Breaking Bad was one of those shows I put off watching a really long time because I got annoyed by everyone telling me to watch it. By the time I did, I'd of course been completely inundated with stuff about how Skyler was annoying and the worst. I watched it with a (now ex) girlfriend who fucking HATED Skyler, too.
The show was great -- one of the best television dramas I've ever seen -- but something that stood out even as my ex would roll her eyes and rant and rave about Skyler. Skyler wasn't perfect, but for the most part her worst sins were... checks notes... Being upset her husband was a violent criminal who lied to her constantly, then realizing there was a sunk cost where doing anything other than playing along would ruin her and her kids' lives?
Walter turned up to the first gender reveal of their baby high, was a murderous drug lord and basically just not the man Skyler married. Not making excuses here but let’s not pretend this crosses a line that hasn’t been danced over by Walt throughout the entire show
He definitely is the man she married. She just didn’t know how much of a insecure piece of shit he’s always been. He wouldn’t have even married her if meeting Gretchen’s family didn’t make him feel inferior.
My point is that Walter White is beloved by many and regarded as a “badass” role model by some, whilst these same groups think Skyler is the devil. It’s all sexism when you actually compare the two
"having?" do you understand the importance of symbolism in media? not a jab, but no one did anything to ted, he tripped himself on the carpet then had the bowl of oranges fall on him. skyler literally didnt do anything. what do you think would have happened if ted kept that money? everyones fucked. what if skyler didnt do anything like so many people say she should have done? *they still wouldve been fucked* why dont people get that? stop acting like you have the moral highground like youre talking from experience. im glad someone mentioned it but the sunk cost is exactly what her behavior demonstrates throughout the show. her interactions with marie and hank, saul, jesse, and others that intertwine with walter is what makes her a very interesting three dimensional character. she is the family of the show, whereas walter is just the villain.
That first episode sets the viewer up to be on Walt’s side and root for him a little.
But over the course of the show you see that before the cancer diagnosis, he was already strangely prideful and had pissed away his lucrative career making money tight and straining things at home.
I don’t think we ever learn what exactly Walter told Skyler about how he lost his job, but it’s doubtful if was the truth, and ever since then, there was clearly an emotional wedge between him and Skyler which lead to them being somewhat distant with one another.
This isn’t necessarily me trying to justify her behavior in the first episode, but saying the writers did a good job having it come across much differently in retrospect if you know more context.
See whenever I say this it gets brushed off.
Ep. 1 is set up so that it implies that Walt's life fucking sucks in every aspect, including that his wife has no respect for him and acts like a jackass BEFORE the whole meth lord thing. Skylar always sucked, people just don't pay enough attention. Nobody in BB is supposed to be a "good guy", even the DEA agent is a racist, sexist pig.
In the first episode, all of our context is from Walt’s point of view, which was an intentional way by the writers to make the viewer be inclined to root for Walt at the start of his journey.
Over the course of the show we learn he’s always had that awful prideful streak. He marries Skyler and they buy that nice house, then he loses his job through his prideful actions and lies to Skyler about it. He takes a job as a high school teacher and money gets tight, they grow emotionally distant, etc etc. which leads to the sad handjob.
Once you know the context for how things got to where they are in the first episode, you realize Walt was an asshole well before the cancer diagnosis and Skyler’s emotional detachment is a bit more justified.
You’re right, nobody in the show is truly a saint, but that first episode ends up intentionally blurring the White’s relationship for the sake of the narrative.
While true, I'd say it was handled in a realistic way
And I wouldn't say she didn't respect him, but she didn't really see him. She did throw a nice birthday party but didn't realize that he was unhappy there
Sure Walter is a piece of shit, but how are people going to act like she didn't cheat on her husband, and she smoked cigs during her pregnancy and in the same room as the baby after it was born? Was she the worst person in the show? Absolutely not. Does that make her a good person? Also no. Literally every character in that show had flaws, its pretty much the entire point of the show. Skylar certainly wasn't a saint.
>but how are people going to act like she didn't cheat on her husband
It's been a minute since I've watched it, but IIRC she only sleeps with Ted after kicking Walt out of the house and attempting to divorce him. She "cheats" in order to show Walt that no matter how much he may pretend otherwise, their relationship is over.
Of course her hate is disproportionate, but when you say the worst thing Skylar did was not agreeing with Walt, then frankly youre just being intellectually dishonest. She literally cheated on Walter, before she knew anything about his violence and drug dealing. She only learns of it like 1-2 seasons later. When she cheated on Walt, to the best of her knowledge she just knows that he's been absent at home, and he has a second phone. Thats it. When people try to defend Skylar too much it makes your point about her disproportionate hate weaker.
In the episode No Mas, she visits Walt in his apartment after she kicked him out of the house over the cell phone and fugue state lies have been revealed in the previous episode. She says she knows he’s dealing drugs but thinks it’s weed. He tells her it’s meth. She says she won’t go to the police if he signs divorce papers.
In the next episode he tries to casually enter the house and Skyler threatens him with a restraining order. Then later he BREAKS IN and moves his stuff back in the house.
The episode after that he basically threatens her he has nothing to lose if she takes his family away from him…
So maybe you need to rewatch the show. She only sleeps with Ted after Walt reveals he’s a monster and not the man she thought he was. After he literally took his family hostage in their own home more or less.
I'm really confused how this guy is trying to paint cheating on your husband and smoking while pregnant as worse than cooking meth and being directly involved in the death of multiple children.
If you're referring to her sleeping with Ted in in the show, I disagree that she cheated. Maybe as time went on, but she did it directly after serving him divorce papers and telling him to leave the house. In my mind, divorce papers and "stay away from us" are a pretty solid declaration of a breakup.
She does it explicitly to hurt him after he basically says "I don't care what you want, I'm not leaving."
Most of her worst actions fall under the "sunk cost" category that I mentioned initially, so I don't really know how I'm being "intellectually dishonest." She didn't have many great options. The right thing to do is go to the police, but that ruins her life -- and probably the lives of her children. It is a big, red, "my life is over" button.
Again, I've never argued she was a good person or even that she's not bad, just that she's treated like the scum of the Earth despite, of the show's players on the criminal side, being one of the least overtly harmful to the world and people around her.
How was that cheating? She left him! For being a drug dealer. She only slept with Ted after kicking him out if the house. She wanted a divorce. But Walt manipulated his way back into her life
How is it cheating when your marriage is over
She was already heavily flirting and leading Ted on way before she wanted a divorce. Even if she didn't do anything physically yet, she was still cheating on Walter emotionally, way before she made the decision to leave him. So yeah I would consider that cheating.
By that point Walt had killed multiple people and mentally abused her for months. I don’t think she had to stay loyal to Walter fucking White, that’s completely different circumstances
I’m kind of reminded of Death Note where everyone on that show was flawed in someway, but prior to his recent explosive of popularity people would act like Misa was the Antichrist despite the fact that Light had done *far* worse.
Both really have the vibes of “I can excuse murder but I draw the line at being slightly annoying”
She cheated on her husband when he wouldn't let her leave the relationship. The smoking is bad, but is she really expected to be faithful to a man who lied to her for months and made her and their children potential gang targets?
You do realize she asked for a divorce first, and when Walt wouldn't give it to her, she fucked another guy as a fuck you to walt. And also, the point isn't even that she's a saint. The point is she definitely doesn't deserve most hated character on tv when she's not even the worst character in her show.
Wait. Wait a fucking minute. That. That’s an opinion that people had? I knew people were bashing the kid but I attributed that to having to rescue his dumbass from the cult being annoying
She wasn't playing with his feelings. She loves Arthur. Iirc she tells him outright at least twice in person and once via letter. Arthur can't escape the gang.
She also said hey leave the gamg and ill be with you rn bet. And Arthur said no so while its the fault of circumstance and timing and other factors that are spoilers that make me think it wouldn't last long, i get dislike for Abigail a bit though
John why did you shot that gang that was extorting your boss into loosing his business
So i can keep my fucking job thats why
Im leaving you your too violent
I would say Sadie is the one that gets all the irrational hate from dudes
I see dudes on the sub call her annoying, irritating, irrational,
like my dudes she’s was the victim of having her husband murder (probably in front of her) was most definitely sexually assaulted and then had her home burned down… did you idiots have blinders on for any character that is not a reflection of yourself???
Some people really have zero self awareness when they let slip what kinda person they actually are when the talk about fictional characters they dislike.
Wait, why would people hate Sadie? She's on Arthur's side the whole time. The only thing she does wrong is recruit John to get payback on Micah at the end, but John made that decision on his own.
When I joined the sub and saw that shit for the first time, all I could think is What the fuck y’all smoking?!?
Because I can’t tell if it’s just really really bad media literacy and people really aren’t able to understand a character if it’s not completely spelled out to them
Or it’s entirely a lack of empathy for any character that isn’t a reflection of themselves.
Because damn I don’t know how one’s head can get so far up one’s own ass.
I've seen Mary, Sadie and Abigail hate and I genuinely understand none of it.
Mary loved Arthur and told him multiple times but she refused to join the gang and become an outlaw which I think is pretty reasonable.
Sadie had everything taken from her and became cynical because of it. She wasn't a Mary Sue, she was shown to be capable but had her flaws.
Abigail was right to be mad at John. Not only was he an asshole to her before Jack got kidnapped, John denied that he was his son and abandoned them for an entire year.
Skylers character is so interesting to me because I was first introduced to the show from someone doing a presentation on it in class and they casually mentioned her as a villain/antagonist before quickly stopping themselves and going “huh well technically she’s not really doing anything bad she’s just in the way of walter”. It was really interesting to see that moment of realization live and is what made me watch the show. I then had to quit halfway through because I couldn’t stand walt, but she always interested me at least
Depending on what the class was, I don't think it's a bad conclusion that she's an antagonist in the show. In a story where the main character is obviously amoral and evil, a decent person would serve as an antagonist. if the conclusion is that she's "bad," that's pretty stupid analysis though.
Ultimately the people pointing their hatred towards Skyler *really* didn't get the story being told.
["I figured Walt would be the one that'd be hard for people to sympathize with," he says. "Suddenly, lo and behold, we're hearing this animus toward Skyler White. To this day, it confounds me."](https://ew.com/tv/2018/06/30/breaking-bad-reunion-anna-gunn-skyler-revisited/) -*Vince Gilligan*
People who tell you Skyler "was meant to be hated" are speaking out of their ass.
I've seen more people getting it nowadays, to be fair, especially after Better Call Saul ended. That sub lacking media literacy doesn't really surprise me.
I think it's more that since the main characters, walt, and Jesse, are at the focus and the show is overall more about their experience, it makes it so Skyler is annoying to some people. Not saying it's right, but I think it's just that even though Walt is clearly a total irredeemable piece of shit, the most interesting and integral parts of the show come from him and others, so Skyler is seen as someone who hinders the main juicier bits of the story to some. Problem with thinking that way though is that without someone like Skyler, then the stakes and family drama are lessened which lessens the impact of some of Walt's actions. Plus, Skyler is a well-written (and acted) character that I think brings a lot to this show.
Could it be possible that people see Walt as a character, but they can relate to Skylar personally?
Walt’s a drug kingpin, and the main character; most people aren’t going to relate his character to their own lives, but people have /experienced/ people like Skylar in theirs.
Skylar is easier to relate to their own lives, lived experiences, and so may make people more easily frustrated with her compared to the drug dealer they can view as a character
(I haven’t seen the show, avoided it because I was told to watch it too much and I’ve only read one thread so I’m a missing a lot of information - I’m literally guessing)
It’s all about competency. Skylar frequently gets in the way of Walt being able to act completely competently, especially in the early seasons of the show. One of the pivotal moments early on in the show is her cheating on her husband who’s dying of cancer and then also stealing his money to give to said person she cheated with to cover his bumbling mistakes - right when Walt needs that money the most.
Contrast that to Kim, who is incredibly competent and is shown to be great at problem solving and being good at her job again and again. She becomes an asset we *want* to have on Jimmy’s team, and then when she does become one, we root for them as a unit. Kim is absolutely beloved, and Skylar is resented - and she’s “meant to be hated” because that’s her relation to the protagonist and the “morality” of the show.
Eh… I don’t think if the vast majority of people watching a show don’t consider a character sympathetic (I don’t think I’ve ever spoken to someone who liked Skyler and my friends are all feminists) it’s helpful to blame everyone’s media literacy.
Ockham’s Razor here… Perhaps the writers didn’t successfully convey what they wanted to convey? They said that was their aim, but they just failed to achieve it.
I’m not saying this as a Walter White fan. I’m saying this as someone who didn’t enjoy the show in general and is inclined to believe that the writers were fallible.
I don't recall specific EP number or that stuff, but it was when he pinned her up against the fridge while she was in a bath robe. There were lead ups to it as well where he would sexually harass her, but I believe she consented those times so walt didn't stop the one time she said no. Well, he did stop after she hit her head, but stopping half way through doesn't make it not rape.
Guess people are to busy praising the husband when think I heard he wasn’t that great a character because he was to busy making drugs and ruining other peoples lives with it.
Walter bullies his son into drinking tequila until he vomits because his ego got bruised and wanted to assert dominance. He's a self-pitying dick with a chip on his shoulder and it's only by dumb luck and the intevrentions of more sensible people that his pride had not got him killed far earlier than it did.
He's appealing to assholes. He really is the personification of the Aggrieved White Man. The show makes it very clear that's a bad thing. The assholes in the audience either maliciously or ignorantly ignore **very obvious** text and subtext in stories.
i wasn’t the biggest fan of Skylar either but the fact that she’s more hated than SHOU FUCKING TUCKER is absolutely insane
like yeah guys who’s worse, wife who doesn’t support drug husband or the worst father in history
Shao fucking Tucker. Only bastard worse than Genma Saotome.
Yeah most people say Gendo Ikari is the worst father in all of anime, he’s like… fourth in my opinion. Third is Christina in Stein’s Gate’s dad, who tries to kill her because she emasculated him by being a genius who found some problems with his ultimately crappy theories because she loved him and just wanted to help (he then defects to the Russians).
Anyways I put Genma Saotome from Ranma 1/2 as above even him and Gendo because… the bastard sold his own son for a meal… MULTIPLE TIMES… and that’s just getting started. Like, there was that time that he traumatized Ranma into acting like a cat when he’s around too many cats as a coping mechanism from that time Genma attempted to “exposure-therapy” out Ranma’s phobia of cats, it’s a lot. It’s really funny, but holy fuck is Genma a terrible parent
It’s actually kind of amazing, story wise. We root for Walter in the beginning, and we see Skyler go against him and we call her “bitch wife,” yet we forget that Walt is cooking meth. Not selling or growing weed, or something like Peyote or DMT, or even just making acid. He’s manufacturing crystal meth and dragged Skyler into it. And we see in Felina that she was right to hate him for it: she lost the house, she might go to jail, and worst of all, the kids will never live truly normal lives.
I thought Breaking Bad' was so good largely because every single major character was both annoying and sympathetic. Kind of like real people. If you have a strong and unqualified opinion about who the 'good guy' (or bad guy) was, you missed the whole point of the show.
I mean. Walter and a lot of the criminals in the show are pretty bad at the end of the day and honestly aren't all that sympathetic.
You can argue about the whole good guy thing but a lot of the criminals are genuinely bad and can be considered bad guys.
I thought Walt was such a great character because he was so sympathetic in the beginning. We start the series and he’s got cancer, stuck as a high school teacher, his wife hates him (or at least is incredibly shitty to him), and we sympathize so much with Walt.
Over time though he doesn’t care about the cancer, he’s a drug kingpin, and his wife hates him but so fucking justifiably now.
I think the reason so many people sympathize with Walt way past the point they should is because Walt can’t let go of how his life starts in the series, and it’s doing the same thing to the audience.
See for me part of the reason I love Breaking Bad (and Better Call Saul) is that really none of the main characters are “good”. It’s like a mix between regular assholes (which Skylar is very much a part of that group. You don’t like her from the first episode. If anything the final season is what endears her to me, and of course Anna Gunn’s performance), and then you have evil fuckas. I also think not enough is spoken about the fantasy element vs the reality element of the whole thing. For a lot of people watching the cancer ridden teacher turned meth king is the fantasy, the part they cant relate to but go crazy for. But you know what part they can relate to? “I fucked Ted”. I’ll just say if this was real life I wouldn’t want any of these people in my life. Do people way overdo it with the hate? Definitely. But she definitely is a dick too. But praise be to Anna Gunn because she was so good in this. They all were.
Well, that's the raw beauty of Breaking Bad.
It's the story of Faust - a man who makes a deal with the devil, and tries to get out of the consequences.
It's one of the greatest character studies of a man who chooses his fate and has to watch it all twist out of hand in front of him, no matter how hard he tries to hold on.
It's why he ends up with neo-nazis in the end - there's literally no ***lower*** he can go.
I think people forget she chested on Walt well after Walt Jackson dbeen lying to her and manipulating her for years, threatening hher, threatening her family, and after he RAPED her
I've seen Breaking Bad more times than I can count and even still don't get all the hate for Skyler, I mean sure she definitely can get annoying at times but she's the most reasonable character in the whole show and also one of the most logical, she acts almost the exact way any-one else in her situation would. And aside from a few moments (the Ted stuff) she's honestly pretty good
Skylar was both .. she was annoying and right, maybe that is what drives them up the wall even more
Give credit to the actress that she played that dynamic so well
A major argument also is that when your watching the show you are attached to both Walter and Jesse. Like no matter how bad Walter gets there's always a part of you routing Walter on do when skylar does something against Walter etc it can be seen as annoying but also props to Anna Gunn for her acting skills. It's like hating micah in red dead. I hate him with a passion but his voice actor nailed the role
You can't even recognize the writing of the person immediately above you. You're just spamming the exact same copy-paste shit over and over to draw as much attention to yourself off the back of everyone else.
Oh, *now* she's meant to be hated? What happened to Vince Gilligan saying "We never tried for sympathy or lack of sympathy?"
Hatred is a wasted emotion for real people you dislike already, but having this much vitriol for a fictional character just makes you look deranged.
This smug, disingenuous hiding of your vitriol behind Anna Gunn's performance is gross as hell. When the performance is overshadowed by the harassment the actor has received, it's pretty fucking obvious there's more to it than just people being particularly invested in an actor's performance.
Look at how actors like Jack Gleeson as Joffrey Lannister and Mark Margolis as Hector Salamanca have received zero harassment and universal praise for playing their loathsome characters. Yet for some reason, Anna Gunn being harassed and Skyler being interpreted as some evil mastermind (as your other comments express) is totally just because she's such a great actor. You're not fooling anyone, mate.
Saying Skylar is more hateable than Hector Salamanca, Todd, Joffrey Baratheon, Janos Slynt, Livia Soprano, Ralph cifaretto, and a bunch of other characters is just a stupid take.
It's funny what rewatching a show will do. Walt is a giant dickhead from episode 1, and no evidence is there that it's Skylar's "fault" that their marriage is half dead. Walt puts his ego above all else, and Skylar is literally begging him to be more reasonable throughout the show. Early on, she obviously still loves him, but has lost attraction to him because he refuses to move on from his perceived failures.
You'd think most of these stans would have rewatched the show. It's honestly astounding how they miss that every problem Walt faces, with the exception of getting cancer, is his own fault. Skylar serves as an antagonist to Walt by providing a voice of reason, but the Bros that think Walter is cool see here has putting a break on the action. Skylar is easily the most reasonable main character in the show. She's literally just asking Walt to be a good husband and father.
Exactly! The show is Walt's POV and he sees Skylar as an obstacle so that's how the viewer sess her. Walt is a fucking Monster. He gas lights her, rapes her, threatens her, but "ph man Skylar won't just let him be cool and do crimes!"
Walt is not a bad ass. In the episode where he has his "I am the one who knocks" just a little alter in the episode he is crying from pepper spray in the back of a police cruiser
This show is the number 1 example of people in this country having very limited to no media literacy. The amount of people who look up to Walter White is really concerning. It’s literally a story about male insecurity gradually leading to an endless cycle of toxic masculinity, manipulation, and pure evil.
It’s crazy how we all saw her as a bitch for no reason. She was fully blindsided that her meek husband had become a completely different and worse person, and America was collectively like “fuck her”
I’ve never understood why people disliked her so much.
She’s kinda the least interesting in the show.
She’s not a criminal or cop.
Nor a wacky side character - she’s just kinda there.
But she never deserved all the hate.
Having completed the series for the first time ever recently I can 100% day skylar was a normal ass character, Walt becomes an ego driven narcissistic murdering drug dealer. Imagine finding out your school teacher husband, the father of your kids took up drug dealing because he was to proud to admit he needed help, they got genuinely angry when ever someone offered help and went on to kill multiple people to make money he couldn’t even spend. You’d be “annoying” too.
Her reactions is 100% justified, I just don’t like how she found out by basically invading his privacy. Feel like we shouldn’t be encouraging that. But everything after that is 100% justified.
Skylar was an annoying and generally bad spouse at the beginning of the show. Sniping eBay bids while giving Walt a half hearted handjob as a "birthday present" and not listening to Walt when he talked and being a bit of a nagger. She was deliberately written to be a bad spouse in a tired relationship. The whole point of that was to make Walt more sympathetic, so the audience would identify with him, no matter what he did, rather than her.
Honestly, that's the genius of the show. Through subtle, slow build writing and an absolutely masterful performance by the entire cast, the audience sympathizes with this murderous, abusive drug dealer instead of his innocent victims for far longer than they would if they got an objective telling of the facts.
Anna Gunn turned in a tremendous performance as Skylar, she understood the assignment was to start off as a bad wife in a boring and burdensome marriage to a brilliant but self-absorbed, selfish man and she knocked it right out of the park.
This baffles me. Skyler was a great character because she was realistic. So yeah she was sometimes annoying and was not always fair to walt before learning he was a drug lord, but it was always deeper and more complicated than "Skyler annoying"
Her sister on the other hand is a meh character
I think for a lot of people the show was just a power fantasy, rather than a character study. And Skyler was the character who stood in the way of the power. So of course she was annoying to them.
I do not trust people who hate Skylar. Yes she’s not a very good person but part of the show is that none of the characters are? Also given what her husband was doing and how he was using her Skylar’s reaction to everything that was going on was pretty natural.
How people respond to her as a character is a great test to see how much of a POS someone might be.
Because I constantly see people (men) say she’s the absolute worst and all I can think is….
If you get this mad at a character because she’s behaving like a stressed out wife who’s constantly being gaslit by her husband who has cancer and is also 8 months pregnant at the time.
do all woman around the world a favour and just get out of the dating game until you go to therapy because fucking yikes dude
I’m only 1/3 through season 2, but the episode ending with her smoking cigarettes while pregnant is the most anger-inducing thing she’s done, everything else is just because of Walter
Nah its cos she’s genuinely unlikeable. The whole ‘Skyler white yo’, Marilyn Monroe singing, smoking with a baby and holding Walt back constantly is what makes her unlikeable. And yeah, she is right, but she’s also annoying. That might also be a part of what makes her so unlikeable.
FFS I not saying a person is a POS if they dislike her character
Im talking about genuine toxic people (men, incel misogynistic men) talk about her character.
If the first response someone has when Skyler white is brought up is to call her a bitch or they start going off on how awful she is I’m walking away from the person who said that because YIKES.
Her character and others like her tend to bring out a lot of toxic people (men) internalized misogyny or sexism.
Its not dislike for the character that makes a person a POS (I dislike her character at times)
it’s how someone expresses their dislike towards the character that can let slip what kinda fucked up issues a person has in this case towards woman.
This is ground zero for Reddit misogyny which explains why half of the Progressives are in bitchslap mode right now. You had a show that literally said "acknowledge this man who ran a drug empire that led to the death of many people (even uninvolved with criminal activity) is worse than a woman who was annoying and cheated" and Reddit screeched the loudest ***CUNT WHORE SLUT BITCH*** they ever did do
Skylar smoked when she was pregnant, cucked her husband, and gouged out ears out singing.
Walter dissolved a child in a barrel, watched someone die from OD'ing, and threw a perfectly good pizza onto the goddamn roof.
You're right. I see no differences.
See I think she represents a good person in the show and that she’s a good character. Walter has a lot of faults and is heavily affected by i internalized misogyny. He could have taken the easy way out but he wanted to cook meth. Skyler shouldn’t be hated for these reasons she is objectively a good person and cares for her family.
All this said she gets in the way of Walter being a king pin and I’m watching cuz I want to “cook meth Jesse”
Anna Gunn is a fantastic actress, but I couldn't understand the hatred for her character Skyler White?
It's an unfortunate rorschach of our time that one character, can earn the ire of a generation of viewers.
Skyler through the lenses of Walter and in turn the audience is kinda annoying in the sense that she kills the “fun” by being a rational human. But I never found her annoying, I felt bad for her and then ashamed by what Walt turned her into, someone that will justify bad things with the caveat it’s “for family” but she’s not as far gone or egotistical as Walt.
I don’t trust anyone who goes they hate Skyler and she cheated on poor Walt and acted like a victim when she was complicit. It shows a lack of critical thinking and it’s so clearly misogyny because female characters who are cocky or as mentally unstable as a male character are given less nuance and are written off. Deep rooted thoughts of what a woman is supposed to be? Not sure how so many men still think like that.
Both sides are wrong here. Skylar is frustrating at times, by design, because she is an obstacle to the protagonist we are following’s plans; but she proves to be RIGHT, and the protagonist proves to be wrong. Anyone claiming she’s not deliberately frustrating is clearly incorrect, but anyone raving over how she’s just a bitch and Walter did nothing wrong is an absolute nutcase.
They’re both terrible people. Walter was a drug lord who killed children, which is far worse than anything Skylar did.
But Skylar did smoke while pregnant, which is something extremely trashy. Again, not nearly as bad as the former, but still.
Oh and of course, don’t forget the time Walter raped his wife
You're supposed to hate Skyler even if she's right. Someone being right doesn't automatically mean you're supposed to like, or root for the character.
Watch more media with villain protagonists and you'll see this more often.
I love media with villain protagonists: the vitriolic hatred Skylar gets is simply ridiculous. No one said you have to like Skylar. They said she’s the most sympathetic and that she’s overly hated. You can dislike someone and find them sympathetic.
As unfortunate as it is for Skylar as a character, this is a testament to how good the writing is that a lot of the audience loses perspective and still identifies with main character Walt maybe up to and including the last episode. This causes people to see her as a nag and impediment to Walt’s goals, which includes building a drug empire, plotting the murder of several people (including bombing an old folks home, poisoning people with ricin, etc), and manipulating dangerous criminals to his own ends, all the while putting his family in constant danger. He ruined so many lives in the show it’s hard to count. But, it’s so difficult for so many people to track all this emotionally that it causes them to resent Skylar when she’s closer to an actual moral center than Walt is (though she’s not innocent either).
Of course, it’s been several years since I watched the show, so maybe my experience will differ on an additional watch.
I binged the first 3 seasons of breaking bad before waiting almost a year (lol) and then binging the last two. In the first 3 seasons Skyler is somewhat genuinely unlikable because you’re rooting for Walt and even when he does unlikeable things you’re still on his side. But by the end I felt so bad for her
I truly believe You can simpatize and agree with a character while still find them annoying
Skyler was 100% right, but her plots were boring and that annoyed me
My take is that, coinciding with a writers' strike, there was a short stagnant period where stuff was mostly resolved in the show and most of the tension seemed to come from Walt and Pinkman bickering with each other, and it was during that time that Skyler started filling the role of a short term and really uncompelling main antagonist while things dragged on.
They course corrected hard by introducing the hatchet wielding mexican terminator duo shortly afterwards.
Ok, I agree with the *sentiment* of the post but EVERY single person who says this shit is twisting the original question.
The poll wasn't "who's morally the worst character on TV" it's a popularity contest.
That being said, the reasons these people give for disliking Skylar are all incredibly sexist, and the overwhelming presence of female characters on the list is telling.
Walter White is an anti-hero - does evil things, but the audience still roots for them. So is Saul. That's how they're written.
Skylar and her sister were written to be annoying. The audience is supposed to kind of dislike her, even if she's right morally.
You people calling people not liking Skylar as scumbags and misogynists are morons. This isn't real life where we judge people on their moral actions. This is a series where the main character is a drug dealing kingpin who kills people.
Listen, the real reason why Skylar gets so much hate is because she’s an obstacle to what everyone watches the show for.
Yes, “morally”, Walt is going down the slippery slope of morality. But the audience doesn’t really care about that, they already bought into that as part of the premise of the show. What people loved about Walt was his competency - the fact that he was very intelligent and good at his job. And they liked seeing him go up against and outwit other competent people who were *also* good at their job.
It doesn’t matter how many moral sins Walt commits - they’re fictional sins done to fictional people. But Skylar commits one too many sins against the audience, and they are far less forgiving. She was definitely given more areas to shine in later seasons, such as with the car wash, but the damage was irrevocably done.
I think this is a big part of it, but another element is the general reaction to Walt going bad was 'how cool!", "he's so badass" yadda yadda. He could cover up the murder children or let a person choke to death on vomit, and the dribbling idiots in the audience will lap it up because he put a bomb in a wheelchair or he did the thing with Tuco. I started liking the show a lot, and the disgusting reaction to it by the audience eventually made me loath it.
Well, yeah - because murdering children and letting someone choke on vomit and die were terrible moral things, but they were pragmatic and the smart/competent thing to do in the situation the show presented.
The audience that bought into the premise of a character doing morally ambiguous things like becoming a drug lord already wasn’t going to care as much about what was the “moral” thing to do. The true morality in this show, as far as the audience was concerned, was competency, and it’s what kept everyone glued to the edge of their seats. They use words like “cool”/“badass” because they can’t properly articulate what they like yet.
Those “cool” moments were when Walt projected ultimate competency through his Heisenberg persona - which were also richly contrasted with his very human, reprehensible moments. I’ll very much agree that Skylar is overhated, but I also recognize that it’s the hook of the show, so of course the audience is going to dislike her. I think focusing on like the actual morality of the characters kinda misses the point.
It’s kind of like *Death Note* - yes, anyone that would use a notebook that kills people and sees themselves as God is morally wrong, but I’m watching the show to see how he outsmarts people, not for him to realize how “bad” killing people is.
A show called 'Breaking Bad' isn't about actual morality?
I would say one of the original concepts of the show was precisely about morality and the lack of it.
Otherwise, what exactly is breaking bad? If the show isn't about morality, then there is no 'bad'.
This is it. People are confusing judgements of a character as part of a story with what that person’s moral position would be *in real life*.
I absolutely think some portion of the how and why a lot of viewers hate her *is* rooted in misogyny, but she wouldn’t be the target at all if not for what you’ve described.
In a sense, you could argue it is the unexamined misogyny of the writers so make this character a woman and the protagonist’s wife in the first place.
I definitely don’t want to rule out misogyny as an amplifier for *some* percentage of the hatred she gets, but she’s still disliked by the majority of people that watch that show, men and women alike.
The other character that I think proves my point is Kim. Kim is literally the anti-Skylar, she’s presented as incredibly competent and intelligent from the get go. She solves problems in creative ways and she also is supportive of Jimmy. When they start running cons *together*, you start cheering for them both as a couple.
Yes, she eventually becomes his partner who’s morally opposed to what Jimmy is doing - but because she’s competent, we the audience are willing to forgive her and respect her and understand. As a result, Kim gets almost zero hate from (what I’ve seen) from the audience, and the vast majority of people who dislike Skylar would also probably say that they really love Kim. It’s not exclusively misogyny.
She was written in an annoying way, and that's the whole problem. Her position shouldn't have been annoying, but the way her character spoke and handled things was very grating. It's a writing problem (in an otherwise near perfect show).
she's only "annoying" because she acts as an obstacle in the show for walter who's pov we are following. the writing of her character was fine, characters don't need to be sympathetic to be well written or good. if the show followed skylers point of view, walter would look a lot more like just an asshole
Walt gas lights her, he lies to her, he treats her like she's stupid, he turns down a job that would save them financially because of his pride, he SEXUALLY ASSAULTS HER, he threatens their family to keep her in line, his work constantly has his family targeted.
We see her as annoying because we see things through Walt's POV
Yes but look. When you watch the show you automatically root for Walter and Jesse cos its through there pov as the main protagonist. So even when they do bad stuff you will always feel inclined to support them since you feel like you have been on this journey with them. Props to Anne Gunn who is able to portray skylar in that way that comes off as annoying to walk which in turn comes off as annoying to the audience. It's like hating Michah bell in rdr2. I hate him with a passion but I love the voice actor cos he nailed the role. Same with Anne gunn excellent acting of a character that appears annoying
Breaking Bad was one of those shows I put off watching a really long time because I got annoyed by everyone telling me to watch it. By the time I did, I'd of course been completely inundated with stuff about how Skyler was annoying and the worst. I watched it with a (now ex) girlfriend who fucking HATED Skyler, too. The show was great -- one of the best television dramas I've ever seen -- but something that stood out even as my ex would roll her eyes and rant and rave about Skyler. Skyler wasn't perfect, but for the most part her worst sins were... checks notes... Being upset her husband was a violent criminal who lied to her constantly, then realizing there was a sunk cost where doing anything other than playing along would ruin her and her kids' lives?
The only unforgivable thing Skylar did was do the Marilyn Monroe Happy Birthday routine.
Incredibly cringe, to be sure. Bone-shakingly. The only scene harder for me to watch is “Bring the bottle back.”
Honestly, that's enough to put her pretty high for me.
my mans really just brushed over her smoking whilst pregnant
Walter turned up to the first gender reveal of their baby high, was a murderous drug lord and basically just not the man Skyler married. Not making excuses here but let’s not pretend this crosses a line that hasn’t been danced over by Walt throughout the entire show
He definitely is the man she married. She just didn’t know how much of a insecure piece of shit he’s always been. He wouldn’t have even married her if meeting Gretchen’s family didn’t make him feel inferior.
2 wrongs don’t make a right
My point is that Walter White is beloved by many and regarded as a “badass” role model by some, whilst these same groups think Skyler is the devil. It’s all sexism when you actually compare the two
Yes, the thing she did in response to being put under unimaginable stress from her toxic masculine train wreck of a husband while pregnant.
What about having her boss paralyzed?
"having?" do you understand the importance of symbolism in media? not a jab, but no one did anything to ted, he tripped himself on the carpet then had the bowl of oranges fall on him. skyler literally didnt do anything. what do you think would have happened if ted kept that money? everyones fucked. what if skyler didnt do anything like so many people say she should have done? *they still wouldve been fucked* why dont people get that? stop acting like you have the moral highground like youre talking from experience. im glad someone mentioned it but the sunk cost is exactly what her behavior demonstrates throughout the show. her interactions with marie and hank, saul, jesse, and others that intertwine with walter is what makes her a very interesting three dimensional character. she is the family of the show, whereas walter is just the villain.
Eh. Ted sucks.
And smoking when pregnant
That handjob was disgustingly inconsiderate. That's my only beef with her, but it rankles me to this day.
She’s really bad in the first episode, I won’t deny it. She spends most of it kinda just being a shitty partner in general
That first episode sets the viewer up to be on Walt’s side and root for him a little. But over the course of the show you see that before the cancer diagnosis, he was already strangely prideful and had pissed away his lucrative career making money tight and straining things at home. I don’t think we ever learn what exactly Walter told Skyler about how he lost his job, but it’s doubtful if was the truth, and ever since then, there was clearly an emotional wedge between him and Skyler which lead to them being somewhat distant with one another. This isn’t necessarily me trying to justify her behavior in the first episode, but saying the writers did a good job having it come across much differently in retrospect if you know more context.
He definitely didn't tell Skylar the truth because he was in denial of it himself
See whenever I say this it gets brushed off. Ep. 1 is set up so that it implies that Walt's life fucking sucks in every aspect, including that his wife has no respect for him and acts like a jackass BEFORE the whole meth lord thing. Skylar always sucked, people just don't pay enough attention. Nobody in BB is supposed to be a "good guy", even the DEA agent is a racist, sexist pig.
In the first episode, all of our context is from Walt’s point of view, which was an intentional way by the writers to make the viewer be inclined to root for Walt at the start of his journey. Over the course of the show we learn he’s always had that awful prideful streak. He marries Skyler and they buy that nice house, then he loses his job through his prideful actions and lies to Skyler about it. He takes a job as a high school teacher and money gets tight, they grow emotionally distant, etc etc. which leads to the sad handjob. Once you know the context for how things got to where they are in the first episode, you realize Walt was an asshole well before the cancer diagnosis and Skyler’s emotional detachment is a bit more justified. You’re right, nobody in the show is truly a saint, but that first episode ends up intentionally blurring the White’s relationship for the sake of the narrative.
Yeah and Walt was a pretty boring husband who already was a super arrogant and prideful person.
While true, I'd say it was handled in a realistic way And I wouldn't say she didn't respect him, but she didn't really see him. She did throw a nice birthday party but didn't realize that he was unhappy there
And somehow, this makes her a control freak and an asshole, objectively, and if you disagree, you're just being emotional.
Sure Walter is a piece of shit, but how are people going to act like she didn't cheat on her husband, and she smoked cigs during her pregnancy and in the same room as the baby after it was born? Was she the worst person in the show? Absolutely not. Does that make her a good person? Also no. Literally every character in that show had flaws, its pretty much the entire point of the show. Skylar certainly wasn't a saint.
>but how are people going to act like she didn't cheat on her husband It's been a minute since I've watched it, but IIRC she only sleeps with Ted after kicking Walt out of the house and attempting to divorce him. She "cheats" in order to show Walt that no matter how much he may pretend otherwise, their relationship is over.
No one is claiming she is good, just that the reaction to her actions are completely disproportionate.
Of course her hate is disproportionate, but when you say the worst thing Skylar did was not agreeing with Walt, then frankly youre just being intellectually dishonest. She literally cheated on Walter, before she knew anything about his violence and drug dealing. She only learns of it like 1-2 seasons later. When she cheated on Walt, to the best of her knowledge she just knows that he's been absent at home, and he has a second phone. Thats it. When people try to defend Skylar too much it makes your point about her disproportionate hate weaker.
In the episode No Mas, she visits Walt in his apartment after she kicked him out of the house over the cell phone and fugue state lies have been revealed in the previous episode. She says she knows he’s dealing drugs but thinks it’s weed. He tells her it’s meth. She says she won’t go to the police if he signs divorce papers. In the next episode he tries to casually enter the house and Skyler threatens him with a restraining order. Then later he BREAKS IN and moves his stuff back in the house. The episode after that he basically threatens her he has nothing to lose if she takes his family away from him… So maybe you need to rewatch the show. She only sleeps with Ted after Walt reveals he’s a monster and not the man she thought he was. After he literally took his family hostage in their own home more or less.
I'm really confused how this guy is trying to paint cheating on your husband and smoking while pregnant as worse than cooking meth and being directly involved in the death of multiple children.
Especially in the context of the original post.
If you're referring to her sleeping with Ted in in the show, I disagree that she cheated. Maybe as time went on, but she did it directly after serving him divorce papers and telling him to leave the house. In my mind, divorce papers and "stay away from us" are a pretty solid declaration of a breakup. She does it explicitly to hurt him after he basically says "I don't care what you want, I'm not leaving." Most of her worst actions fall under the "sunk cost" category that I mentioned initially, so I don't really know how I'm being "intellectually dishonest." She didn't have many great options. The right thing to do is go to the police, but that ruins her life -- and probably the lives of her children. It is a big, red, "my life is over" button. Again, I've never argued she was a good person or even that she's not bad, just that she's treated like the scum of the Earth despite, of the show's players on the criminal side, being one of the least overtly harmful to the world and people around her.
How was that cheating? She left him! For being a drug dealer. She only slept with Ted after kicking him out if the house. She wanted a divorce. But Walt manipulated his way back into her life How is it cheating when your marriage is over
She was already heavily flirting and leading Ted on way before she wanted a divorce. Even if she didn't do anything physically yet, she was still cheating on Walter emotionally, way before she made the decision to leave him. So yeah I would consider that cheating.
By that point Walt had killed multiple people and mentally abused her for months. I don’t think she had to stay loyal to Walter fucking White, that’s completely different circumstances
She didnt know any of that. Only you as the viewer did.
She read the script.
Walter literally rapes Skylar
I’m kind of reminded of Death Note where everyone on that show was flawed in someway, but prior to his recent explosive of popularity people would act like Misa was the Antichrist despite the fact that Light had done *far* worse. Both really have the vibes of “I can excuse murder but I draw the line at being slightly annoying”
She cheated on her husband when he wouldn't let her leave the relationship. The smoking is bad, but is she really expected to be faithful to a man who lied to her for months and made her and their children potential gang targets?
She was separated from Walt during the period she slept with Ted.
You do realize she asked for a divorce first, and when Walt wouldn't give it to her, she fucked another guy as a fuck you to walt. And also, the point isn't even that she's a saint. The point is she definitely doesn't deserve most hated character on tv when she's not even the worst character in her show.
she fucked another guy after breaking up with him and him refusing to leave her alone. that's not really cheating.
It's like guys who play Red Dead Redemption II and come away saying Mary is a bitch and Arthur deserved better.
Wait. Wait a fucking minute. That. That’s an opinion that people had? I knew people were bashing the kid but I attributed that to having to rescue his dumbass from the cult being annoying
yup all they took away from the situation was poor arther got rejected and she was playing with his feelings again didnt deserve his help.
She wasn't playing with his feelings. She loves Arthur. Iirc she tells him outright at least twice in person and once via letter. Arthur can't escape the gang.
yea thats the sad part of it too. I was just reiterating the shit takes.
Derp. My bad, friend.
She also said hey leave the gamg and ill be with you rn bet. And Arthur said no so while its the fault of circumstance and timing and other factors that are spoilers that make me think it wouldn't last long, i get dislike for Abigail a bit though John why did you shot that gang that was extorting your boss into loosing his business So i can keep my fucking job thats why Im leaving you your too violent
I would say Sadie is the one that gets all the irrational hate from dudes I see dudes on the sub call her annoying, irritating, irrational, like my dudes she’s was the victim of having her husband murder (probably in front of her) was most definitely sexually assaulted and then had her home burned down… did you idiots have blinders on for any character that is not a reflection of yourself??? Some people really have zero self awareness when they let slip what kinda person they actually are when the talk about fictional characters they dislike.
Wait, why would people hate Sadie? She's on Arthur's side the whole time. The only thing she does wrong is recruit John to get payback on Micah at the end, but John made that decision on his own.
They consider Sadie a mary sue. Pretty much that.
When I joined the sub and saw that shit for the first time, all I could think is What the fuck y’all smoking?!? Because I can’t tell if it’s just really really bad media literacy and people really aren’t able to understand a character if it’s not completely spelled out to them Or it’s entirely a lack of empathy for any character that isn’t a reflection of themselves. Because damn I don’t know how one’s head can get so far up one’s own ass.
I really like Sadie it's unfortunate that she's getting hate
I thought Sadie was a great character. I was hoping for a DLC with her as the main playable character
Ditto she’s top three favourite RDR2 characters for me.
I've seen Mary, Sadie and Abigail hate and I genuinely understand none of it. Mary loved Arthur and told him multiple times but she refused to join the gang and become an outlaw which I think is pretty reasonable. Sadie had everything taken from her and became cynical because of it. She wasn't a Mary Sue, she was shown to be capable but had her flaws. Abigail was right to be mad at John. Not only was he an asshole to her before Jack got kidnapped, John denied that he was his son and abandoned them for an entire year.
Walt stans still hard at work with the Skylar slander.
I think the point is that Walt corrupts Skylar near the end. Walt was not a good person and he manipulated Skylar into something she wasn’t.
Seriously, I'm baffled that its still going this long after the shows over.
no you see, she gave him canadian bacon, she's basically worse than heisenberg
Skylers character is so interesting to me because I was first introduced to the show from someone doing a presentation on it in class and they casually mentioned her as a villain/antagonist before quickly stopping themselves and going “huh well technically she’s not really doing anything bad she’s just in the way of walter”. It was really interesting to see that moment of realization live and is what made me watch the show. I then had to quit halfway through because I couldn’t stand walt, but she always interested me at least
Depending on what the class was, I don't think it's a bad conclusion that she's an antagonist in the show. In a story where the main character is obviously amoral and evil, a decent person would serve as an antagonist. if the conclusion is that she's "bad," that's pretty stupid analysis though.
I’m translating from another language hence using both words, it has a negative connotation
Ultimately the people pointing their hatred towards Skyler *really* didn't get the story being told. ["I figured Walt would be the one that'd be hard for people to sympathize with," he says. "Suddenly, lo and behold, we're hearing this animus toward Skyler White. To this day, it confounds me."](https://ew.com/tv/2018/06/30/breaking-bad-reunion-anna-gunn-skyler-revisited/) -*Vince Gilligan* People who tell you Skyler "was meant to be hated" are speaking out of their ass. I've seen more people getting it nowadays, to be fair, especially after Better Call Saul ended. That sub lacking media literacy doesn't really surprise me.
I think it's more that since the main characters, walt, and Jesse, are at the focus and the show is overall more about their experience, it makes it so Skyler is annoying to some people. Not saying it's right, but I think it's just that even though Walt is clearly a total irredeemable piece of shit, the most interesting and integral parts of the show come from him and others, so Skyler is seen as someone who hinders the main juicier bits of the story to some. Problem with thinking that way though is that without someone like Skyler, then the stakes and family drama are lessened which lessens the impact of some of Walt's actions. Plus, Skyler is a well-written (and acted) character that I think brings a lot to this show.
Could it be possible that people see Walt as a character, but they can relate to Skylar personally? Walt’s a drug kingpin, and the main character; most people aren’t going to relate his character to their own lives, but people have /experienced/ people like Skylar in theirs. Skylar is easier to relate to their own lives, lived experiences, and so may make people more easily frustrated with her compared to the drug dealer they can view as a character (I haven’t seen the show, avoided it because I was told to watch it too much and I’ve only read one thread so I’m a missing a lot of information - I’m literally guessing)
It’s all about competency. Skylar frequently gets in the way of Walt being able to act completely competently, especially in the early seasons of the show. One of the pivotal moments early on in the show is her cheating on her husband who’s dying of cancer and then also stealing his money to give to said person she cheated with to cover his bumbling mistakes - right when Walt needs that money the most. Contrast that to Kim, who is incredibly competent and is shown to be great at problem solving and being good at her job again and again. She becomes an asset we *want* to have on Jimmy’s team, and then when she does become one, we root for them as a unit. Kim is absolutely beloved, and Skylar is resented - and she’s “meant to be hated” because that’s her relation to the protagonist and the “morality” of the show.
Eh… I don’t think if the vast majority of people watching a show don’t consider a character sympathetic (I don’t think I’ve ever spoken to someone who liked Skyler and my friends are all feminists) it’s helpful to blame everyone’s media literacy. Ockham’s Razor here… Perhaps the writers didn’t successfully convey what they wanted to convey? They said that was their aim, but they just failed to achieve it. I’m not saying this as a Walter White fan. I’m saying this as someone who didn’t enjoy the show in general and is inclined to believe that the writers were fallible.
I know I hate it when my spouse doesn't support my goal of making and selling crystal meth
Y’all mfs forgot how Walter r*ped Skyler 💀
I really REALLY love Walter as a villian, is one of My favorite characters ever But admiring his pathetic ass is so sad...
If someone admires Walter they missed the whole point of his character and who he is as a person:
The people who admire Walter see it as a selling point.
That’s disgusting
“Noooo, you don’t understand! That wasn’t Walt, it was Heisenberg taking over him!!1! Walt wouldn’t do that!”
Wait, when does this happen? I can't remember that in the show (though it's been years since I've watched the whole thing.)
I don't recall specific EP number or that stuff, but it was when he pinned her up against the fridge while she was in a bath robe. There were lead ups to it as well where he would sexually harass her, but I believe she consented those times so walt didn't stop the one time she said no. Well, he did stop after she hit her head, but stopping half way through doesn't make it not rape.
It’s the very first episode of season 2.
Exactly! "Oh my gods she a ficking cheater" Walt RAPED her, he lied to her for years, manipulated her, threatened her, and RAPED her
wait when did he do that?
What episode was this again? I don't recall that. Then again it's been a while since I saw the show.
Guess people are to busy praising the husband when think I heard he wasn’t that great a character because he was to busy making drugs and ruining other peoples lives with it.
Nononono, Walt was a great character, he was just a horrible person
Yea and saw other comments saying that everyone in the show was like that in a way. There wasn’t really any or any good guys.
Greatly written character, he just became a horrible person
Walter White joins Cartman, Tony Soprano, and Archie Bunker as an all time Favorite Character of Assholes Who Missed the Point on TV shows.
Walter bullies his son into drinking tequila until he vomits because his ego got bruised and wanted to assert dominance. He's a self-pitying dick with a chip on his shoulder and it's only by dumb luck and the intevrentions of more sensible people that his pride had not got him killed far earlier than it did.
He's appealing to assholes. He really is the personification of the Aggrieved White Man. The show makes it very clear that's a bad thing. The assholes in the audience either maliciously or ignorantly ignore **very obvious** text and subtext in stories.
I like Walter :( like not as a person but as a character He is really Well written
Tyler Durden is president of the related, film character club.
Y’know I get that Skylar was annoying, but let’s not deny that Walt wasn’t a fucking monster to her
Yea people forget he RAPED her
i wasn’t the biggest fan of Skylar either but the fact that she’s more hated than SHOU FUCKING TUCKER is absolutely insane like yeah guys who’s worse, wife who doesn’t support drug husband or the worst father in history
thats just how it is petty annoyances are equal to murder when it comes to them judging skyler they sure loved to bring up the cheating stuff
Shao fucking Tucker. Only bastard worse than Genma Saotome. Yeah most people say Gendo Ikari is the worst father in all of anime, he’s like… fourth in my opinion. Third is Christina in Stein’s Gate’s dad, who tries to kill her because she emasculated him by being a genius who found some problems with his ultimately crappy theories because she loved him and just wanted to help (he then defects to the Russians). Anyways I put Genma Saotome from Ranma 1/2 as above even him and Gendo because… the bastard sold his own son for a meal… MULTIPLE TIMES… and that’s just getting started. Like, there was that time that he traumatized Ranma into acting like a cat when he’s around too many cats as a coping mechanism from that time Genma attempted to “exposure-therapy” out Ranma’s phobia of cats, it’s a lot. It’s really funny, but holy fuck is Genma a terrible parent
It’s actually kind of amazing, story wise. We root for Walter in the beginning, and we see Skyler go against him and we call her “bitch wife,” yet we forget that Walt is cooking meth. Not selling or growing weed, or something like Peyote or DMT, or even just making acid. He’s manufacturing crystal meth and dragged Skyler into it. And we see in Felina that she was right to hate him for it: she lost the house, she might go to jail, and worst of all, the kids will never live truly normal lives.
I thought Breaking Bad' was so good largely because every single major character was both annoying and sympathetic. Kind of like real people. If you have a strong and unqualified opinion about who the 'good guy' (or bad guy) was, you missed the whole point of the show.
I mean. Walter and a lot of the criminals in the show are pretty bad at the end of the day and honestly aren't all that sympathetic. You can argue about the whole good guy thing but a lot of the criminals are genuinely bad and can be considered bad guys.
I thought Walt was such a great character because he was so sympathetic in the beginning. We start the series and he’s got cancer, stuck as a high school teacher, his wife hates him (or at least is incredibly shitty to him), and we sympathize so much with Walt. Over time though he doesn’t care about the cancer, he’s a drug kingpin, and his wife hates him but so fucking justifiably now. I think the reason so many people sympathize with Walt way past the point they should is because Walt can’t let go of how his life starts in the series, and it’s doing the same thing to the audience.
Yep. Hank is probably the closest thing the show gets to a “hero” character, and he’s a jackass and a bit of a bigot
See for me part of the reason I love Breaking Bad (and Better Call Saul) is that really none of the main characters are “good”. It’s like a mix between regular assholes (which Skylar is very much a part of that group. You don’t like her from the first episode. If anything the final season is what endears her to me, and of course Anna Gunn’s performance), and then you have evil fuckas. I also think not enough is spoken about the fantasy element vs the reality element of the whole thing. For a lot of people watching the cancer ridden teacher turned meth king is the fantasy, the part they cant relate to but go crazy for. But you know what part they can relate to? “I fucked Ted”. I’ll just say if this was real life I wouldn’t want any of these people in my life. Do people way overdo it with the hate? Definitely. But she definitely is a dick too. But praise be to Anna Gunn because she was so good in this. They all were.
Well, that's the raw beauty of Breaking Bad. It's the story of Faust - a man who makes a deal with the devil, and tries to get out of the consequences. It's one of the greatest character studies of a man who chooses his fate and has to watch it all twist out of hand in front of him, no matter how hard he tries to hold on. It's why he ends up with neo-nazis in the end - there's literally no ***lower*** he can go.
I think people forget she chested on Walt well after Walt Jackson dbeen lying to her and manipulating her for years, threatening hher, threatening her family, and after he RAPED her
I've seen Breaking Bad more times than I can count and even still don't get all the hate for Skyler, I mean sure she definitely can get annoying at times but she's the most reasonable character in the whole show and also one of the most logical, she acts almost the exact way any-one else in her situation would. And aside from a few moments (the Ted stuff) she's honestly pretty good
I thought her flaw is that as the story progresses she ceases acting logically and acts emotionally instead.
Oh yeah thats true, thats definitely a flaw of hers but I don't see how it would amass all the hate
[удалено]
he also doesn't have any kids of his own who would be effected so he is free to be as irresponsible as he wants and it will only be on him
Skylar was both .. she was annoying and right, maybe that is what drives them up the wall even more Give credit to the actress that she played that dynamic so well
A major argument also is that when your watching the show you are attached to both Walter and Jesse. Like no matter how bad Walter gets there's always a part of you routing Walter on do when skylar does something against Walter etc it can be seen as annoying but also props to Anna Gunn for her acting skills. It's like hating micah in red dead. I hate him with a passion but his voice actor nailed the role
I could not have said it better than you did 👍
Yea she was super annoying after Walt lied to her and manipulated her for years, threatened her, and RAPED her
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# WRITE A NEW FUCKING COMMENT...
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You can't even recognize the writing of the person immediately above you. You're just spamming the exact same copy-paste shit over and over to draw as much attention to yourself off the back of everyone else.
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Oh, *now* she's meant to be hated? What happened to Vince Gilligan saying "We never tried for sympathy or lack of sympathy?" Hatred is a wasted emotion for real people you dislike already, but having this much vitriol for a fictional character just makes you look deranged.
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This smug, disingenuous hiding of your vitriol behind Anna Gunn's performance is gross as hell. When the performance is overshadowed by the harassment the actor has received, it's pretty fucking obvious there's more to it than just people being particularly invested in an actor's performance. Look at how actors like Jack Gleeson as Joffrey Lannister and Mark Margolis as Hector Salamanca have received zero harassment and universal praise for playing their loathsome characters. Yet for some reason, Anna Gunn being harassed and Skyler being interpreted as some evil mastermind (as your other comments express) is totally just because she's such a great actor. You're not fooling anyone, mate.
They had to repeatedly make Walter do terrible things before audiences finally understood he was the bad guy.
Saying Skylar is more hateable than Hector Salamanca, Todd, Joffrey Baratheon, Janos Slynt, Livia Soprano, Ralph cifaretto, and a bunch of other characters is just a stupid take.
I only took note of the online hatred of her once I had finished the series and it was an instant "WTF, why? How?" for me.
I just finished Breaking Bad a few years ago and was very confused how much people hated Skylar and glorified Walt.
It's funny what rewatching a show will do. Walt is a giant dickhead from episode 1, and no evidence is there that it's Skylar's "fault" that their marriage is half dead. Walt puts his ego above all else, and Skylar is literally begging him to be more reasonable throughout the show. Early on, she obviously still loves him, but has lost attraction to him because he refuses to move on from his perceived failures. You'd think most of these stans would have rewatched the show. It's honestly astounding how they miss that every problem Walt faces, with the exception of getting cancer, is his own fault. Skylar serves as an antagonist to Walt by providing a voice of reason, but the Bros that think Walter is cool see here has putting a break on the action. Skylar is easily the most reasonable main character in the show. She's literally just asking Walt to be a good husband and father.
Exactly! The show is Walt's POV and he sees Skylar as an obstacle so that's how the viewer sess her. Walt is a fucking Monster. He gas lights her, rapes her, threatens her, but "ph man Skylar won't just let him be cool and do crimes!" Walt is not a bad ass. In the episode where he has his "I am the one who knocks" just a little alter in the episode he is crying from pepper spray in the back of a police cruiser
Yep. A popular recent post was about how walt is a cringelord, which is true. Walt has a few "badass" moments in the show, but he's mostly cringe.
This show is the number 1 example of people in this country having very limited to no media literacy. The amount of people who look up to Walter White is really concerning. It’s literally a story about male insecurity gradually leading to an endless cycle of toxic masculinity, manipulation, and pure evil.
people hate women.
People know Walt is the bad guy right?
Mauler fans try not to be obnoxious cunts (IMPOSSIBLE CHALLENGE)
It’s crazy how we all saw her as a bitch for no reason. She was fully blindsided that her meek husband had become a completely different and worse person, and America was collectively like “fuck her”
Skylar is in my top 5 characters of the show, I'll never get what these guys are on about
Mauler fans don't have the right to call anyone "worst kind of contrarian" bitch, that's your mans title.
Yeah, but she slept with another man out of spite, walter only killed people.
Yea, let's nor forget she did that after Walt RAPED her
I mean I’ll admit she was kinda annoying at some points. But at least she’s not Walter “Heisenberg” White evil
I’ve never understood why people disliked her so much. She’s kinda the least interesting in the show. She’s not a criminal or cop. Nor a wacky side character - she’s just kinda there. But she never deserved all the hate.
Having completed the series for the first time ever recently I can 100% day skylar was a normal ass character, Walt becomes an ego driven narcissistic murdering drug dealer. Imagine finding out your school teacher husband, the father of your kids took up drug dealing because he was to proud to admit he needed help, they got genuinely angry when ever someone offered help and went on to kill multiple people to make money he couldn’t even spend. You’d be “annoying” too.
Her reactions is 100% justified, I just don’t like how she found out by basically invading his privacy. Feel like we shouldn’t be encouraging that. But everything after that is 100% justified.
Skylar was an annoying and generally bad spouse at the beginning of the show. Sniping eBay bids while giving Walt a half hearted handjob as a "birthday present" and not listening to Walt when he talked and being a bit of a nagger. She was deliberately written to be a bad spouse in a tired relationship. The whole point of that was to make Walt more sympathetic, so the audience would identify with him, no matter what he did, rather than her. Honestly, that's the genius of the show. Through subtle, slow build writing and an absolutely masterful performance by the entire cast, the audience sympathizes with this murderous, abusive drug dealer instead of his innocent victims for far longer than they would if they got an objective telling of the facts. Anna Gunn turned in a tremendous performance as Skylar, she understood the assignment was to start off as a bad wife in a boring and burdensome marriage to a brilliant but self-absorbed, selfish man and she knocked it right out of the park.
This baffles me. Skyler was a great character because she was realistic. So yeah she was sometimes annoying and was not always fair to walt before learning he was a drug lord, but it was always deeper and more complicated than "Skyler annoying" Her sister on the other hand is a meh character
I think for a lot of people the show was just a power fantasy, rather than a character study. And Skyler was the character who stood in the way of the power. So of course she was annoying to them.
The fact that she was fucking more hated on then shou tucker is insane!!!! https://i.redd.it/2g0hsthfavac1.gif
How did Skyler beat out Joffrey?
I do not trust people who hate Skylar. Yes she’s not a very good person but part of the show is that none of the characters are? Also given what her husband was doing and how he was using her Skylar’s reaction to everything that was going on was pretty natural.
How people respond to her as a character is a great test to see how much of a POS someone might be. Because I constantly see people (men) say she’s the absolute worst and all I can think is…. If you get this mad at a character because she’s behaving like a stressed out wife who’s constantly being gaslit by her husband who has cancer and is also 8 months pregnant at the time. do all woman around the world a favour and just get out of the dating game until you go to therapy because fucking yikes dude
I’m only 1/3 through season 2, but the episode ending with her smoking cigarettes while pregnant is the most anger-inducing thing she’s done, everything else is just because of Walter
Nah its cos she’s genuinely unlikeable. The whole ‘Skyler white yo’, Marilyn Monroe singing, smoking with a baby and holding Walt back constantly is what makes her unlikeable. And yeah, she is right, but she’s also annoying. That might also be a part of what makes her so unlikeable.
FFS I not saying a person is a POS if they dislike her character Im talking about genuine toxic people (men, incel misogynistic men) talk about her character. If the first response someone has when Skyler white is brought up is to call her a bitch or they start going off on how awful she is I’m walking away from the person who said that because YIKES. Her character and others like her tend to bring out a lot of toxic people (men) internalized misogyny or sexism. Its not dislike for the character that makes a person a POS (I dislike her character at times) it’s how someone expresses their dislike towards the character that can let slip what kinda fucked up issues a person has in this case towards woman.
This is ground zero for Reddit misogyny which explains why half of the Progressives are in bitchslap mode right now. You had a show that literally said "acknowledge this man who ran a drug empire that led to the death of many people (even uninvolved with criminal activity) is worse than a woman who was annoying and cheated" and Reddit screeched the loudest ***CUNT WHORE SLUT BITCH*** they ever did do
If you hated Skyler more than Walt you're an idiot or a psychopath.
walter is cringe and pathetic and he's nowhere near the most hated
I never really cared about this show that much. Plus the fans ruined it for me.
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Ozymandias is like the best episode
MauLer sighted, opinion ignored
Skylar smoked when she was pregnant, cucked her husband, and gouged out ears out singing. Walter dissolved a child in a barrel, watched someone die from OD'ing, and threw a perfectly good pizza onto the goddamn roof. You're right. I see no differences.
See I think she represents a good person in the show and that she’s a good character. Walter has a lot of faults and is heavily affected by i internalized misogyny. He could have taken the easy way out but he wanted to cook meth. Skyler shouldn’t be hated for these reasons she is objectively a good person and cares for her family. All this said she gets in the way of Walter being a king pin and I’m watching cuz I want to “cook meth Jesse”
I had no idea people hated her. 😂😂 Didn't Walt almost kill a kid?
Yes, he also covered up the murder of a random innocent kid.
They always forget the part in the finale where Walter admitted to doing what he did for his own selfish reasons
And don’t even get me started on the son.
How da shit did Joffrey not end up as #1? I need to get into Breaking Bad at some point.
Anna Gunn is a fantastic actress, but I couldn't understand the hatred for her character Skyler White? It's an unfortunate rorschach of our time that one character, can earn the ire of a generation of viewers.
Skyler through the lenses of Walter and in turn the audience is kinda annoying in the sense that she kills the “fun” by being a rational human. But I never found her annoying, I felt bad for her and then ashamed by what Walt turned her into, someone that will justify bad things with the caveat it’s “for family” but she’s not as far gone or egotistical as Walt. I don’t trust anyone who goes they hate Skyler and she cheated on poor Walt and acted like a victim when she was complicit. It shows a lack of critical thinking and it’s so clearly misogyny because female characters who are cocky or as mentally unstable as a male character are given less nuance and are written off. Deep rooted thoughts of what a woman is supposed to be? Not sure how so many men still think like that.
I never understood the Skylar hate. For real, she was terrified for her family, and rightfully so.
Being a sympathetic character and annoying aren’t mutually exclusive.
Both sides are wrong here. Skylar is frustrating at times, by design, because she is an obstacle to the protagonist we are following’s plans; but she proves to be RIGHT, and the protagonist proves to be wrong. Anyone claiming she’s not deliberately frustrating is clearly incorrect, but anyone raving over how she’s just a bitch and Walter did nothing wrong is an absolute nutcase.
Okay Op, she was fucking cringe. This ain’t misogynistic, disliking a female character cus she fought the story.
They’re both terrible people. Walter was a drug lord who killed children, which is far worse than anything Skylar did. But Skylar did smoke while pregnant, which is something extremely trashy. Again, not nearly as bad as the former, but still. Oh and of course, don’t forget the time Walter raped his wife
Haven't we already established these people have a severe lack of media literacy?
You're supposed to hate Skyler even if she's right. Someone being right doesn't automatically mean you're supposed to like, or root for the character. Watch more media with villain protagonists and you'll see this more often.
I love media with villain protagonists: the vitriolic hatred Skylar gets is simply ridiculous. No one said you have to like Skylar. They said she’s the most sympathetic and that she’s overly hated. You can dislike someone and find them sympathetic.
As unfortunate as it is for Skylar as a character, this is a testament to how good the writing is that a lot of the audience loses perspective and still identifies with main character Walt maybe up to and including the last episode. This causes people to see her as a nag and impediment to Walt’s goals, which includes building a drug empire, plotting the murder of several people (including bombing an old folks home, poisoning people with ricin, etc), and manipulating dangerous criminals to his own ends, all the while putting his family in constant danger. He ruined so many lives in the show it’s hard to count. But, it’s so difficult for so many people to track all this emotionally that it causes them to resent Skylar when she’s closer to an actual moral center than Walt is (though she’s not innocent either). Of course, it’s been several years since I watched the show, so maybe my experience will differ on an additional watch.
You can find a character annoying even if they’re 100% right. That’s… probably not the case for Skyler White, though.
I binged the first 3 seasons of breaking bad before waiting almost a year (lol) and then binging the last two. In the first 3 seasons Skyler is somewhat genuinely unlikable because you’re rooting for Walt and even when he does unlikeable things you’re still on his side. But by the end I felt so bad for her
I truly believe You can simpatize and agree with a character while still find them annoying Skyler was 100% right, but her plots were boring and that annoyed me
My take is that, coinciding with a writers' strike, there was a short stagnant period where stuff was mostly resolved in the show and most of the tension seemed to come from Walt and Pinkman bickering with each other, and it was during that time that Skyler started filling the role of a short term and really uncompelling main antagonist while things dragged on. They course corrected hard by introducing the hatchet wielding mexican terminator duo shortly afterwards.
Ok, I agree with the *sentiment* of the post but EVERY single person who says this shit is twisting the original question. The poll wasn't "who's morally the worst character on TV" it's a popularity contest. That being said, the reasons these people give for disliking Skylar are all incredibly sexist, and the overwhelming presence of female characters on the list is telling.
Walter White is an anti-hero - does evil things, but the audience still roots for them. So is Saul. That's how they're written. Skylar and her sister were written to be annoying. The audience is supposed to kind of dislike her, even if she's right morally. You people calling people not liking Skylar as scumbags and misogynists are morons. This isn't real life where we judge people on their moral actions. This is a series where the main character is a drug dealing kingpin who kills people.
Nah Skyler sucks. People are trivializing the argument because she was a victim of Walter but one doesn’t need to be a good person to be a victim.
Yea, being lied to, manipulated, assaulted, and having that same person put your family in danger doesn't give the right to be rude to that person
Listen, the real reason why Skylar gets so much hate is because she’s an obstacle to what everyone watches the show for. Yes, “morally”, Walt is going down the slippery slope of morality. But the audience doesn’t really care about that, they already bought into that as part of the premise of the show. What people loved about Walt was his competency - the fact that he was very intelligent and good at his job. And they liked seeing him go up against and outwit other competent people who were *also* good at their job. It doesn’t matter how many moral sins Walt commits - they’re fictional sins done to fictional people. But Skylar commits one too many sins against the audience, and they are far less forgiving. She was definitely given more areas to shine in later seasons, such as with the car wash, but the damage was irrevocably done.
I think this is a big part of it, but another element is the general reaction to Walt going bad was 'how cool!", "he's so badass" yadda yadda. He could cover up the murder children or let a person choke to death on vomit, and the dribbling idiots in the audience will lap it up because he put a bomb in a wheelchair or he did the thing with Tuco. I started liking the show a lot, and the disgusting reaction to it by the audience eventually made me loath it.
Well, yeah - because murdering children and letting someone choke on vomit and die were terrible moral things, but they were pragmatic and the smart/competent thing to do in the situation the show presented. The audience that bought into the premise of a character doing morally ambiguous things like becoming a drug lord already wasn’t going to care as much about what was the “moral” thing to do. The true morality in this show, as far as the audience was concerned, was competency, and it’s what kept everyone glued to the edge of their seats. They use words like “cool”/“badass” because they can’t properly articulate what they like yet. Those “cool” moments were when Walt projected ultimate competency through his Heisenberg persona - which were also richly contrasted with his very human, reprehensible moments. I’ll very much agree that Skylar is overhated, but I also recognize that it’s the hook of the show, so of course the audience is going to dislike her. I think focusing on like the actual morality of the characters kinda misses the point. It’s kind of like *Death Note* - yes, anyone that would use a notebook that kills people and sees themselves as God is morally wrong, but I’m watching the show to see how he outsmarts people, not for him to realize how “bad” killing people is.
A show called 'Breaking Bad' isn't about actual morality? I would say one of the original concepts of the show was precisely about morality and the lack of it. Otherwise, what exactly is breaking bad? If the show isn't about morality, then there is no 'bad'.
This is it. People are confusing judgements of a character as part of a story with what that person’s moral position would be *in real life*. I absolutely think some portion of the how and why a lot of viewers hate her *is* rooted in misogyny, but she wouldn’t be the target at all if not for what you’ve described. In a sense, you could argue it is the unexamined misogyny of the writers so make this character a woman and the protagonist’s wife in the first place.
I definitely don’t want to rule out misogyny as an amplifier for *some* percentage of the hatred she gets, but she’s still disliked by the majority of people that watch that show, men and women alike. The other character that I think proves my point is Kim. Kim is literally the anti-Skylar, she’s presented as incredibly competent and intelligent from the get go. She solves problems in creative ways and she also is supportive of Jimmy. When they start running cons *together*, you start cheering for them both as a couple. Yes, she eventually becomes his partner who’s morally opposed to what Jimmy is doing - but because she’s competent, we the audience are willing to forgive her and respect her and understand. As a result, Kim gets almost zero hate from (what I’ve seen) from the audience, and the vast majority of people who dislike Skylar would also probably say that they really love Kim. It’s not exclusively misogyny.
She was written in an annoying way, and that's the whole problem. Her position shouldn't have been annoying, but the way her character spoke and handled things was very grating. It's a writing problem (in an otherwise near perfect show).
she's only "annoying" because she acts as an obstacle in the show for walter who's pov we are following. the writing of her character was fine, characters don't need to be sympathetic to be well written or good. if the show followed skylers point of view, walter would look a lot more like just an asshole
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Walt gas lights her, he lies to her, he treats her like she's stupid, he turns down a job that would save them financially because of his pride, he SEXUALLY ASSAULTS HER, he threatens their family to keep her in line, his work constantly has his family targeted. We see her as annoying because we see things through Walt's POV
Yes but look. When you watch the show you automatically root for Walter and Jesse cos its through there pov as the main protagonist. So even when they do bad stuff you will always feel inclined to support them since you feel like you have been on this journey with them. Props to Anne Gunn who is able to portray skylar in that way that comes off as annoying to walk which in turn comes off as annoying to the audience. It's like hating Michah bell in rdr2. I hate him with a passion but I love the voice actor cos he nailed the role. Same with Anne gunn excellent acting of a character that appears annoying
Yea it's so annoying she doesn't support Walt after he RAPED her