Games - A Kind of a Stopwatch

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	Games - A Kind of a Stopwatch

Cast

Patrick Thomas McNulty: Richard Erdman
Mr. Cooper: Roy Roberts
Potts: Leon Belasco
Joe: Herbie Faye

Synopsis

Patrick McNulty, an unpopular, know-it-all windbag, played by Richard Erdman, befriends an odd man named Potts, whom he meets in the local bar the day after McNulty is fired. Potts offers him a stopwatch, “an old family heirloom” in exchange for his friendship. Thinking it an odd gift, the man soon realizes that when the button is pressed, the stopwatch is capable of stopping time itself. Excited with his new toy, he unsuccessfully uses it in an attempt to win back his job and his friends. Disappointed at the results, he decides that if he were rich he would have all the friends he needed. While he is robbing a bank, the watch falls and breaks—leaving the universe forever frozen in time.

Themes

Similar themes are explored in “The Prime Mover”, “A Most Unusual Camera”, “Mr. Dingle, the Strong” and “The Four of Us Are Dying”.

Parodies

The idea was parodied on an episode of Duck Tales. In the episode, called "Time Teasers", the Beagle Boys steal the Time Teaser, a pocket watch with the ability to speed up a person so much the rest of the world seems motionless, from Gyro Gearloose. They use the watch to steal the money from Scrooge McDuck's money bin. Later, the Beagle Boys break the watch while on a freighter trying to take the money out of the country. They go back in time, where they are captured by pirates.

Scrooge, Gyro, and Huey, Dewey, and Louie go back in time in Gyro's time tub. The pirates are distracted as the Beagle Boys sing Barbershop Quartet music at the captain's birthday party. Gyro succeeds in connecting the time tub's controls to the freighter, and brings them all back to the present. The Beagle Boys are sent back to jail, and Scrooge's money is returned.

The idea was parodied in a Halloween episode of The Simpsons. In the episode, Bart and Milhouse order a stopwatch from a magazine ad and find that with it, they can stop time. They pull pranks on all the citizens of Springfield. The Mayor calls a town meeting, where the boys prank him by continually changing him into humiliating outfits. Anticipating their presence, Mayor Quimby had coated the floor with an ultra-violet powder, which revealed Bart and Milhouse to be the pranksters.

The town become a bloodthirsty mob, who chases the boys with pitchforks. Bart and Milhouse freeze the mob and decide to find a scapegoat, only to drop and break the watch. They realise they are free from oppressive adults and indulge in hedonism, however they soon decide they miss their parents. They order a watch repair book, and repair the watch; however, it takes them fifteen years (subjective) to do so. Lisa Simpson is the only one who notices that Bart's room is full of new items and he is fifteen years older.

The plot was also central to the movie Clockstoppers

[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for A Kind of a Stopwatch (The Twilight Zone) ]

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