Bad Waitress

Remember Harvey Keitel in Bad Lieutenant? It’s surprising that Melissa McCarthy hasn’t played the server from hell in a movie called Bad Waitress. There are so many possibilities and you don’t even need a script. It could be filmed a little like reality TV by placing the comic star in almost any twenty-four Greek diner and letting the kitchen provide the gags. The movie might open with a late middle-aged foursome arriving for dinner carrying with them an ice chest and their own Styrofoam containers in which the leftovers would be taken. Everyone is naturally gluten adverse and on the look out for itinerant trans fats permeating the atmosphere of these establishments (even when they don’t touch fried foods) much like third hand smoke. The women are ordering breakfasts when it’s dinner time and if it’s a breakfast gathering the men will be ordering dinner. Here’s a simple order that would have great comic potential: two poached eggs and a lightly cooked waffle. Just try to make that order in almost any diner in the city and you will get one poached egg with a burnt waffle. Naturally there's a reason for everything and this continuing state of affairs is not the result of a communication problem but because short order cooks tend to be angry people. Wouldn’t you be, if you had to endure the abuse they take on a daily basis? So it’s a breakfast and one of the men are ordering the following dinner menu: chicken rice soup (hot) and a triple decker turkey club with seven grain bread as a concession to abolitionists who want to rid the world of white flour. Naturally the soup is cold with the sandwich coming on white toast. Here's where our hefty actress famous for her explosive comic energy comes to the fore. Naturally she plays a Russian who trained in the Gulag. You may remember the senseless gun shot in Chekhov’s The Three Sisters in which Solyony the disaffected soldier kills the Baron. Here’s the place where our Melissa McCarthy character will have her big scene, nodding calmly towards her customer as she takes back the order, disappearing behind the kitchen doors and sending the dishes flying with a crash that is heard around the world as a hit on YouTube.