Rusty Hamer Was Not A Good Actor

What's more, I don't find Rusty the character cute or funny at all - just annoying as hell.

That kid annoys me so much.

I love Rusty Hamer. I thought he and Danny Thomas had great chemistry. Tony Dow and Jerry Mathers were different and the relationship they had with the parent characters was different. Danny Williams was not the all-knowing dad who held some traditional job as most TV dads were back then. He was emotional and angered easily. He wasn't always fair with his kids and he didn't give a lot of wisdom. In fact, he had his immature moments many times. So why would his son be as mild-mannered as the Cleaver boys? IMHO Rusty Hamer and Angela Cartwright were two of the most talented kid actors of their time, and even between the two of them, they had a lot more chemistry and comic timing than, say, Buffy and Jody of Family Affair.

I just saw the episode of when the new family went on the honeymoon together, and Kathy and Rusty and Terry were getting annoyed with Danny for spending a lot of time talking with fans and performing. They would bicker with Danny. Linda, OTOH, as the new step daughter, just kept saying, "I forgive you, Daddy." It was just real cute. :-)

He was a typical professional kid. Danny Thomas said of Hamer, "He was the best boy actor I ever saw in my life. He had a great memory...great timing and you could change a line on him at the last minute and he came right back with it."
Unfortunately he was never able to get past his stereotyping. Which ultimately led to his tragic demise.

I'm not so sure it was Rusty or the writers to blame. The lines he delivered in large part were like more recent-era sitcom lines instead of being what a realistic kid would be saying.

Rusty had the quick, one-liners, the amazingly quick retorts for what his father or others said to him--the type of line few people, if any, could come up with that quickly, certainly not that often, in response to what someone else just said.

His character was an operator, sort of like a pint-sized Bilko, always eager to gain something--a privilege or money--in exchange for doing what his parents wanted. We rarely saw him interacting with friends and most of his scenes with Linda involved him teaching her how to do things to gain something from their parents.

I think if the writers had written his part to be more like a Beaver, or an Opie, he might have seemed like a much better actor.

It also would have been a big advantage to not doing a show in front of a large studio audience, but on a closed set, with easier retakes and breaks, like Jerry Mathers and Ronny Howard got to do.