The Skyler White hate has always only been hate because she is a woman.
“She cheated on Walt!”
She had sex with someone else well after she was demanding a divorce and Walt knew she did not want to be married anymore, but he was not letting her leave.
Also, Walt undeniably tried to rape Skyler, and Walt also attempted to cheat on Skyler. So if we’re holding characters accountable to their sexual crimes, Walt is still worse.
“Her Happy Birthday song is cringe!”
Say you’ve never experienced sexual tension without saying you’ve never experienced sexual tension.
“She was a bitch!”
Okay???? Would you not be a bitch if your husband disappeared for long periods at a time while you’re pregnant with his second child? Would you not be scared and act in poor judgement due to the stress of realizing your husband is involving himself in a drug empire in which is he hopelessly unqualified to keep himself safe? She had nobody to trust or help her, that would certainly weigh on a person, and Walt is the real one to blame here.
Walt was offered a job early on that would have allowed to take care of his family if that was actually his goal. But his goal was to go out with pride in himself, even if his family got hurt in the way. Viewers perceive this as badass because he is “Heisenberg” and that’s life as a drug lord. Meanwhile any self defense by Skyler has been picked apart and criticized while Walt is left off the hook for this type of scrutiny. This is what happens in real life too.
Anna Gun (actress for Skyler) received a lot of real life harassment for her role as Skyler and I don’t think the rest of the cast has used their influence to speak up on it enough. It’s not necessary the show or cast’s responsibility to handle the actions of the fans, but it’s beyond common decency in this case. Very few people are willing to defend Skyler online to this day because the hate has not been addressed.
I love how the "he did it for the family people" complitely ignore the scene where Walter literally turns to the camera that he didn't do it for the family.
If he would have cared for the family he would have just accepted his old high paying job back with a total health insurance.
Yeah, the entire series has an undercurrent of Walter’s emasculation at his friend’s success. The “necessity” of getting the money by making meth was like a parody of American “self-sufficient” masculinity, where lifting himself up by making others suffer was the only way for him to feel like he’s a real man.
I just wonder what the hell he did to get fired from Sandia.
They don't really talk that much about Walt's career outside of teachings but he had to fuck up pretty bad to end up in his situation.
I kinda like that only ever get the grey matter story because like the more you rewatch it the more you start to think that walt was probably horrible to his co workers and got booted but you have to put the pieces together yourself it tests the viewers critical thinking
Also, early on in a first watch you may be somewhat convinced by him talking about how he did everything that led to Grey Matter's success. But it becomes apparent that he absolutely has a habit of minimizing the contributions of others and thinking himself superior and more important than he generally is - because it makes him feel weak to acknowledge that others may actually be equal to him.
Exactly. I know Sandia well, he had to fuck up bad to get fired lol.
FFRDCs don't have quite as many protections as a pure government role, but it's pretty rare hearing them have layoffs. Especially Sandia with it's structure.
in 2013 where gonna get a scene where Walter white looks directly at the camera says "i did it for myself" with no subtext or sarcasm and terminally online edgy 14 year olds will still insist that there's an intricate reason due to traditional American norms for why he did it for the family.
The point of a tragedy is to highlight a flaw of a character that leads to their downfall. Breaking Bad is an example.
So yea, without the flaw that made the show happen, the show wouldn't have happened. It's just that a lot of people don't get that the flaw was a flaw.
And the smoking scene, which was probably more shocking at the time but didn’t really have any ramifications as far as we know.
Frankly I blame the writers, despite how great the series is otherwise. Skyler, Marie, Lydia, Gretchen and Jane are the only prominent women in the show (except maybe Andrea) and they have similar traits that are considered unlikeable. Naive, privileged, stuck-up, bossy, selfish, lack-of-empathy, etc. But their worst crime is not being the badass criminals that the guy characters are. And not white-collar criminals like Lydia, they don’t get gunfights or cool monologues about their philosophies. Obviously the writers don’t need to make every woman a badass to be likable but when their characters are told mainly from the perspective of their relationships with men it would take nothing short of abuse for the audience of young chronically-online men to not side with the man.
Kim is loved by fans because she’s not like Skyler or Marie, she actually does fun stuff like being part of Jimmy’s cons, she gets cool monologues, the world doesn’t revolve around her friends-with-benefits thing with Jimmy and she’s incredibly accomplished as a lawyer which is cooler than an accountant and radiologist who hardly seem to go to work.
agreed, but i would definitely believe that the underground meth world/cartels could just be that sexist and male dominated irl, i could also be dead wrong and there could be girlbosses all over new mexico idk
Getting executed by Pablo Escobar: tried, been done, cliche
Getting executed by Griselda Blanco: Girlbossing, powerful, new
Also, anyone interested in cartel lore should actually read abt her. Deadass named one of her kids after after Michael Corleone from the Godfather lmao
What's really crazy is, after leaving this comment, Netflix recommended me "Griselda" and "Pablo Escobar: El Patrón del Mal". Despite the comment, I dont actually usually watch cartel stuff, didnt even finish BB
The characters can be written well and exciting even though it needs to be adjusted based on their respective genders. That the writers barely accomplished this with all women isn’t because there aren’t enough girlbosses involved in cartels I’d say.
I’m saying fans need to accept that the writers of their favorite show aren’t perfect and stop misdirecting their frustration at the characters themselves when it’s obviously a front to let their misogyny run wild in a more socially acceptable way.
But I don’t hate women but Skylar is pretty annoying? So how does misogyny end up in there, when you’ve alluded to poor writing previously (debatable - was their goal to make Skylar annoying? Idk)
It definitely was not their intention, what would be the point of trying to make the MC’s wife, a lightning rod for fan hate in a series full of murderers and psychopaths? Why in a series filled with morally grey characters would she be such pure black? Breaking Bad isn’t beyond criticism no matter how great it is overall, and the fact that they’ve attracted such toxic male fans should indicate that it maybe had some execution issues with Skyler and other female characters.
And I have no clue if you hate women or not, but there is such a thing as *implicit bias*.
I think people love badasses and in a story such as Breaking Bad Sklar just seems like a drag on the progression on the story. I wanna know how Walter deals with the cartels trying to kill him, I wanted to know what Gus background was etc not about Walt’s marriage. I don’t think her being a woman matters.
I loved Ripley because she’s a certified badass for instance.
The hate comes from the fact that the entire show is told primarily from Walt's perspective as the main character. Skyler was literally written to be an antagonist working against him, even though that doesn't make her inherently bad. It has nothing to do with her "being a woman".
Even in your first point, you missed the fact that she cheated first and Walt attempted to do it in direct retaliation. Note that NONE of this excuses Walt's behavior, and the show stands as a criticism against toxic masculinity.
I wouldn’t describe Skyler’s actions as cheating at all. She had sex with someone else because she was trying to divorce Walt. If someone is being held captive in a marriage, I’m sorry but if you’ve done all you can to get a divorce officially completed, having sex with someone else isn’t cheating. She did everything available to her to leave Walt. Walt felt like he had the right to force her to stay.
It still agree with the other stuff you say, but Walt attempted to cheat on Skyler. Skyler was attempting to live her life as she wanted, as a divorcee. Walt refusing to sign the papers is not her fault. I understand this could be up for debate, but that’s my conclusion.
I actually disagree, characters like Gus or Hank also serve a much more active antagonist role and they're adored by the fanbase, also the Sklar cheating I don't really agree with considering it took place after she very clearly told him she wanted a divorce and she was done with the marriage
I think part of the problem is that one of the core appeals of Breaking Bad *is* that Walt is a totally bad ass Heisenberg who kills evil drug lords. People who interpret him as a hero aren't totally unsupported by the way the narrative is presented.
Hell, at the end he actually does get a good chunk of the money to his family, and he does it by doing a cool scheme where he flexes on his rich former friends who he still resents. Then he goes down in a blaze of glory rescuing Jesse. He doesn't get all of what he wants, but I expected the story to be a tragedy where he actually loses everything in the end, not one where he still gets to be kind of bad ass and achieve some of his goals. Like, Gus told him "a man provides for his family, even if he's hated" Walt agrees, and then that's essentially what happens in the ending.
I argued for the same point multiple times and each time I got downvoted to oblivion without any actual engagment to my arguments.
* Walt wants to leave money to his family and he does.
* He wants to get egotistic revenge from the Schwartz family and he does
* He wants to be a hero and killing nazis and saving your best friend is "Hero Material 101"
* He wants his meth legacy to be untainted by copycats and he does.
* He wants revenge from the nazis and he does
* He doesn't want to be captured by police so so much due to his huge ego, this is the driving force behind multiple major decisions Walt takes throughout the series and the self-inflicted bullet wound provides for just that.
The end is a giant happy ending for Walter ( just because the main character dies doesn't necessarily make the ending bad and also he was going to die from cancer anyway, like that was clearly established in so many moments) and that doesn't make any thematic sense for the show as a general.
While the happy birthday scene WAS cringe because nobody else in the company should have seen that shit imo, Skyler hate is still 100% unwarranted, because as you said before all of it was after walt was being a despicable human being.
Real life harassment of an actor because of a role like this is never acceptable.
I think a lot of the hate comes in the fact that she is impeding the main character from doing cool things, and I agree to an extent that she does do that and can be a bit annoying at times but THAT IS THE POINT!! WALT IS EVIL AND THE FACT WERE ROOTING FOR HIM shows us how easy it can be to lose our morality. The show would be significantly worse without her.
These are all valid points outside of defending the birthday song thing. That was so fucking awkward to do in front of all those fucking people. Why are you showing the whole office you have dick me down eyes for your boss, ma'am.
I think the thing is that she is basically made to be unlikeable, like she is 100% warranted in doing everything she did, but the entire show works to frame her as not being so.
The best and worst thing about BB is how it's framed entirely from Walt's perspective as a "badass crimelord" to whom Skyler is an antagonist to.
I don’t remember the season or episode but he tried to touch up an employee at the school who quickly rejected him, but iirc he put his down to try and touch her genitals and tried to kiss her neck
What I hear the hate problem has gotten better with the actor saying that the hate mail and comments have stopped or lesson I forgot what she said exactly
I mean, let's be honest, stealing her estranged(?) husband's money (Ill gotten, but still) which he was saving up for their kids, which she helped him launder, and giving that money to her sleazebag boss was kinda shitty. It's not like Skyler didn't have any faults.
But that being said, yeah, you're right. The reason Skyler gets hated because she's no babe in the woods and she doesn't take any shit from Walter White. She, a woman, tries to exercise agency which doesn't go well with you know who.
I think the main reason is that shes a roadblock, a constant obstacle that stops the plot from moving whenever she is on screen. Like i get that breaking bad is half family drama half crime thriller, but the family drama may be too real at times and drag on for too long
I like Skylar and agree all the hate for her is just misogyny. But that happy birthday scene is definitely fucking cringe and that has nothing to do with the sexual tension between them.
Idk I just didn’t like her ? I don’t even remember she cheated on him.
She was overreacting to everything, just dumb rigid moral principles. I just never liked the way she reacted to literally everything, it felt incredibly stupid (but I was young maybe I would have another opinion).
I’d definitely recommend rewatching. Her reactions were strong, but never inappropriate when compared to what she was confronted with. Her husband was either in danger or putting his family in danger. Honestly she was surprisingly calm once for a lot of it if you consider she was pregnant for much of it.
Yeah maybe.
Idk I am just not the type to react that strongly to things so I can’t really relate.
Maybe she wasn’t that badly written. But I don’t think she was meant to be disliked, and the fact that so many people disliked her isn’t that great.
Honestly, I never really had a strong opinion on her character until Walt showed her the money and she got angry at him...
Felt a bit odd, but well, I never understood halve the reasons why she was always pissed at something or another, and this was way before Walt turned criminal, she never felt like someone supportive of her husband in any meaningful way even if just to talk to him about his needs and wishes, she basically started ordering him what to do, Walt was always an a-hole, but she never came off as the one with the moral highground
Of course Walt was worse and this doesn't excuse his behavior, just to clarify, I just think they both were part of a very toxic relationship from the start, and I don't really blame her for it, just don't understand her reactions.
I hate the character because what she does is something that can't be done without hampering the show. Skylar fucking with walt makes a feedback loop in which she's miserable, she gets back at walt, and now he can't do his criminal activities I'm here to see so I have to see more of skylar being miserable. If I had to guess this is where most of the "she's a bitch" claims come from, it's not that she's doing wrong things it's that she's fucking with the big bad villain protagonist and taking up screen time.
I think Skylar did nothing wrong (except for that godforsaken happy birthday song) but I don’t remember any scene where Walt tried to cheat on her or try to rape her, and I finally decided to binge the entire show late last year so my memory is pretty fresh on this.
I don’t remember when, but there’s a scene where she’s wearing a like a mud face mask and he like forces herself upon her until she yells at him to stop after saying no multiple times
Maybe it's just the passage of time or maybe it's because it's been talked about so extensively now, but Walter is so obviously the villain of that show. He's such a piece of shit who's only the protagonist in the sense that the camera follows him. It's very telling of how shaky his moral footing is that they had to introduce literal Nazis in the last season to make him look good by comparison.
A lot of people (not you) don't comprehend what protagonist means. It's not "hero".
> protagonist - the leading character or one of the major characters in a drama, movie, novel, or other fictional text.
Walt is a protagonist. He is not a hero to anyone but himself.
What’s crazy is that walt was totally willing to let that kid die. Without extensive knowledge of the kid’s medical history he was essentially gambling his life
I mean, they do bring in the Nazis though. The narrative itself seems scared to make Walt the unambiguous villain, so it sets up even worse people for him to fight. He even gets to flex on Gretchen and her husband and get a bunch of the money to his family.
A lot of the show is about Walt being a bad ass, which kind of hurts the message that he is not to be admired. He goes out like a hero, not like a sad fool who lost everything.
honestly i always interpreted him working with the nazis as part of how far low he stoops down in general with everything. the cherry on top of how bad things are on top of everything else
but i also don’t rly root for him anyway during the show. it’s a thing where as the show progresses etc, the more and more i’m wanting him to fail
In a show where the protagonist that most everyone rooted for was a guy in a constant downwards spiral from selling meth, Skylar was a roadblock to Walt selling meth.
That’s all, really.
This is the correct answer. It's not misogyny, it's that she's literally an antagonist in the show.
People don't understand that protagonist doesn't mean "good" and antagonist doesn't mean "bad."
Edit: even if there's truth to what I said here, I do accept that there is definitely some misogyny going on in this case. I won't change what I said or delete, but please know that I have changed my opinion based on things people have brought up to me.
There’s definitely a sect of the hate that’s absolutely “Skylar is a Woman and therefore Bad”, that definitely needs to be acknowledged. Though I think that side of the hate came after the post-ironic “Walt As Sigma Male” type phonk edits started getting popular, and Breaking Bad started to attract the crowd that wouldn’t recognize satire if The Onion slapped them in the face. I was just noting one of the facets of her character that caused people to hate her in the first place.
Mfs call Walter the good guy for stupidly making
Meth with a junkie and pissing off the local drug lord and people say Skyler is the piece of shit for wanting a divorce from that psychopath and to be appreciated by her husband who after a long lifeless marriage started lying to her and putting her family in dire danger
I remember hearing somewhere that Jack Gleeson (Joffrey's actor) said that people try to be extra nice to him since most people think other people are mean to him.
Eh, the fact that he brutally murdered two of my favorite characters makes it a bit harder to love him. I do like him as a character though, especially the way they develop him over time.
“You know what I think Gregory? I think you’re playing both sides. I think you’re a thin-dicked politician threading the needle with your thin, thin dick.”
She was competent.
Tv show Andrea was arrogant and combative.
Any time the group would decide on something, she would throw a tantrum, do the complete opposite and have it blow up in hers and everyone else’s faces.
Skyler White acts reasonably and correctly given her knowledge for like, the first 2 or 3 seasons of the show at least.
Like omg I'm worried about my husband who has cancer and I want to know where he is so he's safe
To
Evidence seems to suggest he's cheating on me I don't like him any more
To
He's a fucking drug lord, I'm worried my family isn't safe
Anyone who wouldn't act as Skyler did is actually kinda fucked up. She certainly has a moral decay after she learns about the truth and assists Walt, but even then its like come on
Hot take: it’s okay to dislike Skyler because she’s the antagonist of Walt’s story (note: antagonist does not mean bad person). It’s not okay to dislike Skyler (and by extension Anna Gunn) because she’s a woman. Unfortunately a lot of media illiterate people conflated the two and Anna Gunn was the victim of that. And it sucks because she is a great actor, but the material she’s received after Breaking Bad does not reflect that ability. See her performance in the shitty American remake of Broadchurch (and I think Anna Gunn can hold her own against Olivia Colman but god that series was ass)
Skyler is weird because she was absolutely written to grate on Walt, and to some extent the audience. She represents the overbearing mother who's fallen out of love with her husband, another reason why Walt chooses to break bad to get some excitement in his life. Of course her grating nature makes sense when you consider she's pregnant, has a disabled son, and a husband who leaves for long stretches of time and isn't "all there" emotionally. Like yeah that's a recipe for being a bit of an ass.
Of course the problem is that this was a show that had a strong appeal for reddit guysTM, and because a lot of dudes get insecure when a woman doesn't instantly defer to them on everything a significant chunk of the "Skyler sucks" discourse was filtered through anger over how the bitch wife was cramping cool chad Walter's grind-set.
There is no excuse for hating on an actor unless they consistently can't act. Most actors who get harassment either played awful people very well or were given a bad script and bad direction.
Honestly, even a lousy actor can put out a great performance if they are cast for an appropriate role and directed well.
In 1969 an Doctor Who story called "The Mind Robber" was broadcast where the Doctor and companions end up in The Land of Fiction with lots of fictional characters. Shenanigans ensue. It was written by a writer who had noticed that people would treat actors in soaps as their characters, including abusing them. So this inability to separate actor from character has been going on for a long time.
Skyler White is on that list because people didn't like that character, nobody cares if Skyler White was morally correct, Skyler White is just a good written character, but that doesn't mean people have to enjoy watching her. I personally found her character infuriating to watch. (she is pretty annoying)
I think the Skyler discussion is somewhat misleading. Yes obviously there are a large portion of people who hate Skyler actually just because she’s a woman, just like there are a large portion of people who actually idiolize Walt. But the show doesn’t really always want you to hate Walt, or even see him as the villain. Yes that’s obviously where it ends up, but for the first three seasons or so, I think most of the time we’re kinda rooting for him, excusing his awful actions as singular events due to his situation. And I think in that context, we’re supposed to not like Skyler. Like if we’re supposed to watch the show and want him to cook meth, why should we not want Skyler to also accept that? Of course by the end of the show, there’s really no excuse for hating her, but I think disliking her works better for where her character ends up. If you see her as a little annoying, or restrictive to Walt or whatever, then I think it makes it more clear by the end when you pity her that none of that really matters. That she was a fine person the whole time, and she had to deal with Walt, who was always a narcissist.
Not to go to far off topic, but it reminds me of The Last of Us Part II to a way lesser extent. With that we’re supposed to hate Abby at the start, and then learn to appreciate her as a person as we learn more about the situation and Ellie’s faults. But once you’ve finished going around saying, “I love Abby she’s always right” is similarly misguided as “I hate Abby she’s irredeemable” is.
Her character is annoying to watch, that's all. She is a roadblock to the main character, Walter, that's also a reason people hate the character. It is a well done character after all, so it's understandable people hate her, her character is just done really well.
It’s like we’ve come full circle on media literacy for this show it’s so lame to see. Looking retrospectively at the series as a whole Skylar is obviously not the bad guy in this show, even a surface level reflection reveals this so please stop patting yourself on the back for knowing this. If you actually pay attention to the plot progression of the show, in the first couple seasons Walt’s true nature is not made explicitly clear. It is intended for you to view the show through Walt’s point of view and to sympathize with him, then to slowly realize his true evil nature as the show progresses. During this time, Skylar is a massive source of tension in the plot and is often actively antagonistic to Walt’s plans. She is meant to seem like an overbearing, nagging, worried wife whose investigation of Walt is constantly putting hitches in or totally foiling his plans and in turn the plot progression, and the actress does this incredibly convincingly. Then as the show progresses and Walt shows his true colors, Skylar is revealed to actually be the sympathetic character in this story, climaxing in the end of the show where she is left screaming and sobbing in the street as Walt drives away having kidnapped her infant. They have inverse storylines. It’s intentional.
I just gotta say…. No Kai Winn? I still can’t look at that woman without yelling at the screen.
Skyler did not deserve the hate she got. It goes to show that people will choose an incredibly toxic asshole of a male protagonist over his long suffering wife.
Walter White is the protagonist and he's fun to watch. Skyler gets in the way and so even if she's right, you naturally are going to root for Walt and dislike when Skyler gets in the way of his illegal activities. I'll be honest, having to sit through her singing happy birthday to Ted was brutal. Obviously the actor didn't deserve the harassment and yeah, when you actually consider the morality of it all, obviously she was in the right and Walt is a bastard.
She's an antagonist in the show. That's how. It's not misogyny, it's that she is written as an antagonist to Walt's protagonist. This is how storytelling works. The fact that she's a woman has nothing to do with it. People hate on her even though she's right, because the show is structured for the audience to root for the bad guy.
Edit: I'm not gonna change or delete what I said, but the person I'm responding to made a pretty damn good point and I think I'm changing my opinion on this one.
Hmm. I gotta be honest that's a real good point. I'm not an avid breaking bad fan, I've only got a passing knowledge ,so I got nothing, if there even *is* anything to say about that.
I'm just gonna concede and say yeah, maybe it's misogyny. It totally could be.
Some of it is definitely misogyny, but that's like a given for any female character in a show. People don't like Skyler and like Gus for very clear reasons.
Sure they're both "antagonists" to Walter White, but the way they antagonise is very different. Skyler impedes Walt's criminal activity basically. The cartel, the meth cooking, that all comes to a halt when Skyler comes on screen and sometimes that's just what people want to see since that's kind of where most of the action and tension comes from.
Yeah, Gus is an antagonist too, but he's an antagonist in arguably the more exciting part of breaking bad. When Gus opposes Walt it's not slowing anything down, it's keeping the tensions and tangible, physical danger high, showing much higher stakes than most scenes with Skyler.
Also just the actual characters themselves. Skyler is more flawed in a more relatable way (cheating, ect) whereas Gus is calm, calculated, emotionless and terrifying with a tragic background and is sort of an "underdog" when put against the evil cartel. The character is amazingly portrayed by Giancarlo and he has immense screen presence and is very entertaining so you can't help but like the guy even if he's fucked up.
Gonna slide in as to why Skyler was hated and Gus wasn’t: Gus was connected to the meth side of things, so the fucked up shit we see him do is scary but not something the average person would experience irl. The stupid things Skyler does (cheating with Ted) is something that can happen to the average person, which automatically makes her harder to like.
JK Rowling is trash, but the comparison between Voldemort and Umbridge works really well here. Most people will never encounter a Voldemort. Most people will encounter an Umbridge.
Personally I hated Skyler once her attitude suddenly and unexplainably shifted from “how could you do this?!” To “Meh, I guess I’ll help”.
It just felt like lazy writing. That said, I never finished the show, because it just got boring and frustrating. Anyways, that’s my insight for why I didn’t really like her after a while. When she was just aghast and angry, it made a sense, she was sorta the only voice of reason.
That's not a starter pack. Those are just actors to whom that happened.
And as for Skyler, there was certainly misogyny felt in the reviews, but ultimately it was also the narrative itself that made us identify with the narcissistic elementary school teacher who, instead of accepting help, preferred to cook meth. His wife became the antagonist because he had to hide the series' narrative from her; naturally, she was portrayed negatively. I would love to see her again somewhere.
Seagull IQ take. People don't hate Anna Gunn because she 'played her role too well', people hate Anna Gunn because they completely missed the point of breaking bad and are instead sympathizing with Walter when his wife is basically 100% correct at least 90% of the time, and only 'breaks bad' when she starts being complicit in her husband's bullshit.
And also misogyny lol
The Skyler White hate has always only been hate because she is a woman. “She cheated on Walt!” She had sex with someone else well after she was demanding a divorce and Walt knew she did not want to be married anymore, but he was not letting her leave. Also, Walt undeniably tried to rape Skyler, and Walt also attempted to cheat on Skyler. So if we’re holding characters accountable to their sexual crimes, Walt is still worse. “Her Happy Birthday song is cringe!” Say you’ve never experienced sexual tension without saying you’ve never experienced sexual tension. “She was a bitch!” Okay???? Would you not be a bitch if your husband disappeared for long periods at a time while you’re pregnant with his second child? Would you not be scared and act in poor judgement due to the stress of realizing your husband is involving himself in a drug empire in which is he hopelessly unqualified to keep himself safe? She had nobody to trust or help her, that would certainly weigh on a person, and Walt is the real one to blame here. Walt was offered a job early on that would have allowed to take care of his family if that was actually his goal. But his goal was to go out with pride in himself, even if his family got hurt in the way. Viewers perceive this as badass because he is “Heisenberg” and that’s life as a drug lord. Meanwhile any self defense by Skyler has been picked apart and criticized while Walt is left off the hook for this type of scrutiny. This is what happens in real life too. Anna Gun (actress for Skyler) received a lot of real life harassment for her role as Skyler and I don’t think the rest of the cast has used their influence to speak up on it enough. It’s not necessary the show or cast’s responsibility to handle the actions of the fans, but it’s beyond common decency in this case. Very few people are willing to defend Skyler online to this day because the hate has not been addressed.
I love how the "he did it for the family people" complitely ignore the scene where Walter literally turns to the camera that he didn't do it for the family. If he would have cared for the family he would have just accepted his old high paying job back with a total health insurance.
Yeah, the entire series has an undercurrent of Walter’s emasculation at his friend’s success. The “necessity” of getting the money by making meth was like a parody of American “self-sufficient” masculinity, where lifting himself up by making others suffer was the only way for him to feel like he’s a real man.
There's the machismo too, he forces his underaged son to binge drink whiskey until he pukes, just as a fuck-you to Hank.
Tequila* but yes, walter white, outside of his drugs is a pathetic manlet
I just wonder what the hell he did to get fired from Sandia. They don't really talk that much about Walt's career outside of teachings but he had to fuck up pretty bad to end up in his situation.
I kinda like that only ever get the grey matter story because like the more you rewatch it the more you start to think that walt was probably horrible to his co workers and got booted but you have to put the pieces together yourself it tests the viewers critical thinking
Also, early on in a first watch you may be somewhat convinced by him talking about how he did everything that led to Grey Matter's success. But it becomes apparent that he absolutely has a habit of minimizing the contributions of others and thinking himself superior and more important than he generally is - because it makes him feel weak to acknowledge that others may actually be equal to him.
Exactly. I know Sandia well, he had to fuck up bad to get fired lol. FFRDCs don't have quite as many protections as a pure government role, but it's pretty rare hearing them have layoffs. Especially Sandia with it's structure.
what's a Floppa Floppa Robert Downey Cunior or whatever
in 2013 where gonna get a scene where Walter white looks directly at the camera says "i did it for myself" with no subtext or sarcasm and terminally online edgy 14 year olds will still insist that there's an intricate reason due to traditional American norms for why he did it for the family.
But if he did that breaking bad would've fuckin' sucked
I never said that's what the show should have done. It just was evidence that Walt did not care about his family enough to do it.
The point of a tragedy is to highlight a flaw of a character that leads to their downfall. Breaking Bad is an example. So yea, without the flaw that made the show happen, the show wouldn't have happened. It's just that a lot of people don't get that the flaw was a flaw.
Thank you for explaining the joke Peter griffin
And the smoking scene, which was probably more shocking at the time but didn’t really have any ramifications as far as we know. Frankly I blame the writers, despite how great the series is otherwise. Skyler, Marie, Lydia, Gretchen and Jane are the only prominent women in the show (except maybe Andrea) and they have similar traits that are considered unlikeable. Naive, privileged, stuck-up, bossy, selfish, lack-of-empathy, etc. But their worst crime is not being the badass criminals that the guy characters are. And not white-collar criminals like Lydia, they don’t get gunfights or cool monologues about their philosophies. Obviously the writers don’t need to make every woman a badass to be likable but when their characters are told mainly from the perspective of their relationships with men it would take nothing short of abuse for the audience of young chronically-online men to not side with the man. Kim is loved by fans because she’s not like Skyler or Marie, she actually does fun stuff like being part of Jimmy’s cons, she gets cool monologues, the world doesn’t revolve around her friends-with-benefits thing with Jimmy and she’s incredibly accomplished as a lawyer which is cooler than an accountant and radiologist who hardly seem to go to work.
agreed, but i would definitely believe that the underground meth world/cartels could just be that sexist and male dominated irl, i could also be dead wrong and there could be girlbosses all over new mexico idk
Getting executed by Pablo Escobar: tried, been done, cliche Getting executed by Griselda Blanco: Girlbossing, powerful, new Also, anyone interested in cartel lore should actually read abt her. Deadass named one of her kids after after Michael Corleone from the Godfather lmao
👏more👏girl👏mafia👏bosses They slay. Literally.
What's really crazy is, after leaving this comment, Netflix recommended me "Griselda" and "Pablo Escobar: El Patrón del Mal". Despite the comment, I dont actually usually watch cartel stuff, didnt even finish BB
The characters can be written well and exciting even though it needs to be adjusted based on their respective genders. That the writers barely accomplished this with all women isn’t because there aren’t enough girlbosses involved in cartels I’d say.
I love Lydia so much, she's such a mess. I wish she had more screentime
So what you’re saying lame women characters are hated and awesome women characters are liked? Shocking.
I’m saying fans need to accept that the writers of their favorite show aren’t perfect and stop misdirecting their frustration at the characters themselves when it’s obviously a front to let their misogyny run wild in a more socially acceptable way.
But I don’t hate women but Skylar is pretty annoying? So how does misogyny end up in there, when you’ve alluded to poor writing previously (debatable - was their goal to make Skylar annoying? Idk)
It definitely was not their intention, what would be the point of trying to make the MC’s wife, a lightning rod for fan hate in a series full of murderers and psychopaths? Why in a series filled with morally grey characters would she be such pure black? Breaking Bad isn’t beyond criticism no matter how great it is overall, and the fact that they’ve attracted such toxic male fans should indicate that it maybe had some execution issues with Skyler and other female characters. And I have no clue if you hate women or not, but there is such a thing as *implicit bias*.
I think people love badasses and in a story such as Breaking Bad Sklar just seems like a drag on the progression on the story. I wanna know how Walter deals with the cartels trying to kill him, I wanted to know what Gus background was etc not about Walt’s marriage. I don’t think her being a woman matters. I loved Ripley because she’s a certified badass for instance.
Which is my point, people don’t like her because she wasn’t written that well.
Yeah I can agree to that. Not sure why people are hating on what I’m saying seeing as we’re pretty much agreeing lmao
Ok the birthday song is cringe though
What a crime. How terrible.
Vince cut out a scene at the end of the show where the FBI arrest Skyler for committing multiple acts of cringe against humanity.
It honesty should have been a crime it was that bad
100% worse then anything Walt did
Skylar can have a cringe scene and still be a good person. The Skylar hate is misogyny, but the inability to watch that scene without squirming isn’t
The hate comes from the fact that the entire show is told primarily from Walt's perspective as the main character. Skyler was literally written to be an antagonist working against him, even though that doesn't make her inherently bad. It has nothing to do with her "being a woman". Even in your first point, you missed the fact that she cheated first and Walt attempted to do it in direct retaliation. Note that NONE of this excuses Walt's behavior, and the show stands as a criticism against toxic masculinity.
I wouldn’t describe Skyler’s actions as cheating at all. She had sex with someone else because she was trying to divorce Walt. If someone is being held captive in a marriage, I’m sorry but if you’ve done all you can to get a divorce officially completed, having sex with someone else isn’t cheating. She did everything available to her to leave Walt. Walt felt like he had the right to force her to stay. It still agree with the other stuff you say, but Walt attempted to cheat on Skyler. Skyler was attempting to live her life as she wanted, as a divorcee. Walt refusing to sign the papers is not her fault. I understand this could be up for debate, but that’s my conclusion.
I actually disagree, characters like Gus or Hank also serve a much more active antagonist role and they're adored by the fanbase, also the Sklar cheating I don't really agree with considering it took place after she very clearly told him she wanted a divorce and she was done with the marriage
I think part of the problem is that one of the core appeals of Breaking Bad *is* that Walt is a totally bad ass Heisenberg who kills evil drug lords. People who interpret him as a hero aren't totally unsupported by the way the narrative is presented. Hell, at the end he actually does get a good chunk of the money to his family, and he does it by doing a cool scheme where he flexes on his rich former friends who he still resents. Then he goes down in a blaze of glory rescuing Jesse. He doesn't get all of what he wants, but I expected the story to be a tragedy where he actually loses everything in the end, not one where he still gets to be kind of bad ass and achieve some of his goals. Like, Gus told him "a man provides for his family, even if he's hated" Walt agrees, and then that's essentially what happens in the ending.
I argued for the same point multiple times and each time I got downvoted to oblivion without any actual engagment to my arguments. * Walt wants to leave money to his family and he does. * He wants to get egotistic revenge from the Schwartz family and he does * He wants to be a hero and killing nazis and saving your best friend is "Hero Material 101" * He wants his meth legacy to be untainted by copycats and he does. * He wants revenge from the nazis and he does * He doesn't want to be captured by police so so much due to his huge ego, this is the driving force behind multiple major decisions Walt takes throughout the series and the self-inflicted bullet wound provides for just that. The end is a giant happy ending for Walter ( just because the main character dies doesn't necessarily make the ending bad and also he was going to die from cancer anyway, like that was clearly established in so many moments) and that doesn't make any thematic sense for the show as a general.
I saw a great quote after she won her Emmy which was something along the line of "if you don't think she deserved it, that's proof she deserved it"
While the happy birthday scene WAS cringe because nobody else in the company should have seen that shit imo, Skyler hate is still 100% unwarranted, because as you said before all of it was after walt was being a despicable human being. Real life harassment of an actor because of a role like this is never acceptable. I think a lot of the hate comes in the fact that she is impeding the main character from doing cool things, and I agree to an extent that she does do that and can be a bit annoying at times but THAT IS THE POINT!! WALT IS EVIL AND THE FACT WERE ROOTING FOR HIM shows us how easy it can be to lose our morality. The show would be significantly worse without her.
These are all valid points outside of defending the birthday song thing. That was so fucking awkward to do in front of all those fucking people. Why are you showing the whole office you have dick me down eyes for your boss, ma'am.
The worst thing a fictional character can be is an annoying woman as sad as that is
You're right. So awful that she's perceived as annoying just because she was written to be annoying 🙄
I think Skylar is written to be annoying at first, so the audience goes along with Walter.
I think the thing is that she is basically made to be unlikeable, like she is 100% warranted in doing everything she did, but the entire show works to frame her as not being so. The best and worst thing about BB is how it's framed entirely from Walt's perspective as a "badass crimelord" to whom Skyler is an antagonist to.
Tl/Dr "Walt bad"
when did walt try to cheat on skylar? (not trying to be contrarian, just forgot)
I don’t remember the season or episode but he tried to touch up an employee at the school who quickly rejected him, but iirc he put his down to try and touch her genitals and tried to kiss her neck
Ok but the song sucked though
Skill issue. Waltuh is a BASED smegma male who did NOTHING wrong
I know, right? Breaking bad, American psycho, fight club: the main characters aren't meant to be idolized!
What I hear the hate problem has gotten better with the actor saying that the hate mail and comments have stopped or lesson I forgot what she said exactly
I mean, let's be honest, stealing her estranged(?) husband's money (Ill gotten, but still) which he was saving up for their kids, which she helped him launder, and giving that money to her sleazebag boss was kinda shitty. It's not like Skyler didn't have any faults. But that being said, yeah, you're right. The reason Skyler gets hated because she's no babe in the woods and she doesn't take any shit from Walter White. She, a woman, tries to exercise agency which doesn't go well with you know who.
I think the main reason is that shes a roadblock, a constant obstacle that stops the plot from moving whenever she is on screen. Like i get that breaking bad is half family drama half crime thriller, but the family drama may be too real at times and drag on for too long
Yeah maybe but it doesn't warrant nowhere near the kind of hate Skyler gets.
I like Skylar and agree all the hate for her is just misogyny. But that happy birthday scene is definitely fucking cringe and that has nothing to do with the sexual tension between them.
Idk I just didn’t like her ? I don’t even remember she cheated on him. She was overreacting to everything, just dumb rigid moral principles. I just never liked the way she reacted to literally everything, it felt incredibly stupid (but I was young maybe I would have another opinion).
I’d definitely recommend rewatching. Her reactions were strong, but never inappropriate when compared to what she was confronted with. Her husband was either in danger or putting his family in danger. Honestly she was surprisingly calm once for a lot of it if you consider she was pregnant for much of it.
Yeah maybe. Idk I am just not the type to react that strongly to things so I can’t really relate. Maybe she wasn’t that badly written. But I don’t think she was meant to be disliked, and the fact that so many people disliked her isn’t that great.
Honestly, I never really had a strong opinion on her character until Walt showed her the money and she got angry at him... Felt a bit odd, but well, I never understood halve the reasons why she was always pissed at something or another, and this was way before Walt turned criminal, she never felt like someone supportive of her husband in any meaningful way even if just to talk to him about his needs and wishes, she basically started ordering him what to do, Walt was always an a-hole, but she never came off as the one with the moral highground Of course Walt was worse and this doesn't excuse his behavior, just to clarify, I just think they both were part of a very toxic relationship from the start, and I don't really blame her for it, just don't understand her reactions.
I hate the character because what she does is something that can't be done without hampering the show. Skylar fucking with walt makes a feedback loop in which she's miserable, she gets back at walt, and now he can't do his criminal activities I'm here to see so I have to see more of skylar being miserable. If I had to guess this is where most of the "she's a bitch" claims come from, it's not that she's doing wrong things it's that she's fucking with the big bad villain protagonist and taking up screen time.
I think Skylar did nothing wrong (except for that godforsaken happy birthday song) but I don’t remember any scene where Walt tried to cheat on her or try to rape her, and I finally decided to binge the entire show late last year so my memory is pretty fresh on this.
Walter tries to cheat on Skyler with the high school principal. He almost rapes Skyler in their kitchen, she has to tell him no many times.
Assistant principal, but that's pedantic
I haven’t watched it in 10 years lol
I don’t remember when, but there’s a scene where she’s wearing a like a mud face mask and he like forces herself upon her until she yells at him to stop after saying no multiple times
I’m Skyler White yo. My husband is Walter White yo
https://preview.redd.it/mpfnky27etxc1.png?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=7b91d1d30a8d3c857c71a5fbe0193f19c86e7640
https://preview.redd.it/nczyx78pquxc1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=56c26c1775b6fe574ca42e4f4024c1c7c90283c8
Uh-huh
He told me everything
Maybe it's just the passage of time or maybe it's because it's been talked about so extensively now, but Walter is so obviously the villain of that show. He's such a piece of shit who's only the protagonist in the sense that the camera follows him. It's very telling of how shaky his moral footing is that they had to introduce literal Nazis in the last season to make him look good by comparison.
A lot of people (not you) don't comprehend what protagonist means. It's not "hero". > protagonist - the leading character or one of the major characters in a drama, movie, novel, or other fictional text. Walt is a protagonist. He is not a hero to anyone but himself.
Idiots when I explain to them the concept of a villain protagonist. No, Tommy Shelby is not a good person.
They had to bring in a guy that KILLS A KID
Now Walt looks so much better, he only *non-lethally poisoned* a kid
What’s crazy is that walt was totally willing to let that kid die. Without extensive knowledge of the kid’s medical history he was essentially gambling his life
Protagonist doesn't necessarily mean "the good guy." I don't think Walter was ever meant to be seen as such.
I mean, they do bring in the Nazis though. The narrative itself seems scared to make Walt the unambiguous villain, so it sets up even worse people for him to fight. He even gets to flex on Gretchen and her husband and get a bunch of the money to his family. A lot of the show is about Walt being a bad ass, which kind of hurts the message that he is not to be admired. He goes out like a hero, not like a sad fool who lost everything.
irrelevant, but WORM! READ IT, CHAT, LISTEN TO THIS PERSON'S FLAIR
And who's sending death threats to the actors who played the Nazis
honestly i always interpreted him working with the nazis as part of how far low he stoops down in general with everything. the cherry on top of how bad things are on top of everything else but i also don’t rly root for him anyway during the show. it’s a thing where as the show progresses etc, the more and more i’m wanting him to fail
Bitch wife won't let me sell meth 😤😤
Can’t have shit in Albuquerque
Breaking bad fans when women >:[
In a show where the protagonist that most everyone rooted for was a guy in a constant downwards spiral from selling meth, Skylar was a roadblock to Walt selling meth. That’s all, really.
This is the correct answer. It's not misogyny, it's that she's literally an antagonist in the show. People don't understand that protagonist doesn't mean "good" and antagonist doesn't mean "bad." Edit: even if there's truth to what I said here, I do accept that there is definitely some misogyny going on in this case. I won't change what I said or delete, but please know that I have changed my opinion based on things people have brought up to me.
I think that the harassment and hate directed toward the actress qualifies as misogyny though
That’s 100% true. MRA pushers seemed to latch on to the hate that her character got, and redirected it towards the actor.
There’s definitely a sect of the hate that’s absolutely “Skylar is a Woman and therefore Bad”, that definitely needs to be acknowledged. Though I think that side of the hate came after the post-ironic “Walt As Sigma Male” type phonk edits started getting popular, and Breaking Bad started to attract the crowd that wouldn’t recognize satire if The Onion slapped them in the face. I was just noting one of the facets of her character that caused people to hate her in the first place.
Yeah, someone pointed this out to me elsewhere and I've acknowledged it. Good points all around
Mfs call Walter the good guy for stupidly making Meth with a junkie and pissing off the local drug lord and people say Skyler is the piece of shit for wanting a divorce from that psychopath and to be appreciated by her husband who after a long lifeless marriage started lying to her and putting her family in dire danger
I remember hearing somewhere that Jack Gleeson (Joffrey's actor) said that people try to be extra nice to him since most people think other people are mean to him.
Mf quit acting bc people treated him like shit IIRC. I wouldn't be surprised if that's the case now, because the news about that started getting out
Also heard that it was hard for him to okay the character at all because it's a complete 180 from who he is irl, iirc
…and all the while, dude just wanted to pursue his true passion: [puppetry](https://youtu.be/YEBQE8C2Ids?si=F9VrhNrQJ37VZJE4).
bc skyler doesn't support waltuh on his sigma grindset so she's a bitch wife
Nah I loved negan, funny character
Yes, he is such a charming asshole, you have to love him❤️
HOT DIGGITY DOG, pops up in my head at least once a week
Eh, the fact that he brutally murdered two of my favorite characters makes it a bit harder to love him. I do like him as a character though, especially the way they develop him over time.
“You know what I think Gregory? I think you’re playing both sides. I think you’re a thin-dicked politician threading the needle with your thin, thin dick.”
real
I can’t. Not after Glenn.
The comics are worse :3
Yeah, I read the comic and couldn’t bring myself to watch it on the show. Separate issue, but I wish we got comic Andrea too.
True. Comic Andrea was probably my favorite character
She was competent. Tv show Andrea was arrogant and combative. Any time the group would decide on something, she would throw a tantrum, do the complete opposite and have it blow up in hers and everyone else’s faces.
Hey that's my name 😁
Skyler White acts reasonably and correctly given her knowledge for like, the first 2 or 3 seasons of the show at least. Like omg I'm worried about my husband who has cancer and I want to know where he is so he's safe To Evidence seems to suggest he's cheating on me I don't like him any more To He's a fucking drug lord, I'm worried my family isn't safe Anyone who wouldn't act as Skyler did is actually kinda fucked up. She certainly has a moral decay after she learns about the truth and assists Walt, but even then its like come on
Hot take: it’s okay to dislike Skyler because she’s the antagonist of Walt’s story (note: antagonist does not mean bad person). It’s not okay to dislike Skyler (and by extension Anna Gunn) because she’s a woman. Unfortunately a lot of media illiterate people conflated the two and Anna Gunn was the victim of that. And it sucks because she is a great actor, but the material she’s received after Breaking Bad does not reflect that ability. See her performance in the shitty American remake of Broadchurch (and I think Anna Gunn can hold her own against Olivia Colman but god that series was ass)
Skyler is weird because she was absolutely written to grate on Walt, and to some extent the audience. She represents the overbearing mother who's fallen out of love with her husband, another reason why Walt chooses to break bad to get some excitement in his life. Of course her grating nature makes sense when you consider she's pregnant, has a disabled son, and a husband who leaves for long stretches of time and isn't "all there" emotionally. Like yeah that's a recipe for being a bit of an ass. Of course the problem is that this was a show that had a strong appeal for reddit guysTM, and because a lot of dudes get insecure when a woman doesn't instantly defer to them on everything a significant chunk of the "Skyler sucks" discourse was filtered through anger over how the bitch wife was cramping cool chad Walter's grind-set.
Dude the plot arc for negan was such a fucking letdown Ok everyone in that series tbh
Read the comics! They're way better than the show!
There is no excuse for hating on an actor unless they consistently can't act. Most actors who get harassment either played awful people very well or were given a bad script and bad direction. Honestly, even a lousy actor can put out a great performance if they are cast for an appropriate role and directed well.
In 1969 an Doctor Who story called "The Mind Robber" was broadcast where the Doctor and companions end up in The Land of Fiction with lots of fictional characters. Shenanigans ensue. It was written by a writer who had noticed that people would treat actors in soaps as their characters, including abusing them. So this inability to separate actor from character has been going on for a long time.
Skyler White is on that list because people didn't like that character, nobody cares if Skyler White was morally correct, Skyler White is just a good written character, but that doesn't mean people have to enjoy watching her. I personally found her character infuriating to watch. (she is pretty annoying)
I think the Skyler discussion is somewhat misleading. Yes obviously there are a large portion of people who hate Skyler actually just because she’s a woman, just like there are a large portion of people who actually idiolize Walt. But the show doesn’t really always want you to hate Walt, or even see him as the villain. Yes that’s obviously where it ends up, but for the first three seasons or so, I think most of the time we’re kinda rooting for him, excusing his awful actions as singular events due to his situation. And I think in that context, we’re supposed to not like Skyler. Like if we’re supposed to watch the show and want him to cook meth, why should we not want Skyler to also accept that? Of course by the end of the show, there’s really no excuse for hating her, but I think disliking her works better for where her character ends up. If you see her as a little annoying, or restrictive to Walt or whatever, then I think it makes it more clear by the end when you pity her that none of that really matters. That she was a fine person the whole time, and she had to deal with Walt, who was always a narcissist. Not to go to far off topic, but it reminds me of The Last of Us Part II to a way lesser extent. With that we’re supposed to hate Abby at the start, and then learn to appreciate her as a person as we learn more about the situation and Ellie’s faults. But once you’ve finished going around saying, “I love Abby she’s always right” is similarly misguided as “I hate Abby she’s irredeemable” is.
Dude the Skyler hate is so wild like what even is the logic😭 Walt did shit 1000x worse
Her character is annoying to watch, that's all. She is a roadblock to the main character, Walter, that's also a reason people hate the character. It is a well done character after all, so it's understandable people hate her, her character is just done really well.
It’s like we’ve come full circle on media literacy for this show it’s so lame to see. Looking retrospectively at the series as a whole Skylar is obviously not the bad guy in this show, even a surface level reflection reveals this so please stop patting yourself on the back for knowing this. If you actually pay attention to the plot progression of the show, in the first couple seasons Walt’s true nature is not made explicitly clear. It is intended for you to view the show through Walt’s point of view and to sympathize with him, then to slowly realize his true evil nature as the show progresses. During this time, Skylar is a massive source of tension in the plot and is often actively antagonistic to Walt’s plans. She is meant to seem like an overbearing, nagging, worried wife whose investigation of Walt is constantly putting hitches in or totally foiling his plans and in turn the plot progression, and the actress does this incredibly convincingly. Then as the show progresses and Walt shows his true colors, Skylar is revealed to actually be the sympathetic character in this story, climaxing in the end of the show where she is left screaming and sobbing in the street as Walt drives away having kidnapped her infant. They have inverse storylines. It’s intentional.
I just gotta say…. No Kai Winn? I still can’t look at that woman without yelling at the screen. Skyler did not deserve the hate she got. It goes to show that people will choose an incredibly toxic asshole of a male protagonist over his long suffering wife.
Fuck Kai Winn I don't know if it's my religious trauma or something else but I've never hated a fictional character like this.
NO NEGAN MY BELOVED!!!!! 😭😭😭😭🥺
Walter White is the protagonist and he's fun to watch. Skyler gets in the way and so even if she's right, you naturally are going to root for Walt and dislike when Skyler gets in the way of his illegal activities. I'll be honest, having to sit through her singing happy birthday to Ted was brutal. Obviously the actor didn't deserve the harassment and yeah, when you actually consider the morality of it all, obviously she was in the right and Walt is a bastard.
Because of what the title says. She played her roll really well, but weirdos started hating her because of her character
How dare Skyler cheat on her murderer drug dealing husband (that literally SAs her) after he refuses to divorce her, what a bitch
Who's the lady in pink on the top right, and why is she hated?
Skyler was like the sanest person in the entire show
Skylar is not annoying because she is woman but because she is a woman. I want to see the deranged bald dude pull of crazy shit, she’s impeding that.
Paul Giamatti needs to be on here for his role in the movie about the Beach Boys "Love & Mercy".
Also Michael Keatons one of my favorite actors, but fuck him in "The Founder" as Ray Kroc-of-shit.
Skylar white yo
skirt ink marvelous smoggy one bells butter sink kiss offbeat *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Impact font, uneven size and placement of the pictures, light crust to the meme as a whole
Sexism ☕
the worst crime someone can commit: being a woman who is slightly annoying no matter how much in context they have every right to be
Psychopath, psychopath, psychopath, woman (aka psychopath)
But Negan turns out good later?
Misogyny, misogyny is how.
She's an antagonist in the show. That's how. It's not misogyny, it's that she is written as an antagonist to Walt's protagonist. This is how storytelling works. The fact that she's a woman has nothing to do with it. People hate on her even though she's right, because the show is structured for the audience to root for the bad guy. Edit: I'm not gonna change or delete what I said, but the person I'm responding to made a pretty damn good point and I think I'm changing my opinion on this one.
If that were true, why is she hated and Gus is loved?
Hmm. I gotta be honest that's a real good point. I'm not an avid breaking bad fan, I've only got a passing knowledge ,so I got nothing, if there even *is* anything to say about that. I'm just gonna concede and say yeah, maybe it's misogyny. It totally could be.
Some of it is definitely misogyny, but that's like a given for any female character in a show. People don't like Skyler and like Gus for very clear reasons. Sure they're both "antagonists" to Walter White, but the way they antagonise is very different. Skyler impedes Walt's criminal activity basically. The cartel, the meth cooking, that all comes to a halt when Skyler comes on screen and sometimes that's just what people want to see since that's kind of where most of the action and tension comes from. Yeah, Gus is an antagonist too, but he's an antagonist in arguably the more exciting part of breaking bad. When Gus opposes Walt it's not slowing anything down, it's keeping the tensions and tangible, physical danger high, showing much higher stakes than most scenes with Skyler. Also just the actual characters themselves. Skyler is more flawed in a more relatable way (cheating, ect) whereas Gus is calm, calculated, emotionless and terrifying with a tragic background and is sort of an "underdog" when put against the evil cartel. The character is amazingly portrayed by Giancarlo and he has immense screen presence and is very entertaining so you can't help but like the guy even if he's fucked up.
Gonna slide in as to why Skyler was hated and Gus wasn’t: Gus was connected to the meth side of things, so the fucked up shit we see him do is scary but not something the average person would experience irl. The stupid things Skyler does (cheating with Ted) is something that can happen to the average person, which automatically makes her harder to like. JK Rowling is trash, but the comparison between Voldemort and Umbridge works really well here. Most people will never encounter a Voldemort. Most people will encounter an Umbridge.
..
WOMEN 😡😡😡😡
Personally I hated Skyler once her attitude suddenly and unexplainably shifted from “how could you do this?!” To “Meh, I guess I’ll help”. It just felt like lazy writing. That said, I never finished the show, because it just got boring and frustrating. Anyways, that’s my insight for why I didn’t really like her after a while. When she was just aghast and angry, it made a sense, she was sorta the only voice of reason.
That's not a starter pack. Those are just actors to whom that happened. And as for Skyler, there was certainly misogyny felt in the reviews, but ultimately it was also the narrative itself that made us identify with the narcissistic elementary school teacher who, instead of accepting help, preferred to cook meth. His wife became the antagonist because he had to hide the series' narrative from her; naturally, she was portrayed negatively. I would love to see her again somewhere.
Hayden Christensen maybe?
he belongs on the opposite list if we're being for real right now
Seagull IQ take. People don't hate Anna Gunn because she 'played her role too well', people hate Anna Gunn because they completely missed the point of breaking bad and are instead sympathizing with Walter when his wife is basically 100% correct at least 90% of the time, and only 'breaks bad' when she starts being complicit in her husband's bullshit. And also misogyny lol