I tend to think they go hand in hand. I don't think the familial situation in S1 is written so much as Walt's POV because to me she's never written antagonistically
Skyler is not written as an outright antagonist I agree, but the show always felt very singularly focused on Walter White to me. Both seasons 1 and 5 in particular felt almost solely constructed around Walt's POV, there was little exploration of how characters like Jesse and Marie would ultimately end up in the end for example. Jesse's happy ending from Walt's POV rings false the more you think about what he was actually driving back too, and even the people that Walt was taking out were very much one-dimensional baddies that we see from Walt's POV as bad guys to defeat, even though arguably Lydia had previously been given more dimension than that
Obviously as the show went on the supporting characters did get a lot more range and their own stories at times, but just in general I got the feeling most strongly with season 1 that we were primarily watching Walt's story and how he viewed the people in his life, and then by the end of season 5 that's what we were again going back to with the other characters just supporting his story. IMO Skyler's role early on was very specifically one of the ~nagging wife~ stereotype who's going to give Walt a hard time for eating bacon, or for not checking in with her over the credit card spending, and we were almost encourage to see her as way too controlling in the same way that Walt did. Later seasons did give her more dimension, but it seemed like those early episodes had already coloured many viewers opinion of her
no subject
Skyler is not written as an outright antagonist I agree, but the show always felt very singularly focused on Walter White to me. Both seasons 1 and 5 in particular felt almost solely constructed around Walt's POV, there was little exploration of how characters like Jesse and Marie would ultimately end up in the end for example. Jesse's happy ending from Walt's POV rings false the more you think about what he was actually driving back too, and even the people that Walt was taking out were very much one-dimensional baddies that we see from Walt's POV as bad guys to defeat, even though arguably Lydia had previously been given more dimension than that
Obviously as the show went on the supporting characters did get a lot more range and their own stories at times, but just in general I got the feeling most strongly with season 1 that we were primarily watching Walt's story and how he viewed the people in his life, and then by the end of season 5 that's what we were again going back to with the other characters just supporting his story. IMO Skyler's role early on was very specifically one of the ~nagging wife~ stereotype who's going to give Walt a hard time for eating bacon, or for not checking in with her over the credit card spending, and we were almost encourage to see her as way too controlling in the same way that Walt did. Later seasons did give her more dimension, but it seemed like those early episodes had already coloured many viewers opinion of her