let me preface this by saying it is difficult to get me to sit down and watch something, even if i know the thing is supposed to be good or i will like it. i won't even watch a short video tutorial. you didn't need to know any of that, but i want you to feel the impact of me actively looking for ways to watch the things this one actor has been in and carving out time to see them.
thankfully, i drew a silly thing that helped me find twitter user @PudiUnion, and in their bio was a masterdoc of danny's filmography. always thankful for fans who are both more feral and more organized than myself.
i do not know yet if i will watch everything (my god!) but i have watched enough for me to make this page!
watched
community
started 3/16/24, got through everything except the last three episodes by 3/31/24. finished the last three sometime in april.
this is how i discovered him! a mutual on twitter would sometimes RT stuff about community and i always saw him with donald glover. i got the vibe that abed was not a character most people thirstwatched for but He Was To Me... it only took a couple of tiktoks more and netflix showing me its pending removal to get me to finally give community a shot, and i ended up binging it.
i liked it a lot! i thought the first three seasons were the best, and the latter three were okay. i'm glad abed was there the entire time – i don't know if i would have kept watching otherwise. trobedison ot3.
the argument
watched 3/22/24. it was an absurd movie about painful people, but it seemed like the secondhand embarrassment was intentional, and the more i watched it (to screencap, lol) the more i appreciated it! i also liked that it was short.
i found this movie by searching (shamefully) "danny pudi kiss scenes" on youtube, prior to seeing any kiss scenes he had on community. enter this video. "let's get married and have a baby right away"? him getting picked up by sarah and put on the table? sarah asking "who's your daddy" and him going "you are" in the nastiest (positive) way? this movie was a targeted attack. i had to see the whole thing after seeing that.
brett is SUCHHHH a babygirl character. you know how hard it is for a one-off film character to be blorbo-able? yet he does so with flying colors! i love how much he cares about keeping up appearances with sarah until he doesn't. i love the cracks in his easygoing facade the night he goes it alone, and how he and sarah come back together. the character of all time.
babysplitters
watched 3/24/24. it opens with danny's character jeff having sex so like... Okay!!!!
the writing in this one wasn't great (especially in the first half) but the acting was good, and i was happy to see danny as a romcom (?) lead, especially alongside an asian woman. me-catered.
plus points for jeff having an anxiety montage (love!) and dilf danny. they also styled him impeccably - thank youuuuu costume department.
good girls get high
3/24/24 - i only watched the supercut. if he were my english teacher i don't know what would have happened to me. i'd have either worked extremely hard to do well or not been able to concentrate at all. he's cute in glasses :)
running
watched 4/5/24. augh!!!!! it was so heartfelt, i felt it would be rude to take screencaps. i love that he was moved to make this, and love that he shared it.
like i said on the about page of this shrine, i like thinking about any intersection of culture and country and home and belonging and identity, and danny has such a unique background, even without the family layer added. it was nice to feel part of that journey of learning more about his dad and trying to reconcile all his feelings about him.
i also like the extra layer he added, where you see how important it is for him to wrangle with this because he himself is a dad! i don't know – it spoke to the me who wants children but worries about what complexes and unwrangled-with issues she'll inevitably burden them with. it's reassuring to see parents who are aware of their issues effort to address them, for themselves and for their kids.
ducktales
started 4/11/24 – as of writing this page, i'm close to the end of s2 but taking a break because i am getting soooo into it and don't want to burn out the obsession high. it's SO much fun, and huey is so cute. (all the ducks are!)
update 9/14/24 – i love it so much.
smurfs: the lost village
watched 9/11/24. i've not once ever really cared about the smurfs, but i looked up clips of brainy smurf (for *gestures to shrine* obvious reasons) and found him cute enough to watch the movie. it wasn't... very well written... but it was visually nice. again, brainy is cute. he's like huey!!
after the sun fell
watched 11/9/24 (reverse of when i watched the smurfs!). very strange movie. it was rewritten from being a play apparently, and it DOES feel like a play, but not a very well-written one. in parts i understood well what it was trying to do and appreciated it, but the script felt all over the place and it was weirdly edited. low budget and it showed.
i wonder why he did this. i can't even really say he was good in it bc the script n editing were both so weird that it feels more like he was doing the best he could with what he was given. still it was entertaining to see him in Situations (i will never recover from the migraine scene!)
miscellaneous things i've seen/listened to
- the cougartown clip where abed shows up
- carpool karaoke with alison brie, where they sing bonfire
- "missionary positions" - he plays a mormon
- where the magic happens, with funny or die
- lots of interviews! i'll link my favorites in the videos page.
- "this duckburg life", a podcast hosted by huey duck
to watch
- mythic quest
after the sun fellsmurfs: the lost village- flora and ulysses
- somebody i used to know
- powerless
- everything else on that doc...