Amber Portwood and Gary Shirley might consider each other family now, but it seems like they are on different sides of the law at the moment. Earlier in the week, Shirley’s wife, Kristina Anderson, announced that the 32-year-old television personality was recently sworn in as a police officer. Yesterday, media outlets revealed that Portwood, 29, was arrested on suspicion of domestic violence. She was hauled in by police after they responded to a call about a domestic disturbance.
Why was Amber Portwood arrested?
According to E! News, Indianapolis police responded to a call about a domestic disturbance. The call came in around 3 am on Friday. When the police arrived, Portwood’s boyfriend, Andrew Glennon told police that he and his live-in girlfriend were in a heated disagreement.
Andrew Glennon (L) and Amber Portwood | Photo by Jon Kopaloff/FilmMagic
Glennon, whom Portwood met on the set of Marriage Bootcamp, also told the responding officers that Portwood attacked him while he was holding their son. Portwood and Glennon share one child, James. James is just 1-year-old.
Indianapolis police have not released the cause of the disagreement between the pair, but according toOK! Magazine, Glennon is the individual who reported the disturbance. Allegedly, dispatchers received a text from the victim claiming he and his child were in danger.
Could she serve jail time?
Portwood’s most recent run-in with the law is not her first. In December 2010, Portwood was arrested for domestic battery against Gary Shirley. At the time, Shirley and Portwood were in a relationship. Portwood was booked on two felony charges. She was initially placed on probation for the incident.
The following year, Portwood violated the terms of her probation and was offered two options; she could head to a rehab program, or she could go to jail. According to the Huffington Post, Portwood decided she would prefer to spend her time in prison. She served 17-months behind bars.
Considering her past convictions, jail time is not off the table. Authorities have not released the exact charges, nor what the next legal steps are for the Teen Mom OG star. CPS, however, has been notified about the incident. James, 1, is believed to still be in the custody of his father.
Amber isn’t the first Teen Mom star to find herself behind bars
Portwood isn’t the only teen mom who has run afoul of the law. Jenelle Evans, Portwood’s franchise nemesis, has been arrested multiple times. Her charges range from assault to drug possession to probation violations. Evans was most recently in the news when her husband, David Eason, shot and killed the family dog. The couple just regained custody of three of their five children after a two-month court battle.
Nathan Griffith, the father of Evans’ son Kaiser, was arrested on more than one occasion, too. Evans’ ex-boyfriend, Keifer Delp, is currently serving time for running a meth lab. Delp had appeared on Teen Mom 2 with Evans.
Adam Lind, the father of Chelsea Houska’s daughter Aubrey, has also spent time behind bars. Lind’s charges seemingly all stem from substance abuse issues. Ryan Edwards, the father of Maci Bookout’s eldest child Bentley, was recently released from jail after serving three months behind bars for violating his probation and theft charges.
(Newser)
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A "very different royal event" is taking place Saturday in the UK. The BBC reports that baby Archie Harrison Mountbatten-Windsor, the son of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, will be christened in a chapel at Windsor Castle by the Archbishop of Canterbury, and CNN notes the baptism is causing an "almighty storm." That's because the Duke and Duchess of Sussex are keeping the event completely private, with a mostly secret guest list, sealed lips on who the baby's godparents will be, and no TV coverage or media photographers allowed—not even to snaps pics as guests arrive, which has often been the case even for private royal christenings. The AP notes the controversy surrounding the event centers on an increasingly frustrated public, which thinks events like this should be public, especially since taxpayer money pays for much of the couple's lifestyle.
Who Buckingham Palace would confirm is going: Prince Charles and his wife, Camilla, as well as Prince William and Kate Middleton. Markle's mother, Doria Ragland, is also expected to be there. Who won't be at the royal event: Archie's great-grandmother, Queen Elizabeth II, who had a prior engagement. Harry and Meghan won't be completely breaking from tradition for their baby's big day: People reports Archie will be sporting the same baptismal robe that his cousins George, Charlotte, and Louis wore, and he'll be christened in the silver Lily Font, a basin commissioned by Queen Victoria and Prince Albert in 1840 and used for every royal baptism since. The baptismal water for 2-month-old Archie will come from the River Jordan. (Read more Archie Harrison Mountbatten-Windsor stories.)
The Mind Flayer is back, Hawkins has a shiny new mall, and the kids have to confront puberty: Stranger Things has never been scarier. Throughout the Fourth of July weekend, The Ringer will be covering all the happenings in Stranger Things’ third season with episodic breakdowns highlighting the biggest scenes, themes, and character moments. Below, we dive into Season 3’s eighth and final episode, “The Battle of Starcourt.”
Between its interdimensional monsters and the stress-inducing trials of growing up, Stranger Things is unquestionably a crowd-pleaser. The Emmy nominations the first season garnered were a welcome surprise, but the Duffer brothers seem to have a more vested interest in racking up entertaining set pieces, adorable kid moments, and myriad ’80s throwbacks. Dropping the third season on the Fourth of July, while the series simultaneously tracks the events around Independence Day in 1985, seems to affirm those intentions. Stranger Things’ third season has the look and feel of a summer blockbuster—and the first seven episodes lived up to that promise with fleshy monstrosities, zombie-like citizens, hot lifeguards, evil Russians, and a new mall so awash in neon lights it’d probably arouse Nicolas Winding Refn.
Bad things happen frequently in Hawkins, and characters do sometimes die (rest in power, Bob and Barb!); however, these moments don’t come at the expense of the show’s good vibes. But “The Battle of Starcourt” offers a devastating turning point for the series and its immediate future. With our ensemble cast siphoned off to take out the Mind Flayer once and for all, Chief Jim Hopper finds himself on the wrong side of the Russians’ Upside Down portal-opening device, which has gone haywire. Despite defeating the Russian Terminator in a gnarly fight sequence, he’s resigned to his fate—it’s the only way to stop the Mind Flayer. With a look of solemn acceptance, Hopper consents to Joyce’s destroying the machine, which incinerates him and anyone close to the wreckage in the process.
In a flash, Hopper—the show’s most compelling figure, the lord of dad-bods, and the very reason David Harbour has blossomed from a character actor into a full-blown star—is dead. While we don’t technically see Hopper die—and a post-credits scene in Russia makes the curious decision to note that the Russians hold an unseen “American” prisoner in a cell—the fact that the rest of the finale soaks in the post-Hopper pathos should alleviate any speculation that we’re looking at a Jon Snow–type situation. (But it’s worth stressing to the Duffers: Please don’t bring Hopper back from the dead!)
The decision to kill Hopper is bold and certainly antithetical to the erstwhile summer blockbuster thrills, but Stranger Things has never been more emotionally resonant. The ambitious storytelling choice is also indicative of the show’s own maturation process. In a tear-jerking voice-over—courtesy of a speech Hopper writes to Eleven about her ongoing makeout sessions with Mike, which Eleven later reads—Hopper delivers what amounts to the third season’s thesis statement: “I know you’re getting older. Growing. Changing. And I guess, if I’m being really honest, that’s what scares me. I don’t want things to change.” (Side note: Give David Harbour another Emmy nomination.)
Stranger Things couldn’t escape the inevitable growth of its young actors, and instead of trying to retain the charms of its earlier seasons—the games of Dungeons & Dragons, the Ghostbusters-themed group outings on Halloween—the series evolved along with them. That transitional phase left characters like Will Byers and Hopper, who struggled to handle Eleven’s natural teenage urges to make out with her boyfriend, yearning for the old days. Perhaps, on some level, the audience was too.
Hopper’s speech also touches on the other things that define the universal experience of growing up: making mistakes, learning from them, and understanding that change is an inescapable event to cherish, rather than avoid. It’s crushing that Hopper can’t share these moments with Eleven, who’s now lost the only paternal figure she’s ever had in her life. Their bond was strengthened by the trauma both endured in their lives—Eleven at Hawkins Lab; Hopper’s losing his daughter—and even though they spent most of the season at odds with one another, the mutual love and respect they shared was never in doubt.
But while watching Eleven lose Hopper is heartbreaking, the season does reach a touching resolution. She is moving in with the Byers clan, who’ve decided—quite understandably!—that they need a fresh start outside of Hawkins, the most cursed town on television since Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s Sunnydale. Elsewhere, Robin and Steve may no longer have a job at Scoops Ahoy—one of the downsides of Starcourt’s being ground zero for a climactic battle against the Mind Flayer—but they’ve both got a gig at the local video store, which could keep them stably employed until the very streaming site that this show exists on puts that store out of business. Max and Lucas are still going strong; it also turns out that Dustin’s science camp girlfriend, Suzie, is actually real; Jonathan and Nancy will give long distance a shot, along with Mike and Eleven. Everyone’s paths are diverging more than they’ve had all series, and Hopper’s death is more trauma for characters who’ve experienced an overwhelming amount of it. But you also get the impression all the kids are going to be fine because of the lessons derived from battling Upside Down creatures and the perpetually awkward stages of puberty.
With a fourth season almost assuredly on the way—the Duffer brothers have envisioned making four or five seasons, and there’s no way in hell Netflix will cancel this thing—Hopper’s death will likely seep into the show’s ethos far more than Barb’s or Bob’s ever did. Stranger Things now enters uncharted territory, with several protagonists moving outside of Hawkins, the allure of more nefarious Russian villains (they appeared to have captured the Demogorgon in the motherland!), and the void left by one of its most important and beloved characters.
It would’ve been easy for the Duffer brothers, who wrote and directed the finale, to coast on the familiar feelings of ’80s nostalgia throughout the third season—the thing that most highlighted the show’s massive appeal. But “The Battle of Starcourt” and its excellent, emotionally shattering coda make it clear the series will do its best moving forward to echo Hopper’s parting words. Change is a scary thing, and not all shows are equipped to handle big narrative and thematic developments. In not just reacting to the literal growth of its actors but actively establishing a future that shifts the status quo, Stranger Things is striving to do so anyway.
BOSTON (AP) — A young man who says Kevin Spacey groped him in a Nantucket bar in 2016 has dropped his lawsuit against the Oscar-winning actor, his lawyer said Friday.
Spacey still faces a criminal charge. He pleaded not guilty to indecent assault and battery in January.
His accuser's lawyer, Mitchell Garabedian, announced in an email that the suit filed June 26 in Nantucket Superior Court has been voluntarily dismissed. No reason was provided either by Garabedian or in the court filing. Garabedian said he would have no further comment. A telephone message was left at his office.
According to the court filing, the suit was dismissed "with prejudice," which means it cannot be refiled.
An email was left Friday requesting comment from Alan Jackson, Spacey's attorney. Jackson has previously said the man is lying in the hopes of winning money in a civil case against Spacey.
The legal development could have significance for the criminal case against Spacey, legal experts say.
While there are a range of reasons why a civil suit is dropped so quickly after being filed, it could be an indicator a private settlement was reached and that the accuser may ultimately stop cooperating with prosecutors, said William Korman, a former prosecutor in the Suffolk County District Attorney's office who is now a criminal defense lawyer specializing in sexual assault cases.
"Any settlement could not be conditioned on a refusal to cooperate with the prosecution," said Korman. "Nevertheless, money is a great motivator for an individual not to follow through."
It's also possible prosecutors, upset with the timing of the civil suit, specifically asked the accuser to drop it, said David Yannetti, a former prosecutor who is now a criminal defense lawyer in Boston. The civil suit was filed months into the ongoing criminal case, but such suits are typically filed after a criminal case is decided, he said.
"Maybe the prosecution said it's either about money or it's about a crime, but it can't be about both and you have to make a decision on where you want to go with this," Yannetti said.
The civil suit was likely filed before completion of the criminal case because the three-year statute of limitations is approaching, added Yannetti.
"We're operating with very little info, but it's clear something unusual is going on here," he said. "Either the prosecution got involved or there was some sort of civil settlement."
Cape and Islands District Attorney Michael O'Keefe's office declined to comment on whether prosecutors had any role in the withdrawal of the civil suit or whether a settlement has been reached.
"The criminal case is independent from the civil case and will go forward," Assistant District Attorney Tara Miltimore said in an email.
Garabedian's client, the son of Boston TV anchor Heather Unruh, alleged Spacey got him drunk and sexually assaulted him at the Club Car restaurant where the then-18-year-old man worked as a busboy.
The criminal case has centered on the cellphone used by the accuser the night of the alleged groping, which the defense says it needs in order to recover text messages it says will support Spacey's innocence.
Nantucket District Court Judge Thomas Barrett has ordered the man to hand the phone over to the defense, but his attorney said they cannot find it. The judge has given them until Monday to produce the phone.
Amber Portwood is in trouble with the law again and is back behind bars.
The 29-year-old Teen Mom star was arrested and booked in jail on Friday on a domestic battery charge in her native Indiana, legal records show. A hearing has been set for next week.
Police said in a statement to E! News that on Friday just after 3:00 a.m., officers were dispatched to a residence after receiving a call about a disturbance. Upon arrival, they spoke to a male victim who stated that he and Portwood, his live-in-girlfriend, had gotten into a disagreement and that she assaulted him while he was holding their one-year-old child. Police said officers spoke to Portwood at the scene and then arrested her for her alleged actions in this incident.
Reps for Portwood and her boyfriend Andrew Glennon, father of their one-year-old son James, have not commented publicly.
Portwood has gotten into trouble with the law several times in past years.
Portwood spent the night in jail, while a judge issued a temporary restraining order to keep her and her ex away from each other.
In late 2011, Portwood was arrested again, this time for violating the terms of her probation by being accused of battery and public intoxication in connection with a fight weeks prior, and failing to obtain her GED and complete anger management classes, according to Indiana newspaper theHerald Bulletin. Following a probation search, authorities found several different prescription pills in her possession, for which she could not produce prescriptions, and she spent Christmas in jail.
In November 2013, the Teen Mom star was released from jail early for good behavior after spending less than two years behind bars. According to the jail's spokesperson, Portwood participated in a substance abuse program while in prison.
Teen Mom OG star, Gary Shirley, is officially an officer of the law. The married father of two has changed a lot over the years. Not only has he figured out a way to get along with his baby mama, Amber Portwood, but he’s gone on to get married and have a second child with his new wife, Kristina Anderson. During his metamorphosis, Shirley managed to keep one giant secret; he dreamed of becoming a police officer. Now, that dream is a reality, and he, along with his family, have clued the public in.
Why did Gary Shirley keep his new job a secret?
According to Anderson’s Instagram post, Shirley has been training to become an officer for some time. The family, as well as close friends, decided to keep the entire process a secret. In fact, it seems like fans are only hearing about it all now because Shirley is officially an officer. It doesn’t appear as though MTV cameras were there to capture the reality TV stars swearing in.
Shirley has shared the good, the bad, and the ugly of his life with the public for nearly a decade. Some fans are wondering why the burly father of two would keep such a big secret from his fans.
There are a couple of reasons why. First and foremost, it’s possible that Shirley didn’t want to share the news until it was a done deal. While police forces train thousands of recruits each year, not everyone makes it through the academy to become an actual officer. Potential officers can drop out at any time, or they may be dismissed if they can not pass the program.
Shirley may have been asked to keep things quiet on social media by the force itself. MTV camera crews would not be allowed to film Shirley’s training, but it is possible that the recruit was asked to keep things quiet on social media. This allegedly has been Shirley’s dream for some time now, so he’d likely do whatever he was told to do to ensure he got the job.
Are Gary Shirley and Amber Portwood on speaking terms?
A lot has happened for Shirley recently, but fans have noticed a change in the man who coined the phrase “It’s Gary Time!” for a while. Earlier in the year, both Portwood and Shirley admitted that while their relationship hadn’t always been the best they’ve come to a good place. The former couple share 10-year-old Leah and seem to have figured out a way to work together for her benefit.
Shirley took to Twitter in June 2019 to apologize for the footage that aired during a Teen Mom OGepisode. During the episode, Shirley spoke badly about Portwood to his wife. Shirley was sharing his frustration at Portwood’s desire to take a break from parenting due to depression. He also apologized in advance for anything he said in upcoming episodes, according to E! News.
While the details of Shirley’s contract with MTV remains unknown, it is believed he was making at least $25,000 per episode. Even if Shirley stays on the show, his job as a police officer will likely remain relatively unmentioned. He would not be the only Teen Mom dad who has a second gig, so the crews are well-versed in dealing with additional jobs.
Joe Keery, Gaten Matarazzo, Maya Hawke, Priah FergusonScreenshot: Netflix
“Chapter Five: The Flayed” opens with a thrill ride, there’s no denying it. As Starcourt’s “secret room” plunges (as Steve poetically puts it) “halfway to hell,” our heroes’ screams rise over the screeching of metal on metal as their elevator car drops. (Dustin’s scream alone is bloodcurdling; hats off to Gaten Matarazzo and his inimitable pipes.) Joyce and Hopper’s adventure is quieter but just as suspenseful, as they arrive at the old Hess farm in search of a massive government conspiracy—and not even their own government this time!
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But however ghastly or intense the show gets, thrills have never been the heart of Stranger Things. The characters, with all their messy, complicated relationships, are the show’s heart. “The Flayed” intersperses its action with character beats, but it rarely integrates character and action as previous seasons have routinely done.
For better or worse, Stranger Things has embraced the traditional, even hackneyed, logic of the three-part film franchise. The original, the most beloved chapter, is a scrappy, lean work that balances style and substance, and relies on its core characters and the viewer’s fascination more than any special effect or showcase scene. The secondexpands the universe, bringing in new, often broader characters and wider settings, creating more complex systems of interpersonal drama and bigger action. The third blows up the whole dang thing in an extravaganza of violence and over-the-top characters. (Sure, sure, my example of film franchise is a tetralogy, but as my colleague Clayton Purdom puts it, “films think in triplicate.”)
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There’s one big in-universe problem with these folks acting like action heroes: They’re terrible at this! Joyce and Hopper go out to search the suspicious properties on Kline’s list, not bothering to tell anyone where they’ve gone or why. Steve, Dustin, and Robin are trapped in the “secret room,” now deep underground, and they brought a child, also without leaving a clue of their whereabouts.
They make wild leaps of logic, like Nancy announcing, “That proves it!”—it being every single thing she’s speculated about—after learning that two odd events took place “around 9:00” last night. (She’s right; as Mike said earlier, “This can’t be a coincidence!,” because most fiction allows little room for coincidence.) They announce their presence everywhere they go, like Steve splashing urine on two separate levels of their confined space, or Hopper barreling his Blazer right up the driveways of the secret buildings they’re secretly scouting.
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Screenshot: Netflix
But, entertainingly, they’re also great at this. Hopper jauntily commandeers a bystander’s airboatconvertible as casually as he might hail a cab. Winona Ryder continues her unexpected detour into quiet comic genius as Joyce shifts her body language from flustered mom to seen-it-all cop after hearing Hopper introduce her as “Detective Byers.” Will’s plan to let Doris Driscoll lead them back to “the source” is solid; though they’re too late to put it in action, and their arrival at the hospital does lead them to Tom and Bruce, and to the slithering entity that their bodies unite to form.
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They’re great at this and they’re terrible at this, and that’s where all the entertainment in “The Flayed” arises, and—despite the noise and violence of prolonged fights—much of its tension. Even Erica, the unlikely key to entering Starcourt’s secret elevator, has her head on a swivel and her spy patter down pat: “First door, northwest,” she tells the others with the assurance of a Mission Impossible agent. “The comms room.”
Gaten Matarazzo, Priah Ferguson, Maya Hawke: “You won a fight!” Screenshot: Netflix
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Joe Keery showcases what works best in these action scenes, hustling his team to what passes for safety with a characteristic combination of audacity and anxiety. In the middle of the clear, coherent, but otherwise uninspired fight between legend-in-his-own-mind Steve Harrington and a hapless Russian soldier (in what does appear to be the comms room! Good work, Erica!), Steve grabs an instrument from its cradle, flips it in the air as casually as he flips his Scoops Ahoy ice cream scoop, and bashes his opponent with it. It’s a needless flourish, but it’s also a moment of pure Steve Harrington in an otherwise generic fight scene.
We have to talk about Bruce. What is the point of Bruce? What, one might ask, use is Bruce? He has no personality beyond “loud, crude, and insulting,” and now that he’s in the command of the Mind Flayer, he need never have a personality again. So why does he exist? Why bother to have Jake Busey play this braying, empty husk?
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Jake BuseyPhoto: Netflix
On any other show, I would expect future development of this character to justify the casting, but any other show didn’t let Cara Buono melt into the background for two seasons before she had a chance to shine, and any other show didn’t introduce Billy Hargrove as a mysterious new resident with a seething temper and an even more sinister, slippery charm, only to reveal his entire dark secret of that season was… an abusive father.
Erica’s costume goes farther even than her dialogue to camouflage the sight of a little girl in grave danger; with two flashlights taped to her helmet, with her pads and backpack adding odd angles to her silhouette, Erica is reduced almost to a robotic sidekick/instigator in the style of Short Circuit’s Johnny 5. But for me, that facial silhouette will always conjure up images of Roberto, ha HA!
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Priah FergusonScreenshot: Netflix
Stranger Things has always had its share of under-served or overblown characters. But “The Flayed” also lets its central characters lapse into lazy gender stereotypes. (It’s not the first time, or the second, or the third, and some on-set dynamics demanded scrutiny as well. Many of those potential problems, on-screen and off, have been resolved, but not all of them.) In earlier seasons, those slanted, even sexist portrayals are incidental and presumably unintentional; in “The Flayed,” writer Paul Dichter (Stranger Things staff writer, and credited with the eerily effective “Will The Wise”) hangs a lampshade on the show’s simplistic gender dynamics.
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It’s more than Mike and Lucas moaning about girls being “a totally different species” of creatures who “act on emotion and not logic.” It’s more than this episode’s action grinding to a halt while Max and El giggle into a mirror together, or Lucas informing his friends wearily that “girls just like hanging out in bathrooms.” It’s Mike assuming that two girls laughing means “they’re conspiring against me!” It’s Hopper insisting that Joyce’s fears are a way of avoiding what really matters, which is him. It’s Jonathan, hearing Nancy’s urgent, near-panicked voice on the phone at dawn and being surprised that she wants to talk about anything but their breakup.
It’s the female characters accepting that they are seen either as incorrigible fabulists or as infallible. Like Robin before her, Max gleefully asks the boys, “You do still realize we can hear everything you’re saying, right?” Nancy apologizes to Jonathan and accepts his apology, then gloats, “I just look forward to you never doubting me again.” Listening to Joyce’s story, Hopper scoffs that she should “stick to sales” (a particularly sharp jibe considering the going out of business vibe Melvald’s gives off these day); when he sees evidence mount, he beams, telling her with a twinkle to come work for him at Hawkins P.D.
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Most emblematic of all, it’s Mike, who has twice now tried to make up with El without quite apologizing. Gathering supplies at the pool, he tried to charm her into a smile and explain “the context” of his lies; in the hospital waiting room, he offers to share his candy, asking, “Does your species like M&Ms?” He doesn’t make amends; he doesn’t promise to behave better. In this episode, Mike Wheeler and the writers and showrunners of Stranger Things have this in common: They’re trying to entertain and charm their way past their mistakes instead of addressing them.
Putting a lampshade on the thing you’re doing wrong isn’t the same as doing it right. And maybe that’s the core problem with this season, the reason it hasn’t quite hit its stride.Going big and broad with its cast, its world, its characters, and especially its new embrace ofthe loud, slick style of ’80s action flicks, Stranger Things is doing something that doesn’t quite work, and winking at us about its failings. Stranger Things has successfully navigated the perils of being moony, blunt, and unabashedly earnest. What it’s not great at is winking.
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Stray observations
“You did it! You won a fight!” Hey, if you’re going to win one fight, make it the one against the lone armed guard whose station you’ve infiltrated.
“I’ll take those odds,” Robin says, and if I were trapped in an underground bunker full of nervous scientists and heavily armed guards, one out of a hundred odds of escape would sound pretty good to me, too.
