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So I've been rewatching Breaking Bad recently, and while I didn't like Skyler the first time I watched the show like 3 years ago, now she's unironically one of my favorite characters. The funny thing is, in the fandom she's quite disliked for being the nagging annoying wife. In reality, she's way more than that. Spoiler warning for anyone who hasn't watched the show btw.
Imagine being in her situation: you marry and get together with a seemingly kind man, he gets cancer (which is devastating for you) and he starts being neglectful and disappearing for days on end, and this isn't even the worst part. You find out he's making hard drugs (meth) and is in a business that is constantly putting their safety at risk. Meanwhile your husband starts to ego trip, act like the shit and dismiss your rightful concerns. While he constantly puts you and the kids in danger and causes chaos and distress, he's making same excuses "I do this for muh family". And he refuses to divorce and leave the house, making you ultimately trapped with that psycho of a husband. You cheat on him in order to make him leave you alone, and those moments are the only peace you have in your life at that moment. You're involved in the drug business whether you like it or not, and you are 24/7 a perfect potential hostage for individuals Walter's involved with. But you stay with him and even help him launder money in order to protect you and your family from potential consequences, that Walter's antics inevitably would cause. More chaos ensues, people get killed and he seemingly retires from the business, making things more or less peaceful. Then the ozymandias happens, you find out he killed (indirectly) your literal brother in-law. The rest.. you get the point.
What would you do during all that? Not complain and "nag" all the time? Chill and pretend that all of this is totally fine? I also find it very amusing during the show how Walter constantly lies to everybody, but Skyler can see right through his scrotery and often puts him back into reality. She is one of the most hated characters in BrBa, and this is shocking considering the fact that the majority of she show's characters are murderers, drug dealers etc. But the only bad things she did was.. cheat on walter, complain and be a woman? Shit, even the actress who played her eventually got death threats. I'm not saying Skyler is a saint, because there was some things she did that were morally questionable (like smoking while pregnant). Considering though what she was going through, can you really blame her? She was severely abused by her husband and miraculously ended up as one of the few surviving characters (but mentally broken and traumatized like crazy). I mostly feel bad for her, and she is unbelievably strong for more or less enduring all that scrotery until the end.
Of course, you should have seen the character assassination, pun intended, she got from all the Breaking Bad followers at the time. You know from followers like guys.
I have a really difficult time with the rape scene. It is horrific. It's interesting because male fans of the show consistently drag her. This is a woman who was raped, gaslit, and put in harm's way for the entire show. And the male perspective is, "he's doing all of this for her." No he wasn't. He was doing it all for his ego.
That's actually possibly a good vetting question, "what did you think of Breaking Bad?" And then see if he starts complaining about Skylar White.
Yes! I remember at the time, so many people talked so badly about her character on the internet. Even Ana Gunn who played Skylar got death threats. It was such a blatant example of sexism, if it were flipped around in gender everyone would stilll be rooting for the guy.
I loved that she didn't back down about his second phone and other lies. Most men's gaslighting would make the woman question herself, wonder if she was wrong, which I guess she did do a bit but she trusted her instincts overall. She didn't back down when trying to find out what the heck was really going on with him.
There were even people defending Walt for that rape scene saying no see she said no and then he stopped. She had said no more than once. And he still kept going. That was so unforgivable to me.
They harped on about how she had smoked like 3 cigarettes while pregnant (this was a huuuge focus in discussions of the show and anither justification people used for why they hated her so much) and how she should be murdered or locked up for that. Not that I'm saying smoking while pregnant is a smart choice, but Walt put the family in so much danger that the comparison was ridiculous. Even 50 years ago it was pretty common for women to smoke the whole time while pregnant and for their kids to come out fine. 3 cigarettes was absolutely nothing that would have harmed the baby and such a small thing compared to how he endangered their children.
I only recently watched BB like a year ago I wanna say. But I’ve always seen the bashing of her character online for years. I went into it expecting her to be awful While watching, I never saw a single thing wrong with what she did? I didn’t find her to be a nag, I found her human. It was one of the strangest experiences I’ve had with a fandom because I found zero basis for their hate.
Men are the illogical sex
The show definitely WANTS you to hate her for getting in the way of Walt’s ambitions.
But she was 100% right, every time. And was way smarter about laundering their money