I started watching Community recently because I heard it was leaving Netflix at the end of the month. Though I usually struggle to get into TV shows, it was very easy to start binging, and I'm now on Season 4 after a little over a week.

I'm really impressed by this show. What makes Community so good to me is that no character is purely likeable, both right off the bat and as you get to know them, and yet I find myself rooting for each of them anyway – even the most annoying ones.¹ I like that the writers and actors are unafraid to portray these characters as undeniably human, and that they trust their viewers, as humans themselves, to see their value. As far as modern sitcoms go, I get why it's one of the best, and it's gratifying to be able to see why it has such a committed following.

And in addition to joining the list of my favorite shows, Community has also given me a new actor to fawn over.

The beginning of the end.

man crush march

(Is this just a thing that happens to me now? I develop an obsession with some guy this time of the year before returning to my natural state of loving cartoons? I have got to get out of the house.)

Abed is one of my favorite characters on Community. He's odd in a way I'm charmed by, and it helps that he's portrayed by Danny Pudi, who I'd never seen in anything else but have pretty much fallen in love with since starting this show. I find him so handsome – I could wax poetic about his nose, but I'm embarrassing myself enough typing a wholeass blog post about my crush on him.

While I tend to lean towards fictional characters these days, I've always had celebrity crushes growing up, so this is not new to me. But usually I would have a few at a time² so my obsessiveness could be distributed across multiple objects of interest, maintaining some sort of balance.

I assumed that my interest in celebrities would wane over time. So far, I've found that to be true, at least with regard to frequency of occurrence. I thought this meant that the real estate celebrity crushes took in my brain would decrease accordingly as I got older, and it would free up some space in my mind for other things, like the Grown Up Matters I would have to start thinking about.

However, I feel that instead the intensity has filled the gap left by frequency. For lack of a better way to describe it, here is a visual:

I suppose I just feel more shaken by the things a celebrity crush can compel me to do, now that it happens maybe once a year. In one weekend, I watched two films Danny Pudi has starred in that I knew going in would be Just Okay³, and already have more of his filmography queued up. I take so many screenshots while watching Community that I spend an additional 5~10 minutes on a 24-minute episode. I see this man smile and behave like a cartoon wolf hitting itself on the head with a hammer in my bedroom at 1am, disturbing my poor sleeping angel of a dog in the process.

Who is this guy to make me do things, just because he has big beautiful brown eyes? Awful. Attraction is a disease.

the teengirl inside me is eternal

I'm exaggerating the agony of the crush. It's honestly very fun. I guess I've just been feeling a little insecure lately about how un-"adult" I feel in my mid-twenties, and that's why I feel so silly about stuff like having an intense celebrity crush – it's an indulgence I think I should outgrow (in favor of... dating? liking people I know? I don't know), even though no one around me has given me shit for it.⁴

But it seems equally silly to beat yourself up for something as harmless as liking a cute actor – especially one whose thoughts on his identity and his work actually really resonate with me, on top of his being cute and seeming like a good-natured guy. As far as celebrity crushes go, I could do way worse.

And I'm not even alone in recognizing how likeable this guy is! Danny Pudi has a not-insignificant (and mildly feral) fanbase online, at least according to Twitter and Letterboxd reviews of his filmography (one, two). It's kind of inspiring to see them be so loud about their love for him, to see how otherwise unremarkable movies can get so much attention thanks to the unabashed devotion of a fan.

Most of them seem pretty young, but not all of them are, and I like that – there's something so powerful about just liking something with your whole chest, at any age. It makes me question why I try so hard to deprive myself of that, why I think it's something you must let go of as soon as you join the workforce. I'm realizing that my preconceptions about becoming an adult are kind of unrealistic, and it took a celebrity crush to realize that that's something I should probably work on.

---

This post is long enough, so I leave you with a compilation of reactions I drew this past weekend after watching The Argument (2020), where Danny Pudi plays the most babygirl, me-catered character I've ever seen in my life. I'm learning not to be embarrassed by how insane that makes me. Good day.

Thank you, Danny, for reviving the dormant part of my brain that feels attraction to real human people. It's equally enjoyable and distressing.

---

1. This is not always the case for me – I usually have characters sorted definitively into "like them a lot!" or "really don't care about, no matter what."↩

2. K-pop groups made this very easy – they provide you with a boxed set of cute boys! It's impossible to like just one guy.↩

3. He delivers a good performance, but would I have seen these movies if he weren't in them? No! The things I watch for this man.↩

4. Perks of spending your formative years in Catholic school: You learn to feel guilty about everything you do, for absolutely no reason.↩