continuity manager?3
They shouldn’t have left it to a goddamn beaver.
Realism: 1/5 I have several questions, but the main one is how that pawn got to a3. Probably, white’s d-pawn took the missing black bishop and knight to reach the b-file. Then it was taken there, after which the missing white knight sacrificed itself on a3.
Probable winner: White, obviously. He’s up a piece, his king is safer, and more material is coming his way.4
1. [Perhaps he was kicked out by his parents for such boorish behaviour.] ↩
2. [Leave it to this diagram editor.] ↩
3. [Probably dealing with Weierstrass functions.] ↩
4. [Plus it’s the US in the sixties.] ↩