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[frelling_tralk]

Skyler is still one of the most controversial topics of conversation for Breaking Bad and viewers seem to either fall into loving her and Skyler being the best and most flawlessly badass character of the whole show, or being the worst ever and a total bitch of a wife. I'm frustrated though that some of her actual morally ambiguous acts are never

Comments

[waltzmatildah]

URGH, HDU post about Skyler (my QUEEEEEEEN) when I have SO MUCH WORK TO DO, OMG.

But, heh. HERE I AM, REPLYING ANYWAY.

So, basically, I think (hope?!!) I fit in the third category? I LOVE LOVE LOVE Skyler, but I love her 'warts and all' and I also get annoyed when people brush off her (many) 'flaws' or erase them altogether because those things are what makes her HER. She has the propensity to be an awful person. She's arrogant, cold, ruthless, ambitious, spiteful, jealous, hypocritical (note: all things a female 'shouldn't' be!!), but she's also a victim and she's fiercely protective of her kids, and she's brave and scared and A THOUSAND OTHER THINGS.

Urgh. I LOVE HER SO.

(Though I agree that comments I've seen both Anna and Vince make about her make it seem like they think of her slightly differently, but I choose to read that as a reaction to the HATE and RAGE the character - and actress - copped, as opposed to an accurate reading that I need to adopt/adjust to).

Basically, I agree with so much of what you've said here, but the only difference is I love it all and her to BITS because of it?!!

She is my second favourite character behind Walt and my most favourite of season five. LOVE HER. Yes.

[frelling_tralk]

:nods to everything you're saying: And y'know I wouldn't say that I disliked her by the time of seasons 4 and 5, I definitely appreciated her more by then and her character become someone who fascinated me . But looking back I as well fell into the trap of defining Skyler by her husband in the beginning. I.e in seasons 1 and 2 I wasn't keen on her character and generally thought of it in terms of well she's always nagging Walt for daring to want some time to himself after a cancer diagnosis, tracking down Jesse over her husband smoking pot after said diagnosis, or refusing to let anyone do anything but agree with her during the pillow intervention, but looking back now I think that I too was definitely just seeing her character from Walt's POV and how she affected him, instead of seeing being controlling as being an individual character trait of Skyler's to consider. For me the way that the show was structured early on meant that it was much easier to be in Walt's POV alone, and it was really season 3 that fleshed Skyler out as a character and made me take a second look at my first impressions. I'd almost say that Vince Gilligan is being a tiny bit disingenuous when he doesn't at all understand the extreme hate that Skyler gets as a character, even though you could almost predict that it would happen from how strongly season 1 was in Walt's POV and Skyler was written as an obstacle to Walt being his own man

But right up to the end her character was exclusively viewed as how she came across as a wife by so many of the viewers, and even the viewers defending her didn't seem to release that they were also interpreting everything that she did through how it affected her husband and children, they just cheered her on for it and were team Skyler against Team Walt, but that's brushing off such a huge part of her character. It hardly ever gets brought up that she did refuse to be the wife that looks away, but actually insisted on taking an active role in the cover-up and working at money-laundering right alongside Walt. Still her character gets boiled down to those that never forgave her for freaking out over her husband dealing drugs and holding him back, and those that only saw her as the mother figure who was taking a stand against Walt and insist that she only returned to him because Walt dominated and abused her. And both sides are missing, not just a huge chunk of her storyline from seasons 3 and 4, but who Skyler fundamentally is as a person

[infinitewhale]

I tend to think they go hand in hand. I don't think the familial situation in S1 is written so much as Walt's POV because to me she's never written antagonistically. Sky is overbearing and controlling in S1, but at the same time it also shows why she is: Walt has quit. He's a pushover. He's a sleep. Sky is the one keeping track of finances. Walt Jr doesn't respect him. It's Sky who goes to confront the kids making fun of Jr and their surprised when Walt does.

If Vince was writing from that angle, I can see why he'd be surprised at how it was taken by some folks.

[frelling_tralk]

I tend to think they go hand in hand. I don't think the familial situation in S1 is written so much as Walt's POV because to me she's never written antagonistically

Skyler is not written as an outright antagonist I agree, but the show always felt very singularly focused on Walter White to me. Both seasons 1 and 5 in particular felt almost solely constructed around Walt's POV, there was little exploration of how characters like Jesse and Marie would ultimately end up in the end for example. Jesse's happy ending from Walt's POV rings false the more you think about what he was actually driving back too, and even the people that Walt was taking out were very much one-dimensional baddies that we see from Walt's POV as bad guys to defeat, even though arguably Lydia had previously been given more dimension than that

Obviously as the show went on the supporting characters did get a lot more range and their own stories at times, but just in general I got the feeling most strongly with season 1 that we were primarily watching Walt's story and how he viewed the people in his life, and then by the end of season 5 that's what we were again going back to with the other characters just supporting his story. IMO Skyler's role early on was very specifically one of the ~nagging wife~ stereotype who's going to give Walt a hard time for eating bacon, or for not checking in with her over the credit card spending, and we were almost encourage to see her as way too controlling in the same way that Walt did. Later seasons did give her more dimension, but it seemed like those early episodes had already coloured many viewers opinion of her

[infinitewhale]

True that the story is Walt's POV, but even Walt's POV, I don't think he ever sees her in that light. I mean, I agree that she comes across that way, but *Walt* never sees her as such and that's why I think Vince might have been taken aback that people were hating her to the extremes they were.

[frelling_tralk]

Idk I do think that Walt harboured some resentment over Skyler's controlling behaviour, he makes the comment about would she please climb out of his ass in season 1, although I definitely agree that Walt didn't have anywhere near as extreme an opinion of her as the fans did. I guess that it's a similar thing as it is with Walt Junior, if Walt was being totally honest then he would admit that at times he has resented both Skyler and his son and seen them as holding him back from the life that he believes that he should have had, but at the same time though that's not even close to being his main feelings for them when he clearly does love his family very much, so I can understand Vince being surprised when viewers latched on to the most extreme POV of Skyler