Talk:Jennette McCurdy/@comment-3419321-20110312195755

Several years ago, I saw an episode of the medical drama Strong Medicine, titled "Selective Breeding." It was about a young girl named Haley, with a bipolar disorder that was causing her to act hazardously violently.

(A side note : The girl was described as "bipolar" on the show, but some viewers stated that, in real life, some of the behavior Haley displayed would actually indicate schizophrenia.)

I was extremely impressed by the actress who played Haley. I never got her name, but I thought she was extraordinarily talented for being so young. She gave a truly haunting performance, especially in one scene where Haley was frantically telling her mother that she had to cut the heads off her stuffed animals because they were "coming to get [her]."

And the scene in which Haley was being taken to a mental institution, and she was tearfully pleading with her mother not to send her away ... That was chilling stuff.

Some years later, I chanced to see an episode of a teen sitcom called iCarly.

(Frankly, it was unavoidable in my household. My two siblings have been kind of obsessed with this show. Not like Mandy- or Nora-obsessed, mind you, but you know what I mean.)

I remember feeling struck by how familiar the actress who played Sam Puckett looked. I checked the opening credits, but the name - Jennette McCurdy - was unfamiliar to me. I'd never heard of her, but I felt certain that I'd seen her before ... though, for the life of me, I could not recall where.

Assuming that it was on another comedy, I began mentally running through various sitcoms that I'd seen recently, trying (with no success) to place her face.

Since that didn't pan out, I looked up her name on the Internet Movie Database (iMDB), and scrolled through her credits. A long list of television shows and movies that I'd never watched ... and then, I saw the telltale entry - Haley Campos, Strong Medicine, 2004.

Let me tell you, I was totally blown away.

Simply amazing. Jennette is a superb comedic actress, but I would really love to see her do more drama work. She is just incredible.