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Over the course of its six-season run, Dan Harmon’s Community drew in a devoted audience week after week with the promise of more wacky exploits from disgraced lawyer Jeff Winger (Joel McHale) and his tight-knit study group.
What took an already-great TV show and turned it into one for the ages was the revolving door of memorable side characters also attending Greendale Community College. Characters like Leonard Briggs, the octogenarian business major played by the late Richard Erdman, who helped the collegiate backdrop feel like a living, breathing environment, despite the series’ heightened shenanigans.
What you may not know, however, is that Erdman enjoyed an impressive acting career that stretched over seven decades across film and television prior to his death in 2019 at the age of 93. One of his most notable roles — aside from Leonard, of course — can be found in the original Twilight Zone, which airs regularly on SYFY.
Remembering Community star Richard Erdman’s appearance on The Twilight Zone
In particular, Erdman appeared in the Season 5 episode “A Kind of Stopwatch” (1963) as Patrick Thomas McNulty, an obnoxious loudmouth whose ability to speak so much and say so little “sets back the art of conversation 1,000 years,” according to Rod Serling‘s opening narration. He’s nothing but a vapid cloud of useless ideas, bogus factoids, and an irksome, self-satisfied catchphrase: “You think about that now!” As written by Serling (who adapted a story from Charles D. Rosenthal), the character is meant to be absolutely intolerable, and to his credit, Erdman goes above and beyond the call of duty, delivering one of the most grating performances you’ll ever see.
Humanity’s collective wish for McNulty to shut the hell up is somewhat fulfilled when the pestering protagonist finds himself in the possession of a magic stopwatch that can freeze time, a curious object gifted to him by a sloshed bar patron named Potts (Leon Belasco). Rather than use the temporal pauses to reflect on his off-putting behavior and make a lifestyle change, McNulty continues to babble away into the silence, desperate for someone to give him attention. It’s a fool’s errand, considering the fact that only he stays in motion while everyone else stops in their tracks, rendered unconscious for all intents and purposes.
Then it hits him: He can use the watch to freeze time, rob a bank, and use his wealth to gain the notoriety he craves. The plan goes well until the very end when McNulty, pushing a cart full of cash from behind the counter, accidentally drops his extraordinary gift, which shatters — à la Henry Bemis’s spectacles in “Time Enough at Last.” But where Burgess Meredith’s timid bookworm was a blameless victim of random cosmic cruelty, McNulty’s ironic punishment befits his naïve disregard for those around him and the very fabric of reality itself.
Despite his many attempts to push the watch’s button, time will not progress. Everything and everyone is frozen for all eternity. Only in this moment does an anguished McNulty experience an acute wave of self-awareness, promising to live differently if someone, anyone, would just move or make a sound. Ironically, a man who loved the sound of his own voice will get to hear himself — and only himself — talk for the rest of his lonely life… in The Twilight Zone.
Classic episodes of The Twilight Zone air regularly on SYFY. Click here for complete scheduling info! If you’re looking to re-enroll at Greendale, class registration is wide open; all six seasons are currently streaming on Peacock.
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