PUERTO PLATA, Dominican Republic — Wander Franco, the suspended Tampa Bay Rays shortstop charged in a sexual abuse case, was found guilty on Thursday but received a two-year suspended sentence.
Franco was arrested last year after being accused of having a four-month relationship with a girl who was 14 at the time, and of transferring thousands of dollars to her mother to consent to the illegal relationship.
Franco, now 24, also faced charges of sexual and commercial exploitation against a minor, and human trafficking.
Judge Jakayra Veras García said Franco made a bad decision as she addressed him during the ruling.
“Look at us, Wander,” she said. “Do not approach minors for sexual purposes. If you don’t like people very close to your age, you have to wait your time.”
Prosecutors had requested a five-year prison sentence against Franco and a 10-year sentence against the girl’s mother, who was found guilty and will serve the full term.
“Apparently she was the one who thought she was handling the bat in the big leagues,” Veras said of the mother and her request that Franco pay for her daughter’s schooling and other expenses.
Before the three judges issued their unanimous ruling, Veras orally reviewed the copious amount of evidence that prosecutors presented during trial, including certain testimony from 31 witnesses.
“This is a somewhat complex process,” Veras said.
More than an hour into her presentation, Veras said: “The court has understood that this minor was manipulated.”
As the judge continued her review, Franco looked ahead expressionless, leaning forward at times.
Franco, who was once the team’s star shortstop, had signed a $182 million, 11-year contract through 2032 in November 2021 but saw his career abruptly halted in August 2023 after authorities in the Dominican Republic announced they were investigating him for an alleged relationship with a minor. Franco was 22 at the time.
In January 2024, authorities arrested Franco in the Dominican Republic. Six months later, Tampa Bay placed him on the restricted list, which cut off the pay he had been receiving while on administrative leave.
He was placed on that list because he has not been able to report to the team and would need a new U.S. visa to do so.
While Franco awaited trial on conditional release, he was arrested again in November last year following what Dominican authorities called an altercation over a woman’s attention. He was charged with illegally carrying a semiautomatic Glock 19 that police said was registered to his uncle.
That case is still pending in court.
After the ruling, Major League Baseball issued a brief statement noting it had collectively bargained a joint domestic violence, sexual assault and child abuse policy “that reflects our commitment to these issues.”
“We are aware of today’s verdict in the Wander Franco trial and will conclude our investigation at the appropriate time,” MLB said.
Adames writes for the Associated Press. Associated Press writers Dánica Coto in San Juan, Puerto Rico and Ron Blum in New York contributed.
The first time Atsuko Okatsuka filmed a comedy special, 2022’s “The Intruder” for HBO and Max, she didn’t have health insurance. A lot has changed since then.
Instantly recognizable for her severe bowl haircut and “art teacher”-esque, maximalist fashion, the Los Angeles-based comedian has since become insured, hired an assistant, embarked on a world tour, amassed more than two million Instagram followers, met family members she didn’t know she had and filmed her second comedy special, “Father,” which was released June 13 on Hulu.
“I think I have, like, 12 agents or something, and I’m like, ‘Is that even a thing?’” Okatsuka says over Zoom. Wearing a purple, yellow and magenta colorblocked T-shirt, Okatsuka flashes aqua nails topped off with hot dog charms. “It comes with leveling up, right? Not to quote ‘Spider-Man,’ but … yeah, responsibility, right?”
The building blocks of Okatsuka’s life remain in place, though. Amid traveling the globe on her “Full Grown” tour, being interviewed by Stephen Colbert on “The Late Show” and Chelsea Handler on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” and being named one of Variety’s Top 10 Comics to Watch in 2022 (among other accolades), the Taiwanese Japanese stand-up still spends most of her time with her Grandma Li, her mother, and husband Ryan Harper Gray, who is an actor, director and producer and helps manage Okatsuka. Family members feature prominently in Okatsuka’s comedy, to such an extent that a lot of her sentences begin with “My grandmother…” and “My husband, Ryan…”
“I am an open book in that I truly want to connect with people,” Okatsuka says. “I’m just gonna end up telling you what’s happening in my life. That’s the only way I can try to connect with other humans.”
(Mary Ellen Matthews / Disney)
In this respect, Okatsuka jokingly refers to herself as codependent, but from a comedy standpoint, her familial riffing serves as a handy world-building device, building a sense of familiarity with audiences, who no doubt walk out of Okatsuka’s sets feeling like they really know her. “I am an open book in that I truly want to connect with people,” she says. “I’m just gonna end up telling you what’s happening in my life. That’s the only way I can try to connect with other humans. It just naturally happens to be that I am with my mom, grandma and Ryan a lot. I love that the fans have gotten to know the family. They can be Team Ryan. They could be Team Me. I think most often they’re Team Ryan. They’re like, ‘Oh, Atsuko did it again. She can’t find her keys.’”
Okatsuka’s scatterbrained qualities — like losing her keys, realizing she’s never once used the washer and dryer and depending on Gray to set up her Zoom calls — are not only endearing, they also have informed her special’s title of “Father.” As Okatsuka’s star rose, her fans have taken to calling her “Mother,” a mostly Gen Z slang term signaling approval. But to Okatsuka, a “mother” knows how to do things like use the washer and dryer and fill out paperwork correctly, which she remains willfully ignorant about. For example, she frequently tells a story about how she and Gray forgot to file their marriage certificate when they first got married in 2017. When Okatsuka went to put Gray on her health insurance in 2023, she learned there was no record of them being married. “What about the unorganized girls?” she asks her audience. “What about the b— that crumbles easily? We exist! We are not a monolith… No, no, no… I am Father.”
While Okatsuka has been doing stand-up for the better part of a decade, starting out with local sets at the Virgil and Dynasty Typewriter, she shot to viral fame during the pandemic when she posted a video of her (and her grandmother) suddenly “dropping” to Beyoncé’s “Yoncé” in unexpected locations like Little Tokyo and the grocery store. Generating millions of views, the #DropChallenge exploded, with everyone from Mandy Moore to Serena Williams emulating Okatsuka.
In addition to classic observational and absurdist comedy, part of Okatsuka’s charm is also that she has a real knack for tapping into internet humor. Across her social media channels, she dances and puts her own spin on TikTok skits and trends. A recent example is a clip of her doing Doechii’s “Anxiety” dance while her grandmother hovers in an attempt to feed her dumplings.
While “Father” is a self-deprecating jab at Okatsuka’s nondomestic qualities, the title also refers to Okatsuka’s recent reunion with her dad in Japan. This marks the beginning of a winding life journey, which Okatsuka has spoken of at length in her comedy, as well as in an episode of “This American Life” titled “I Coulda Grown Big In Japan.”
Her story began when Okatsuka’s parents, who met on a Japanese dating show, divorced shortly after her birth in 1988. At first, the comedian lived with her father in Chiba; later, she moved in with her mother and grandmother. But when her mother began having mental health struggles (Okatsuka’s mother was later diagnosed with schizophrenia), Okatsuka’s grandmother moved everyone to Los Angeles to be closer to her uncle in West L.A. At the time, Okatsuka’s grandmother told an 8-year-old Okatsuka they were going on a “two-month vacation.” But as eight weeks turned into years, Okatsuka started to wonder if perhaps she’d been kidnapped — another concept she’s worked into her sets. “We’re just like a chiller, more polite, Japanese ‘Jerry Springer’ show,” Okatsuka cracks of her familial backstory.
When asked what it meant to reconnect with her father, Okatsuka becomes somber. “It filled a lot of holes — like, questions that I had. Like, did my grandma kidnap me? I also learned your gut is often right.”
Technically, Okatsuka was kidnapped, if only because her father had full custody of her at the time. Okatsuka might joke about suffering from Stockholm syndrome, but she really is best friends with her grandma, who was her primary caregiver in childhood and now has her own social media fan base.
“That’s why I got into comedy,” Atsuko says. “So that other people can feel seen, and I feel seen too.”
(Lee Jameson)
Ironically, it didn’t occur to Okatsuka to pursue comedy until she was in her early 20s. Her first exposure to stand-up was when, in eighth grade, a friend slipped her a Margaret Cho DVD during a church sermon. “I was like, this is badass. But nowhere did my brain go, ‘That’s gotta be me,’” Okatsuka says. “I dreamed pretty small. When I was a kid in L.A., my dream was to work at an ice cream parlor … And then at 17, I did. [I worked at] Cold Stone Creamery in West L.A. I said, ‘Now what? I’ve already reached my goal. I peaked at 17. I have to dream more.’”
Okatsuka spent a year and a half attending UC Riverside and then transferred to CalArts, where she majored in creative writing and film/video. “You can just get in with an art portfolio; you don’t need grades,” she deadpans. “My interest was in the arts. I wasn’t an academic.” After art school, Okatsuka decided to really make a go at stand-up amid juggling a handful of jobs — dog walking, teaching cinema at College of the Canyons in Santa Clarita and dance fitness in Atwater Village. “But stand-up comedy was always first for me,” she says. “Sometimes I would, you know, take off from teaching community college and get Ryan to substitute for me. It was totally illegal.”
In 2018, Okatsuka got her now-signature bowl haircut, which has made her so recognizable that fans all over the world show up to her sets wearing bowl-cut wigs. She might kid around about being stuck with it (“because my brand,” she says in “Father”), but she really does delight in its permanence, simply because it makes people so happy. Plus, her fans went to the trouble of buying and customizing lookalike wigs. “I mean, in this economy? They gotta be able to wear their wigs again the next time they come to see me.”
Fans will get their chance to break out the wigs again. After “Father”, Okatsuka is heading back on the road in September for the Big Bowl Tour. But there’s a bittersweet element to Okatsuka’s always-expanding schedule. The busier she gets, the less time there is to spend with her mother and grandmother. “The point of all this is we can all be together more, and we could be that happy family that we were trying to be when we first moved to America,” she says. “That’s kind of what I’m talking about in my new show. It’s a real thing that I’m figuring out right now.”
For the time being, Okatsuka has signed her mother up for Instagram, where she can see her daughter anytime she likes. “It’s taking a minute to teach her these things, but at least she can look at what I’m up to,” Okatsuka says. “You just click on my face, and you see what I’m up to that day. And that’s how she keeps up with me. We can do phone calls, but there’s nothing like being able to see your favorite person in your hand.”
Ultimately, Okatsuka revels in the opportunity to connect with as many people as possible, wherever she might be in the world. “That’s why I got into comedy, right? So that other people can feel seen, and I feel seen too.”
Arizona second baseman Ketel Marte was in tears after a heckler made comments about his late mother during the Diamondbacks’ game against the Chicago White Sox on Tuesday night at Rate Field.
That fan has been banned indefinitely from all MLB parks, The Times learned Wednesday morning.
Diamondbacks manager Torey Lovullo put his arm around Marte during a pitching change in the bottom of the seventh inning in an effort to comfort the two-time All Star. According to the Diamondbacks broadcast, Marte had also been crying while kneeling behind second base.
Lovullo later said on the Diamondbacks broadcast that he told Marte in that moment: “I love you and I’m with you, and we’re all together, and you’re not alone. And no matter what happens, no matter what was said or what you heard, that guy’s an idiot and shouldn’t have an impact on you.”
According to the Arizona Republic, Lovullo said he heard the comments made toward Marte during the player’s at-bat during the top of the seventh inning and that he and bench coach Jeff Banister asked for the responsible fan to be removed.
MLB confirmed that the heckler had been ejected from the stadium.
“We commend the White Sox for taking immediate action in removing the fan,” the league said in a statement emailed to The Times.
The Diamondbacks and White Sox did not immediately respond to requests for comments from The Times.
Marte is in his 11th MLB season. He played the first two years with the Seattle Mariners and has been with the Diamondbacks since 2017. His mother, Elpidia Valdez, died in a car accident in the Dominican Republic the same year.
Marte did not speak to reporters after the Diamondbacks’ 4-1 win, during which he went two for four with a solo home run in the first inning.
“I’ve known Ketel for nine years, and he’s had some unbelievable, unbelievably great moments, and some hardships as well, and some really, really tough moments in his life, and I know those,” said Lovullo, who has been the Diamondbacks manager since 2017. “And the end of the day, we’re human beings, and we have emotions, and I saw him hurting, and I wanted to protect him.”
How best to bond with a teenage boy? When my son, Hugo, finished his A-levels, I knew I wanted to “take a journey” with him, to have some sort of final trip before he left home. Ideally a journey that would leave both of us with a few happy memories.
Easier said than done: a midlife woman and a teenage boy are completely different beasts. I wanted to walk. He wanted to be driven. I wanted to get up early. He wanted to sleep in. I wanted unusual food. He wanted pub grub. I wanted to be safely active. He wanted to lie on a sofa or scramble along a vertiginous precipice. I wanted conversation. He didn’t (at least not with me, hour after hour). The problem of where to go seemed insurmountable.
But there was one activity we both enjoyed: making and building things. Could this be the answer to our “bonding” trip? When I suggested we do a three-day stone-carving course on the South Downs and then a wood-turning class deep in an East Sussex forest, he nodded.
We could spend our days together, but not conversing. The start time would be somewhere between his and my preferred rising hours. Our creative endeavours could be interspersed with eating at pubs that catered to each of our food preferences. And the travel requirements were minimal. We would base ourselves at my mum’s in Lewes (but there’s a great choice of local accommodation, including a youth hostel in a converted Sussex farmhouse in Southease on the South Downs that offers options from private rooms to bell tents). To boot, we may come away with more than just a few memories. Conran-ish wooden bowls and Hepworth-ish stone sculptures swum before my eyes. Yes, this could work, we agreed.
Annabel Abbs and her son’s creations. Photograph: Annabel Abbs
And so, with a little trepidation, we turned up at the Skelton Workshop just after Hugo’s last A-level exam. In a hidden crevice of the South Downs, not far from Hassocks, the Skelton stone-carving studio is near the home of the eminent, deceased sculptor and letter-cutter, John Skelton (students can visit Skelton’s nearby sculpture garden during courses). The vast barn-style workshop looks over slanting vineyards which also contained – to our surprise and delight – a very cool wine bar and restaurant. The Artelium wine estate offers vineyard tours and tasting sessionsand, having discovered that the wines had won multiple awards, its alfresco terrace became our lunch spot (charcuterie boards and homemade bread) for the next three days.
Artelium vineyard and restaurant
But first we had to choose whether we wanted to carve letters or sculpture. We both opted for sculpture. We then had to make another decision: what sort of stone? Hugo chose a beautiful green granite, while I selected a large block of Italian soapstone. Being disorganised, neither of us had arrived with any ideas. The course tutors provided books to inspire us and – after a little discussion with our eight fellow students – we both decided to go abstract. After three days of open-air chiselling, hammering, sanding and polishing, we had sculptures deemed good enough for the end-of-course show. To our (continued) surprise, a crowd arrived for the “private viewing” in which our sculptures were publicly praised by the tutors. We celebrated with an evening meal in The Gun, a gastropub in Chiddingly that serves stone-baked pizzas and something it calls a “gut-loving burrito bowl” composed of sweetcorn, black beans, guacamole and all the other things anathema to Hugo but much-loved by his mother.
The next day, we drove 30 minutes east, to a privately owned woodland just outside Battle. Here, we hoped to master the ancient art of wood- turning using pole lathes, now a heritage craft. Green woodworker Amy Leake – youthful, petite, impressively muscled – had set up our pole lathes beneath the shade of a vast, spreading oak. After introducing us to our lathes (simple contraptions Amy made herself, in which sawn branches, rope and a treadle turn the wood), she showed us how to axe an enormous chunk of wood into something that would ultimately become a bowl. As sunlight poured through the green foliage above us, wood chips whizzed through the grainy air and sweat ran from our brows. Turning on a pole lathe requires strength, stamina and skill. Thanks to Amy’s expert guidance, by the end of the day we were the proud (if exhausted) owners of two beautiful bowls.
Crazy golf in Hastings. Photograph: LH Images/Alamy
To recover, we headed to nearby Hastings for fish and chips on the beach followed by a game of crazy golf on the sea front. Tired after all that treadling it was then back to Lewes for some well-deserved sleep.
I’m looking at our (proudly displayed) sculptures and bowls as I write. They always make me smile. Not because I see the embryonic makings of two artistic geniuses, but because they remind me of the connection Hugo and I made while working with our hands, of the shared blood, sweat and laughter. Besides, the bowls are perfect for serving crisps. I’ll take that over a string of digital photographs any day.
Skelton Workshops is running a three-day beginner’s workshop from July 29-31 for £216 including all materials. Amy Leake runs a range of green woodworking classes(£200 for two people per day) including brush-making and spoon-carving
Warning: This article discusses spoilers for the twisty new horror film “Barbarian.” If you haven’t seen it yet, check out our nonspoilery review here and more with the cast and director here.
That one-word title looms large over “Barbarian,” one of the most delightfully twisted horror films of 2022, in which a woman named Tess (Georgina Campbell) stumbles into a nightmare when she finds her rental house already occupied by a stranger.
It’s a roller-coaster horror ride filled with suspense, scares, surprising laughs and some of the most delicious cinematic twists since last year’s “Malignant.”
What Tess discovers in the basement leads her into a labyrinth of unimaginable horrors — some closer than you might think. But who’s the real monster in filmmaker Zach Cregger’s Airbnb-of-horrors solo feature debut?
Bill Skarsgard stars in “Barbarian.”
(20th Century Studios)
The nice guy and the meet-cute from hell
At first, signs point to said handsome stranger, Keith (“It” star Bill Skarsgard, also an executive producer, cannily playing off his Pennywise persona), who turns up the charm to get Tess to lower her guard and spend the night, else brave the storm outside. After a few nice gestures and good conversation, she ignores her instincts and says yes — even as Cregger’s script and Skarsgard’s delivery create a sizzling ambiguity around Keith’s motivations.
“My only note to Bill [Skarsgard] was, ‘Don’t lean into creepy. Lean into nice,’” Cregger said. “The nicer you are and the more disarming and friendly and appealing and nonthreatening that you behave, the more the audience is going to be convinced that you’re bad.”
Inspired in part by security expert Gavin de Becker’s book “The Gift of Fear,” “Barbarian” conjures a minefield of misogynist red flags for its heroine to navigate even before she crosses paths with shouting local Andre (Jaymes Butler), sitcom actor AJ (Justin Long) and a violent tunnel dweller known as the Mother (played expressively by Matthew Patrick Davis).
“[Keith] insists on bringing her luggage in, he makes her tea that she said she didn’t want, he says, ‘Pretty name,’” said Cregger. “These are not appropriate things to be doing in this situation. But he’s not aware of it, because he thinks he’s being nice.”
Is there something more sinister about Keith that Tess can’t see? Does it have anything to do with the doors that open and close in the middle of the night? The question hangs in the air as Tess makes a series of chilling discoveries in the basement, where a hidden door leads to a shadowy hallway and a secret room where very bad things have clearly occurred.
Beyond lies yet another door leading to the subterranean lair of the film’s apparent titular monster — the volatile Mother.
A creepy basement, or bonus square footage? Hidden rooms lead to unexpected terrors in “Barbarian.”
(20th Century Studios)
The mother under the stairs
“She was described as being 7 feet tall, naked, her face looking like it was the product of inbreeding, and having an impossible strength,” said Davis, the 6-foot-8-inch actor and musician behind the most surprising character in “Barbarian.” He was cast after a Zoom audition in which he stripped to his underwear and mimicked biting the head off a rat with a pickle he found in his fridge.
“I was very aware that this could be funny in the right way or the wrong way,” Davis said of his “Barbarian” performance. “When you’re in it, you have no idea how it’s going to be perceived. You’re aware that it’s a big swing and that it is bonkers and that, you know, you’re sitting there naked in Bulgaria with boobs taped to your chest. Are people going to buy this?”
Before filming began last summer, he received advice from legendary creature performer Doug Jones, including the fine line between physical expression and nonverbal overacting and another handy pro tip: Get prescription creature contacts made, else risk biting it while chasing your co-stars through those dark tunnels.
You’re sitting there naked in Bulgaria with boobs taped to your chest. Are people going to buy this?
— “Barbarian” star Matthew Patrick Davis
But Mother’s backstory is also the film’s most tragic. To inform her emotional state, Davis studied profiles of feral children and adults, diving deep into “a dark, disturbing YouTube rabbit hole” of research. As he sat in a chair for three hours getting into prosthetics and makeup each day, he watched the videos to prepare.
“It opened me up to the reality of the lives of people that have been deeply abused, raised in cages, raised like animals, kept in the dark and never spoken to in their formative years,” he said. “It allowed me to have empathy for this character. This is not just a scary character for scariness’ sake. If you’ve seen the movie, you know that she’s a victim.”
“I think that she’s the most empathetic character in the movie. She has never had a chance,” echoes Cregger, who also credits Davis with inspiring him to write certain gestures into Mother’s well-worn maternity VHS tape, which come full circle in the film’s bittersweet final scene. “And Matthew plays it with such tenderness.”
The sins of the father
After introducing Mother, the textbook horror movie monster we expect, Cregger challenges us throughout the film to reconsider who the actual barbarian of the story is. First seen in a Reagan-era flashback, Frank (Richard Brake, who starred recently in Amazon’s “Bingo Hell” and killed Bruce Wayne’s parents in “Batman Begins”) is her inverse — an average suburban family man on the outside and a true monster within.
Borrowing from serial killer films “Angst” (1983) and “Elephant” (both Gus Van Sant’s 2003 feature and the 1983 Alan Clark short of the same name), Cregger builds unease as the camera follows Frank to the store, where he stocks up on a suspicious grocery list, and as he stalks a young woman to her home.
It is revealed that he has kidnapped, raped and impregnated several women in the secret chambers beneath his house without repercussions for decades, and that Mother is the daughter of another of his victims, born into miserable captivity.
But it’s telling that it’s not Tess who learns Frank’s horrible truth in the film. Instead, it’s AJ (Long, playing deftly against type) whoruns from Mother to a section of the tunnels where even she dares not follow.
Justin Long stars as AJ, the owner of the rental house, in “Barbarian.”
(20th Century Studios)
Enter the Hollywood actor
Introduced cruising carefree down Pacific Coast Highway singing along to Donovan’s “Riki Tiki Tavi,” the narcissistic Hollywood star has recently stepped into his own version of a nightmare: an accusation of sexual assault that threatens to unravel his successful career.
“Because I’m an actor, and I know the world of actors very well, I was writing from an amalgam of people in my life,” Cregger said of conceiving the character of AJ. “I was trying to think of, ‘What’s this guy’s horror movie?’ Before he gets into the real horror movie — what’s the horror movie that he thinks he’s in? The collapse of your career and reputation due to your own bad behavior. This guy thinks his world is ending.”
AJ, who at first appears to be a ridiculous comedic figure, is revealed to be arguably the scariest character in the film. In Detroit to liquidate his rental home to cover his impending legal fees, he is the embodiment of male privilege and casual misogyny, his puffed-up bravado masking an inherent cowardice and refusal to take accountability for his actions. (Although not explicitly addressed in the film, Cregger says he deliberately wrote the men of “Barbarian” to be white males.)
When AJ discovers the ailing Frank and judges him by his brutal crimes, the audience is invited to wonder: Just how different is he from the monster staring back at him?
Frank, at least, seems to know he can’t escape what he’s done. AJ’s brief moment of clarity reverts to gaslighting self-preservation as he commits one final heinous act, attempting to hide his true nature behind a well-practiced nice guy veneer — a quality Long borrowed from watching men deliver empty apologies on “The Bachelorette.”
“There’s a glimmer of accountability,” said Long, “and I just love that Zach refuses to take the conventional way out.”
As for Tess, it’s her innate sense of empathy — the one that repeatedly sends her toward danger to help others, at her own peril — that helps her understand Mother before she sets them both free. “She’s someone that is used to traumatic situations and is able to understand how to survive in this situation,” said Campbell. “By the end of the film, I feel like she gets her own agency and is able to get out of the pattern she found herself in again and again and again.”
The scene: Ginny, 16, is carrying an unwanted pregnancy. She’s seeking an abortion. During a preconsultation, a clinic provider asks if she needs more time to decide. No, says the teen, she’s sure.
There’s no proverbial wringing of hands around the character’s decision. No apologizing for her choice. Why? Because it’s not for us to judge. It’s a personal matter, despite all the politicization around reproductive rights that might have us believe otherwise.
Opinions, debates and legislative fights around abortion have raged since Roe vs. Wade was adjudicated by the Supreme Court in 1973, then overturned in 2022. It’s no secret why such a lightning-rod issue is rarely touched by series television. Alienating half the country is bad for ratings. Exceptions include breakthrough moments on shows such as “Maude,” “The Facts of Life” and “Jane the Virgin,” but even those episodes were careful to weigh the sensitivity of the political climate over a transparent depiction of their character’s motivations and experience.
Another pitfall is that subplots featuring abortion storylines are hard to pull off without feeling like a break from scheduled programming for an antiabortion or pro-abortion-rights PSA, or worse, a pointless exercise in bothsidesism.
Season 3 of Netflix dramedy “Ginny & Georgia” dares to go there, unapologetically making the political personal inside a fun, wily and addictive family saga. The series, the streamer’s No. 1 show since it returned two weeks ago, skillfully delivers an intimate narrative that defies judgment and the fear of being judged.
The hourlong series, which launched in 2021, follows single mom Georgia Miller (Brianne Howey), her angsty teenage daughter Ginny (Antonia Gentry) and her young son Austin (Diesel La Torraca). This formerly nomadic trio struggles to forge a “normal” life in the fictional Boston suburb of Wellsbury.
Flamboyant, fast-talking Southerner Georgia stands out among the fussy, provincial New England set. Born in Alabama to drug-addicted parents, she fled her abusive upbringing as a teenager. Homeless, she met Zion (played as an adult by Nathan Mitchell), a college-bound student from a good family. Soon into their relationship, she fell pregnant, giving birth to their daughter Ginny, kicking off a life on the run and in service of protecting her children.
Georgia (Brianne Howey), left, had Ginny as a teenager, and history appears to repeat itself in Season 3 of the show.
(Amanda Matlovich / Netflix)
Now in her 30s, the blond bombshell has relied on her beauty, innate smarts and countless grifts to endure poverty and keep her family intact. The hardscrabble lifestyle has made Ginny wise beyond her years, though she’s not immune to mercurial teen mood swings and the sophomoric drama of high school.
But history appears to repeat itself when Ginny becomes pregnant after having sex just once with a fellow student from her extracurricular poetry class. Overwhelmed, he’s the first person she tells about their dilemma. “That’s wild,” he responds idiotically, before abruptly taking off, leaving her to deal with the pregnancy on her own.
Episode 7 largely revolves around Ginny’s decision to have an abortion, a thoughtfully paced subplot that breaks from the perpetual chaos and deadly secrets permeating the Millers’ universe.
Ginny is painfully aware that she is the product of an unwanted pregnancy and her mother’s choice not to have an abortion. Georgia has repeatedly said her kids are the best thing that ever happened to her. But when counseling her distraught daughter, Georgia says the choice is Ginny’s to make, and no one else’s.
Here’s where “Ginny & Georgia” might have launched into a didactic, pro-abortion-rights lecture cloaked in a TV drama, or played it safe by pulling back and highlighting both women’s stories in equal measure.
Instead it chose to bring viewers in close, following Ginny’s singular experience from her initial shame and panic, to moving conversations with her mom, to that frank counseling session at the women’s health center where she made it quite clear she was not ready to be a mother. We watched her take the medication, then experience what followed: painful cramping, pangs of guilt, waves of relief and the realization she now bore a new, lifelong emotional scar that wasn’t caused by her mother.
By sticking to Ginny’s intimate story, through her perspective, the series delivers a story that is hers and hers alone, partisan opinions be damned.
“Ginny & Georgia” has offered up many surprises over its three seasons. Georgia has emerged one of the more entertaining, cunning and inventive antiheroes of the 2020s. As such, she attracts men in droves, schemes a la Walter White and doesn’t believe in therapy: “We don’t do that in the South. We shoot things and eat butter.”
But therapy might be a good idea given Season 3’s cliffhanger ending: another accidental pregnancy.
Los Angeles County prosecutors on Wednesday charged 19 people with conspiring to murder a rapper who allegedly angered a member of the Mexican Mafia, a prison-based syndicate of Latino gang members.
In the complaint, prosecutors described a sprawling conspiracy that played out over TikTok messages and recorded jail calls, drawing in prisoners from Kern County, jail inmates in downtown Los Angeles and gang members in Paramount, the southeast Los Angeles County city that both Quintero and Abrego call home.
Quintero, 49, was arrested Wednesday and has yet to enter a plea. It wasn’t clear from court records whether he has a lawyer. A longtime member of the Paramount Varrio gang, Quintero has served prison time for assault, manufacturing methamphetamine and false imprisonment, court records show.
Manuel Quintero, shown in a Feb. 15, 2014 photograph from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, has been identified by law enforcement officials as a member of the Mexican Mafia.
(California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation)
On New Year’s Eve in 2022, an alleged subordinate of Quintero, Giuseppe “Clever” Leyva, told an informant he’d notified gang members in Paramount, Compton and downtown L.A. that they had instructions to attack Abrego “on sight,” the complaint says.
Leyva, 34, is now in custody on an unrelated federal case that charges him with selling drugs and guns in Imperial County. He pleaded guilty to trafficking methamphetamine in March and has yet to be sentenced. His attorney in the federal case didn’t immediately return a request for comment.
After the informant asked if “Snuffs is mad” at the rapper, Leyva allegedly said of Abrego: “F— him.”
It’s unclear why Quintero was angry with Abrego, who could not be reached for comment Wednesday.
In a 2024 interview with The Times, the rapper declined to discuss any potential issues with the Mexican Mafia or “jailhouse politics.”
Abrego previously said his music resonates with people because “everybody wants to be a gangster.”
“Whether you’re a lawyer, a police or a kid going to school, everybody wants to be big, bad and tough,” he said in 2024.
Eight months after he spoke to the informant, the complaint says, Leyva warned another person in a TikTok message to stay away from the rapper.
“Let me give u a lil 411 s u won’t get mis guided with the internet,” he wrote, according to the complaint. “With Swifty his career is done.”
“I talked to him tried to guide him but he didn’t listen,” Leyva allegedly continued, adding that now the rapper was “getting his blues” in Men’s Central Jail.
In November 2023, Abrego was jailed on a gun possession charge. Onesimo “Vamps” Gonzalez, held two cells down from the rapper, called his mother and told her to ask an associate if “the one who sings” was “still good,” according to the complaint.
Gonzalez’s mother hung up. When her son called back, she allegedly said, “He’s no good.”
Men’s Central Jail in downtown Los Angeles.
(Al Seib/Al Seib/Los Angeles Times)
Both Gonzalez and his mother are charged in the conspiracy. Gonzalez was already in custody; Dominga Gonzalez, 66, was arrested Wednesday at her Bellflower home, according to a statement from the FBI.
Two days after mother and son spoke, another jail inmate, Jonathan “Dreamer” Quevedo, called a man imprisoned in Kern County who was using a contraband cell phone, according to the complaint.
After mentioning “Swifty Blue,” Quevedo allegedly asked Jacob “Eagle” David if he recalled a “raza rapper” who was “in the shower.”
Prosecutors believed this was a reference to Jaime Brugada Valdez, a rapper known as MoneySign Suede who was stabbed to death in the showers at the Correctional Training Facility in Soledad in 2023.
“The end result should be the same,” allegedly replied David, who was imprisoned for carjacking and robbery.
The next day, the complaint says, David instructed Quevedo to tell the attackers: “Handle that s— with prejudice… You know how that’s like a court term? Well, this s— [is] with prejudice.”
Quevedo allegedly confirmed it was “already in motion.”
When inmates were let out of their cells at 5:50 the next morning to take a shower, Adrian “Slick” Bueno, Andrew “Largo” Shinaia and Jude “Crazy” Valle entered Abrego’s cell, the complaint says. While Michael “Weasel” Ortiz obstructed a nearby camera, Bueno, Shinaia and Valle beat the rapper and “sliced” him, prosecutors charged.
About five hours later, Quevedo called a woman from jail and asked her to tell David in state prison that “old boy got his rap session,” according to the complaint.
“They didn’t really get a good show,” Quevedo allegedly said. “Expect them to be performing in probably the 4000 floor” — another area of the jail — “here soon.”
The attempt on Abrego’s life was unsuccessful, and by March 2024, the complaint says, Leyva told Joshua “Demon” Euan in a TikTok message the rapper was recording a live stream outside his family home “as we speak.”
Euan drove to the house at 1 a.m. and sent Leyva a photograph of a gun in the cup-holder of a car, according to the complaint. “He ain’t here,” he wrote to Leyva.
Later, Euan allegedly told Leyva he sent people to vandalize Abrego’s family home. According to the complaint, he sent photographs of graffiti that read, “Swifty Blue 187,” a reference to the California penal code section for murder.
Euan, 37, eluded arrest Wednesday and remains at large, according to the FBI.
