I think there are certain Twilight Zone episodes that fall right at the bottom if just because they are average and lack anything particularly noteworthy besides perhaps the novelty of the device used to guide them. "A Kind of Stopwatch" features a lead character so hated by everyone (including Serling who opens with a monologue to get the episode started that considers him a bore with little use in our world, as if he should be exterminated because he lacks anything remotely unpredictable or unique to offer his fellow man) that I wonder how we are supposed to even watch him without disliking him ourselves. McNulty (Richard Erdman) is always talking. He's a lively conversationalist but what he has to say drives everyone crazy. He considers all he says as accurate truth much to the disagreement of those around him. He works at a company with a specific item sold to the public yet in the suggestion box he offers ideas for everything but what his work sells. He hangs around a bar, and what he has to say is so annoying to the customers that they flee in droves just to escape McNulty's presence! Some drunkard likes McNulty and gives him a stopwatch. It freezes time and McNulty carries it around, stopping traffic and people in action. He tries to talk his former boss (who finally fires him because he just can't take McNulty anymore) into using the stopwatch as a device to sell in the company and is quickly disregarded. Finally, McNulty decides to steal from a bank, drops the watch which breaks, and time remains frozen
possibly forever. In a nutshell, we are told right from the beginning we are not supposed to like this guy and sadly nothing helps McNulty gain support by those watching this episode. Instead of feeling bad for the guy's fate (like Burges Meredith in "Time Enough at Last"), there's apathy. Because if those writing a treatment about McNulty have apathy towards him, why wouldn't we? Is there an incentive to invest in McNulty's misfortune? Erdman does wonders with a part that is considered a pariah to the outside world, alone and disregarded, because he is likable with a spirit to him. Sadly he will be even more alone after the twist of the episode as those people who would tell him they wanted nothing to with him he will no longer be able to aggravate. Frozen bodies stuck in position, a watch no longer useful, and McNulty moving among them without their knowledge
bad for him, but good for them. The man who gave the stopwatch to McNulty should have a magic to him, you'd think, but the writers seemed to have little interest in developing him whatsoever. I will say that this turned out to be entertaining somewhat if just because Erdman gives it all he has, but after the episode was over, I don't think it will be in the conversation (or even remotely close) regarding Twilight Zone greats. It belongs in the "middling affair" category of a "Black Leather Jackets" or "The Fear", but Erdman's work here would perhaps encourage a future viewing, I must say.
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