Episode no. Season 5
Episode 4 Featured music Nathan Van Cleave Original air date October 18, 1963 | Directed by John Rich Production code 2609 | |
Written by Rod Serling
(based on an unpublished story by Michael D. Rosenthal) | ||
"A Kind of a Stopwatch" is an episode of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone. Star Pulse named it one of the top ten episodes of the series.
Contents
Plot
Patrick McNulty is a self-important boor in his 40s. One day, he is summoned by his boss. He is delighted, believing that his frequent contributions to the suggestion box have earned him recognition. His boss, however, says that all of McNulty's suggestions deal with fields of enterprise in which the company is not involved. The boss fires McNulty for wasting his time.
McNulty goes to a bar, where he drives away the other patrons with his opinions about a sporting event. The bar owner requests that McNulty patronize another establishment. McNulty ignores him and buys a drink for the sole remaining patron, a drunk. The drunk gives McNulty his stopwatch. Thinking it an odd gift, McNulty quickly discovers that it pauses the passage of time for everyone and everything, except the watch holder.
McNulty tries to show his former boss the power of the stopwatch. McNulty says it can be used to make their company the largest in the world. His boss dismisses him. Before leaving, McNulty uses the stopwatch mischievously to rearrange random things in the office. Returning to the bar, he tries to demonstrate the power of the watch to the customers, but eventually realizes that no one else is aware of time being suspended.
McNulty uses the stopwatch to break into a bank vault, but while carting out a pile of cash he drops the watch. It breaks, leaving time permanently frozen. Unaware of a way to repair it, McNulty runs around in a panic, begging the frozen people to talk or move.
Adaptation
The television episode was later adapted as an episode of The Twilight Zone Radio Dramas series—under the title "A Kind of Stopwatch"—featuring Lou Diamond Phillips in the lead role.
Parodies, pastiches, and allusions
A nearly identical premise appears in the novel The Girl, the Gold Watch & Everything (1962).
Ideas from this episode were used in "A Little Peace and Quiet", an episode in the 1985 revival of The Twilight Zone. "The Day the Earth Didn't Move Around Very Much", a 1997 episode of the Cartoon Network series Johnny Bravo written by Seth MacFarlane, is a loose parody of "A Kind of a Stopwatch" and also mentions The Twilight Zone by name.
A similar premise saw use in the 2002 movie, Clockstoppers.
The Simpsons 2003 Halloween episode "Treehouse of Horror XIV" features a segment called "Stop the World, I Want to Goof Off", in which Bart and Milhouse buy a stopwatch that stops time. They use it to pull pranks on Springfield's residents.
The Fermata (ISBN 9780679415862) is a 1994 novel by Nicholson Baker. It is about a man named Arno Strine who can stop time, and uses this ability to embark on a series of sexual adventures.