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this post was submitted on 01 May 2024
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People that hate Skylar are idiots. If they hate the actress, they're even worse.
Being hateable doesn't mean you're wrong. Obviously Skyler was acting in her family's best interest and walt was a psycho POS but she played such an unlikeable character.
There are plenty of likeable "evil" characters and plenty of unlikeable "good" ones. People act like if you hate Skyler you somehow don't get the show, but no, I understand her character just fine, it's just that she's insufferable about everything.
Regardless, hating the actress for the character is smooth brain shit
In the realm of toxic masculinity power fantasies there is no room for a woman who acts kind of like a normal person.
The show was written to make you root for Walt and dislike Skylar because of that, but is she really that unlikeable if you step back and look at her actions and motivations?
Edit: Sorry for being terse and using charged language in this comment.
I'm a fan of Breaking Bad. I wasn't trying to put it down or to say that people disliker Skyler because she's a woman.
Upthread I clarified things a bit, hopefully.
This the kind of surface level interpretation that makes me question people's ability to reason.
Edit: I was being harsh, ignore me lol
Sorry, I should have said that Skyler, the character, did nothing to deserve being disliked. The show was rigged to make you dislike her, in the sense that the storytelling was solely through Walt's eyes, even in scenes he wasn't present for.
But I didn't say that. Vince Gilligan, creator of the show, said it.
https://www.indiewire.com/features/general/breaking-bad-vince-gilligan-skyler-white-sexist-backlash-1234754425/
I also called it a "power fantasy." The show's pitch was to show a man turning himself from "Mr. Chips to Scarface." It's not a criticism, I loved the show. It took the power fantasy tropes and subverted them frequently. But at its heart that's what it is.
If you're upset that I said that it was about toxic masculinity, then I apologize. That was reductive of me. It explores hegemonic masculinity through the power fantasy trope, and it can be interpreted as either a celebration of or criticism of toxic masculinity depending on how you approach it.
Plenty of more well reasoned people than I could hope to be have written in depth on the subject. Someone even wrote a book in the subject.
If you were reacting to thinking I was putting the show down, which I wasn't intending to do, then my bad. I could have worded it better. I was trying to make the point that it's both intentional to not like Skyler, and also the obvious wrong take to not like her.
Alright I love this, thank you! And I apologize for reacting strongly
My whole point was that her motivations and actions are reasonable and she is mostly in the right (ie she is "good" not evil), but her character's mannerisms are still extremely hate-able.
It's not about acting like a normal person and it's certainly not about being a woman.
I hear what you are saying, and while I don't fully agree that she's inherently unlikable, I understand why you're saying that you find her to be so. I mostly was asking you to question your assumptions on it, and I used some charged up language that wasn't meant as a knock at the show.
To elaborate, what I meant was that the show exaggerates her mannerisms to give Walt motivation rather than to create a fully fleshed out character. She's not a woman, but a symbol of how men have become emasculated by their wives' "wearing the pants" in the family. At least early on she's not much more than a framing device and justification for Walt's decisions.
She grows as a character, and ends up having more agency, but only in the confines of Walt's domination of their lives with his selfishly motivated, and traditionally toxic masculine, choices.
And I don't think you meant it this way, but you can't really easily separate disliking her from being a woman. I don't mean to imply that you dislike her because she's a woman, but that her character's role is to be a controlling wife. It's an inherently gendered character that relies heavily on preconceptions of what a woman should and shouldn't be in a relationship with a man who is a main character in a story.
I think it's telling that she is considered unlikable enough to even warrant discussing in a show where the main character is a multi-murderer monster who destroyed the lives of everyone he loved, and the main villains include nazis, cartels, lawyers and corporate shills.
That, for anyone, she's the most hated character on the show is enough for me to take a minute and question my assumptions on her, at least. So I thought it was worth pushing back on your comment asking you, and others reading, to do the same.
The characters role is to be a controlling spouse. If Walt was gay married to a man who behaved the same way Skyler does, they would be just as frustrating to watch on screen. It's not inherently gendered, you're putting that on it.
She isn't a controlling spouse, she's a controlling housewife in an exaggerated disappointing version of a post-nuclear American family.
The show states over and over again that Walt believes a man provides for his family... a necessarily and pointedly gendered role that is central to his entire character's motivations. Skyler's nagging is framed exactly in relation to his perceived shortcomings with respect to this gendered expectation.
In a gay relationship you don't tend to just mirror straight relationships but the bottom replaces the women, or something. So you can't just conjure Skyler as a dude and make it make any sense as a family.
When there are two or more men coming together, usually they all have their own separate careers and plans for life. There is no template gay relationships have to build off of, and having children is way more difficult and complicated. We have to define everything for ourselves.
None of the tropes that are foundations of Breaking Bad work if you swap the genders of the characters. If walt were a woman nothing she does would make sense to the audience and the treatment from her annoyed husband would be absolute nonsense. Why would he expect her to provide for the family? Why would he expect her to man up? Etc?
Nah, that lacks nuance. People who hate Skylar for just crushing Walt's vibe or being unlikeable are idiots. I have watched the show in its entirety three times, and my opinion on all the characters has evolved - my opinion of Skylar is more negative than it used to be. If you believe that Skylar is just a victim, you are denying her character agency. She is highly intelligent and capable and simultaneously intends to benefit from Walt's actions while being arrogant enough to assume she can control the situation, outsmart the authorities, and get off scott free - much like another main character.
Skylar made certain choices to support Walt because she thought it was in the family's best interest (including hers), then she later reneged on those choices when things didn't turn out like she expected and ultimately forced Walt to take the blame for choices she willingly made. Skylar is as relatable and flawed as she is unlikeable: just like we would in her circumstances, she lacks the courage to do what is necessary to stop Walt and protect herself and her family.
She did not have to support Walt in the first place but instead did so even when given many opportunities to get out of the situation with minimal consequences. She may have paid a price for doing so as time went on (asset seizure if she went to the cops, social ostracization, her kids disliking her, etc), but the consequences were initially fairly trivial - divorce from a criminal who was putting the family at risk, embarrassment, harming her relationship with Marie, etc. And, while Walt obviously was callous/cruel/self-righteous/arrogant/and even evil, maybe - as was the point of his whole character, Skylar chose to support Walt in his criminal enterprise when she didn't have to - going so far as to come up with money laundering ideas, encouraging him to expand his operations to an extent early on, helping him come up with cover stories, etc. and only later turning on Walt when she felt like she could no longer benefit from assisting him and would benefit more by betraying him - going so far as to physically assault him with a knife and threaten to kill him, lying to the police about his treatment of the family and also giving them his location which put his life in further jeopardy while he was trying to get the family to safety since he was being pursued.
In fact, Walt saw a way to use Skylar's betrayal to protect the family and takes the blame for Skylar's actions, goes along with Skylar's lie that he was physically assaulting the family, threatening them with death if they didn't comply, etc. all to take the heat off Skylar for the sake of the family. That doesn't mean Walt is a saint. He should've stopped long before that and did many things that put the family in danger. But, his taking the blame for Skylar's part in the operation shows that she did have a real part in it - he had to lie to say he forced her to be a part of the operation to put her in a better light and get her off the hook.
When Skylar initially began to support Walt, she was not under significant duress. There was a significant degree of duress later, with Walt acting intimidating, Meth Damon coming to "talk" to her at her house, etc. But you could say that just like the situation got away from Walt and was out of control, the same happened for Skylar. She thought she could control things and continue to benefit from Walt's operation to provide a better life for the family. Then, when things got out of control, she flipped on Walt. The difference between Walt and Skylar is that Skylar got dragged into the situation by Walt, but remember, he really did try to keep her out of it. At a certain point, she chose to insert herself into it rather than leave the situation.
People dislike Skylar because she lacks courage. Courage to get out early when she had the chance, courage to report Walt to the police despite having many allies to help her and numerous opportunities, courage to stick to her moral convictions about what Walt was doing, courage to ensure her family's safety before doing things that jeopardized her chances of full custody, courage to tell her kids the truth about Walt, or alternatively courage to stick with Walt since she had committed to doing so and was (at first) a willing accomplice. But, most importantly, the courage to face the consequences for her part in the whole ordeal - except at the very end when it was already too late. She lacks courage and is self-interested, wanting to benefit from Walt's dealings while bearing none of the risk or responsibility for her part in them.
Meth Damon cracked me up. But this is an amazing essay on Skyler and have me a lot of perspectives I had not considered. Nice job.
How is she criticized for not having courage to report Walt but also not having courage to stick with him?
Nope read again, I said alternately for that second bit. You couldn't think both of those at the same time, but thinking them separately is valid. Either she sticks with Walt or not, those are her two possible endings.
But, these should be different groups of people criticizing her for different reasons then, right?
Like, having courage to report Walt is specifically because reporting Walt is the right thing to do.
And, having courage to stick with him is because of a belief that loyalty (or submissiveness) matters more than one's obligation to the social good.
I think it's mostly related. People see her behavior as hypocritical. She says she cares about the moral aspect, but never follows through. She says she cares about her family's safety, but doesn't really act consistently with that. And she starts to manage Walt's business (willingly at first) but turns on him even when it might put the family in danger (like giving all their money to Ted).
She's inconsistent/hypocritical because she lacks courage and conviction
I am extremely confused by this.
The Ted situation had to be handled. Like, not handling it was not an option. Isn't trying to handle it, then, to keep the family's secrets out of the IRS's eyes, an example of her acting in the interest of the family's safety? Are there different examples of her being callous and reckless?
That's fair, I didn't put much thought into my response. I never said she was callous or reckless, though. The main thing is that she acted hypocritically and in a way that is inconsistent with her stated values. I think that's a big reason she is disliked other than just being an "unlikeable" character
Hm. Well, I guess I'll cap this off just by saying I disagree quite a bit about your take on Skylar. For one, I don't really value hypocrisy as a criticism, like on a fundamental level. Whether somebody follows through or not matters a lot less to me than whether their ideas are good. See the conservative/liberal criticism of hypocrisy toward Rage Against the Machine as an example. :p
My reading on her character is that there are times when she gave in, like when she told her divorce lawyer she didn't want to throw the book at her druglord husband (she's not blameless), but also that there was never a time she was enthusiastic about the criminal life Walt had pulled her and the family into; she's pretty consistent about wanting out, it's only the 'how' that gets muddled. I'm sure there are parallels to how abuse victims get stuck in there somewhere.
And, the knife that was pulled was a direct response to spoiler dying. I simply can't read that as manipulative; she was fending off a threat at that point. For all Walt's bluster about the work being perfectly safe and he's the one knocks, anyone who crosses him seems to end up in a ditch somehow.
—But anyway, I'm not trying to drag you into a long debate about it. We can agree to disagree here. I held a lot back initially just because I didn't have the energy for the paragraph by paragraph reply thing. 😅
Whether you reply or not, I do hope you have a great day!
I want to add that an annoying character can act morally totally OK but still be disliked. That is because the annoyance is real and their actions and their consequences are not.
You could have a saintly character that always does the "right thing" but if they have an obnoxiously annoying way of speaking (extrem high pitch, extremely slow or fast or something) I would still dislike them.
That is because I actually get annoyed watching the character while I do not react that harshly even to a drug kingpin as the consequences of their action is fictional.
I have that kind of feeling of annoyance for skyler. I really do get annoyed at her controlling and arrogant way to handle things as it reminds me of real people. I do believe that this was intentional to make her unlikeable on first glance.
No matter how moral or "normal" her choices are the consequences are still fictional while my annoyance is real.
Edit: irl the situation is of course reversed. The consequences are real and the annoyance temporary.
Yeah I'm pretty convinced that people who hate Skylar missed the point of the show. Skylar acted like a normal person would.
Before I watched the show I thought she betrayed Walt last second because of all the hate she was getting. What the hell.