I designed a system for Gods.
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— Elroy, "Lawnmower Maintenance and Postnatal Care". |
Elroy Patashnik is former scientist and inventor. He was once a leading pioneer in the field of Virtual reality and the popularity of his inventions made him high profile and in demand back in the 1990's. However, when the novelty of VR wore off his celebrity faded and he fell on hard times. He eventually grew tired of living off of his past acomplishments and peddling his outdated technologies out of his RV camper. He took the opportunity to reinvent himself at Greendale Community College. Elroy joined the "Save Greendale Committee and became the head of the school's I.T. department. His first appearance was in Lawnmower Maintenance and Postnatal Care. He is portrayed by actor Keith David. |
Character history[]
During the 2015 semester at Greendale Community College, Elroy Patashnik sold Dean Pelton a VR machine through his company Virtu Good. At his RV he was later approached by a representative of the school named Jeff Winger. A request to get a refund for the VR machine led to a heated argument with Jeff about how bad his inventions were. After throwing his visitor out he realized Jeff was right and went to Greendale to give them a refund. He found Dean Pelton in his office unwilling to unplug himself from the machine. Elroy entered the simulation and distracted Pelton long enough for Jeff to remove the Dean. Afterwards, Pelton thanked Elroy for his help and suggested he enrol at Greendale to find a new purpose. The next day Elroy took Pelton up on his offer and Jeff introduced him to the Save Greendale Committee ("Lawnmower Maintenance and Postnatal Care").
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Elroy parked his RV on campus and that night encountered a pantsless Britta running around the school grounds. He gave her a pair of his trousers and escorted her back to the study room where he found the committee dealing with a negative City College attack ad about Greendale. He and Britta left to get coffee for the group and returned to his RV where they briefly bonded over similar musical tastes ("Basic Crisis Room Decorum"). He was later given an official position at the school and put in charge of IT when the original department head went missing. His first assignment was to fix the school's wi-fi problem which turned out to be a birds nest on top of the router. Along with Abed he helped protect the eggs in the nest until they hatched and helped the surviving bird go back into the wild ("Queer Studies & Advanced Waxing").
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When Jeff was banned from school grounds due to a "fight" with a student, Elroy helped fashion a makeshift telepresence robot to enable him to sneak back on campus ("Laws of Robotics & Party Rights"). Elroy was unable to prevent a computer hacker from getting into the school's database and leaking the Lunch Lady's emails. The hacker threatened to leak all of the committee members emails as well unless a comedian named Gupta Gupti Gupta was prevented from performing on campus. Elroy and the others were convinced by Britta to not give into the hackers demand but regretted it when their personal information was made public ("Basic Email Security").
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Elroy's occasional nonchalance caused the group to suspect that he didn't like them. While Elroy ended up bonding with the group and sharing a few vulnerable moments with them over a 1990s board game called "The Ears Have It", he left quickly when Jeff showed up. Thinking Elroy's dislike of him was something he needed to fix, Jeff arranged a concert by Elroy's favourite band Natalie Is Freezing for one of Greendale's alumni dances. It turned out Elroy had been dating the band's leader Julie and had been emotionally damaged by the relationship. He shared this with Britta who told him not to be overly protective of himself. This led Elroy to finally confront Julie for her manipulative ways. It was also suggested that Elroy had been avoiding Jeff because of his public facade of coolness, which reminded him of Julie. Jeff and Elroy ended up sharing a drink and developing a friendship ("Advanced Safety Features").
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Elroy participated in the making of the Committee's science fiction B movie, providing CGI models from an old project of his to the film. He played a robotic character called Minotaur Man in the movie, improvising the name of the movie's main villain in the process ("Intro to Recycled Cinema"). He also participated in the group's exposing of grifter and Grifting Professor Roger DeSalvo. The latter occasion again saw him having poor memory with details of the group's lives, since he believed that the study group was originally formed by Britta in an attempt to have sex with Troy ("Grifting 101").
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In order to deliver Dean Pelton's giant fibreglass hand to an online buyer, Elroy agreed to take it to the buyer on the roof of his RV. Because the entire Save Greendale Committee (sans Chang) surprisingly accompanied him, he ended up miscalculating the amount of gas he would need and so the RV got stuck in a Rocky Mountain pass with no help available. The intense situation strained the group's inner relationships, but Elroy was the first to admit his own failures, initiating a cycle of apologies within the group. There was a rift between the Dean and the Committee concerning the hand, but Elroy missed their reconciliation and bonding over the hand since he was pooping in the bushes ("Basic RV Repair and Palmistry").
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Elroy got dragged into Greendale's secret paintball tournament along with other Committee members. His early strategy of pretending he did not know what paintball was failed to convince others. When the Committee began investigating the secret identity of paintball assassin named Silver Ballz, Elroy teamed with Britta in order to access a thumb drive containing information about the assassin. Later, the adrenaline-driven pair took down five of Greendale's kitchen workers in a paintball battle. Elroy was punished along with the rest of the Committee for their childish actions by Frankie ("Modern Espionage").
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When the Committee attended Garrett Lambert's wedding, Elroy went along and kept on bonding with the group. The group's more unpleasant sides took hold of them during the wedding and this also happened to Elroy. In an effort to make up for this, he lapsed into his old habit of encouraging white people about even the most ordinary things they did. It is something he had done while working in the technology industry in between 2006-2009, because he believed that otherwise his voice and his face would have been a hindrance to his career. Eventually this misfired, as him loudly congratulating Garrett on marrying his cousin Stacy contributed to turning the wedding atmosphere uncomfortable ("Wedding Videography").
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At the end of the year, Elroy left Greendale for the summer after accepting a job at LinkedIn. It was in California and he was eager to look up a high school friend in that area who recently got divorced. Elroy was unsure if he would return and said his farewells to the committee who was confused by his "Irish Goodbye". An imaginary version of Elroy is later seen as one part of Dean Pelton's vision of what the group's seventh year at Greendale should be like, sitting next to Shirley and a third black person ("Emotional Consequences of Broadcast Television").
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Trivia[]
- Elroy loves 90's bands including "Natalie Is Freezing, "Kneecap Jenny" and "Forlorn Embassy."
- Actor Keith David was previously on Community in the Season Three episode "Pillows and Blankets." He provided the voice over narration for the Ken Burns documentary homage.