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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

[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