Dr. Laurence Erhardt

Dr. Laurence "Larry" Erhardt is a fictional character and one of the two original villains on the cult television show Mystery Science Theater 3000. He was played by Josh "J. Elvis" Weinstein.

Role

Dr. Erhardt is a mad scientist and was Dr. Clayton Forrester's first assistant. He is a very different character from Forrester's later assistant, TV's Frank. He is more high-spirited than Frank, speaks with a high, squeaky voice, has curly black hair, and thick glasses. Erhardt is himself a "mad scientist" like Forrester, whereas Frank is neither a scientist nor, for the most part, mad. Just like Frank, however, Erhardt goes through many tortures by Dr. Forrester. His catchphrase was to, after soberly describing a horrible movie's plot or some other dire scenario, cheerily proclaim "Enjoy!"

The Mads perform a commercial for their fictitious drive-in restaurant, "Clay and Lar's Flesh Barn"

Little is known of Erhardt's past save that he became a "mad scientist" while working at a zoo; he went mad when, in his own words: "...they promised me students, but all I got were monkeys! Monkeys! Monkeys! So I took off my wetsuit, dropped that hedge clipper, and walked out of that zoo forever!" Any additional details are left for the viewers to fill in themselves since MST3K was, after all, "just a show", and the viewers should "really just relax".

Eventually finding employment at Gizmonic Institute, he became Dr. Forrester's assistant and worked with him to launch Joel Robinson into space, where the pair conducted their movie-watching experiments on him.

Dr. Erhardt was only on the show for the KTMA season and the nationally telecast Season 1. When Frank was first introduced on the show and Joel asked what happened to Dr. Erhardt, Frank simply held up a milk carton with Erhardt's picture on it saying, "He's missing". Since Best Brains, the production company behind MST3K, discouraged the replaying of Season 1 episodes and had no rights to the KTMA episodes, Erhardt fell into obscurity, since few fans had actually had a chance to see him. After the milk carton reference, he was mentioned only once more, in episode #313 - "Earth vs. the Spider" featuring a scene where a policeman closely resembling Erhardt is eaten by a giant spider, and Joel and the bots speculated that this was the true fate of Erhardt.

Behind the scenes

Dr. Forrester and Dr. Erhardt were first shown in episode K06, during the show's original season on KTMA TV23. During this season, and season 1, J. Elvis Weinstein (who was credited under his real name Josh Weinstein) held a dual role as both Dr. Erhardt and the voice of Tom Servo, and he also provided the voice of Gypsy during the KTMA years (replaced in season one by Jim Mallon). Weinstein, the youngest of the MST3K creators, left the show after its first nationally telecast season due to creative differences once the show began being scripted instead of being ad-libbed. His youth and relative inexperience was also said to have rubbed his older co-workers the wrong way. In an interview, he stated the show simply quit being fun for him when they moved from KTMA to The Comedy Channel because it became "a business".

External links

• Dr. Laurence Erhardt at the Internet Movie Database