Every good sitcom has to have a black dude. Or, at least, this seems to be the theory that FOX’s New Girl was working by when, after they lost Damon Wayans Jr. to ABC’s Happy Endings following the filming of their pilot, they dealt with the situation by replacing his Coach character with another black dude named Winston (Lamorne Morris). Since then though, Happy Endings has done well for itself, and – after a period of hanging around the outskirts of the show as the token who the writers didn’t have much for – Morris has found his groove and started getting big laughs on New Girl. So it’s kind of hard to get upset about any perceived racism or whatever.
One thing that we can still get upset about, however, is that we never really got the chance to see a couple of comedic talents like Wayans and Jake Johnson play off of each other. They’ve both been great on their respective shows, and it’s kind of hard not to dream about what might have been had they been given a chance to play in the same sandbox. This is the part of the story where there’s good news. Deadline is reporting that Fox has just green lit a new comedy called Let’s Be Cops that’s coming from The Girl Next Door director Luke Greenfield. It’s about two idiot best friends who decide to start impersonating police officers in order to entertain themselves, and – here’s the big news – it’s set to star Wayans and Johnson as these two best friends.
Apparently the two characters’ hijinx eventually lead to them running afoul of a gangster and getting in over their heads, which definitely sounds like it could be a situation ripe for comedy, especially given the talent of the stars. Then again, that also sounds kind of similar to the plot of the Jerky Boys movie, and we all saw how that turned out (right?). Also, since Greenfield impressed with the surprisingly charming Girl Next Door back in 2004, he did unfortunately plague us with 2011’s Something Borrowed, which was one of the most contemptibly terrible romantic comedies of the last decade of contemptibly terrible romantic comedies. So his name in the credits can’t be taken as a sign of the film’s potential quality either way.
What do you say, fans of Happy Endings and New Girl? Do these two stars have what it takes to make this one a success? Or is this one doomed to be another unfortunate case of what might have been?
Correction: An earlier version of this post mislabeled the show as “NBC’s New Girl.”