2002-03-27 - 12:47 p.m.

It would be cool to put Ted Danson in a new movie. I haven’t seen him in much lately. There are many routes we could take with this proposal. For instance, maybe he’d be best-suited to star in a romantic comedy. This would give his fans a new side of their favorite sitcom star, aka TV’s Becker, the irascible Bronx doctor with the blind, black friend played by the guy who used to be one of the singers in the mid-’90s ska band Hepcat. Anyway, yes, Ted Danson. I picture him as a rich inventor, but yet a sweet sad sap, always getting screwed over by women fifteen years younger than him who are only out for his money and never take the time to see the real Ted. (Maybe his name in this flick could be Carter or Cooper or something sensitive and modern like that.)

So Carter, or Cooper as the case may be, is having no luck with the ladies. One day, however, he’s out in the food court of the mall, sipping coffee and peoplewatching. (Did I mention he’s a recovering alcoholic, just like on Cheers? This will be a more accurate description of the alcoholic lifestyle. They don’t all own bars, you know.) All of a sudden he’s struck by the beauty of a punk-rock retail employee (Scarlett Johansson) sauntering out of Express on her lunch break. She sits at one of the tables; Danson tries to get her attention with some juvenile antics (flicking hot coffee at her? Still brainstorming that*), which initially horrifies her, but later endears Cooper/Carter to her (Somehow. Again, brainstorming). She lets a smile slip, he picks up on it, and moves in with a killer pickup line: What Are You, a Senior? That’s the movie’s title, by the way. Then comes the usual romantic-comedy claptrap (shared Orange Juliuses, Danson dressed as a nun for some reason, Johansson biting her lower lip a lot) except there’s a twist: the new unlikely pair is continually dogged by a cop (Paul Giamatti, with a nod to Peter Sellers in Kubrick's Lolita) who’s sure the ingénue is underage (She isn’t; barely. Oh Ted!). That makes for many chase scenes that end with the couple jumping into Danson’s early-’90s model Corvette convertible.

Or maybe we could put Ted in a buddy/cop comedy with Will Smith. With a cameo by Whoopi Goldberg, this movie would reunite the case of Made in America for the first time. I don’t know. I’m not saying my ideas are the best; I just want to see Ted in a new movie, and soon.

*I got it! I forgot that he's supposed to be an inventor. So maybe he'll invent a hand-held, automatic shirt folder that creates a lot more snark-time for the Express employees, which Johansson clearly needs to allow her to come up with some biting Ghost World-style angsty lines.