Amanda Bynes hospitalized on 5150 hold, latest sad chapter for ex-Nickelodeon star

For whatever reason, there has been a part of us hoping throughout this entire Amanda Bynes meltdown that perhaps this former star of “The Amanda Show” was just pulling a Joaquin Phoenix and trying to have some fun at America’s expense, and that maybe she was not quite as insane as the press was making her out to be. As easy as it is to joke about wacky people, you don’t want to see someone really lose themselves, in particular when they were at point so talented.

So maybe, the report coming from TMZ today is a good thing that that Bynes has been placed on a 5150 psychiatric hold in California, meaning that she is being kept involuntarily for 72 hours in order to undergo serious mental evaluation. She was allegedly found starting a fire in the driveway of an elderly woman, who did not even know what was going on at her resident until the police showed up and informed her.

Now of course, there are a few questions that come out of something like this: Can Amanda recover first of all, and then attempt some sort of comeback? In the world of extremely-troubled young stars this is what we like to call rock bottom, but it’s what may have helped Britney Spears reach the other side and start to get her life back together following her infamous meltdown. While you may not see it in the midst of her calling Drake “ugly” and then “gorgeous” and then “ugly” again, she was at one point one of the most-talented young physical comics on TV. Had she stayed on the straight and narrow, she could have been an excellent “Saturday Night Live” cast member, perhaps even more so than her fellow “All That” alum Kenan Thompson. (Another one of her former co-stars in Nick Cannon has also done rather well for himself.)

Instead, this is where we’ll at; and while we have no interest whatsoever in writing about every single thing that she posts on Twitter (given that there are at least a trillion more important things in the world), we’ll let you know if there is anything else important that breaks.

Photo: Nickelodeon