frelling_tralk | (no subject)

Skyler is still one of the most controversial topics of conversation for Breaking Bad and viewers seem to either fall into loving her and Skyler being the best and most flawlessly badass character of the whole show, or being the worst ever and a total bitch of a wife. I'm frustrated though that some of her actual morally ambiguous acts are never even considered and taken seriously. All that the criticism mostly seems to come down too are accusations of her being a terrible wife, and so there's this perception that you might be misogynistic and a total Walt stan if you do have problems with Skyler as a character

Well for me the character really bothered me over the whole car wash deal when she came up with an elaborately clever deal to force the man to sell his life's work to her. But it wasn't enough for Skyler that she was conning him out of a business that he was obviously proud of and had spend most of his life building up from where he started off as a poor immigrant, just because he disrespected her husband when she tried to make him a fair offer she deliberately decided to punish and humiliate him by dropping the offer to a much lower amount and relished in her new-found power over him. I was cringing when she seemed so smug and awful when she telling Walt that oh he'll call. I thought that her attitude there was meant to be similar to Walt's similar reactions to any perceived slights against him. Ditto with Saul and the money-laundering where Skyler brings up her book-keeping experience as a reason for why she has to personally handle the money-laundering and they have to follow her insistence on it being a car-wash, leading to the hilarity of her looking up "money laundering" on google to show us that she really doesn't know as much as she thinks. That all reminded me of Walt arrogantly thinking that his chemistry skills meant that he could handle making meth, even though he had no idea how to handle the criminal underworld and got him and Jesse in over their heads time and time again because of that

But those questionable characters flaws of Skyler's never seem to get brought up and discussed, it's ALWAYS just about what an awful wife Skyler is to Walt and how she nags him too much. I've seen her sleeping with Ted brought up soooo often as to why viewers can't stand her, yet hardly ever does the actual manipulation that Walt pulled on her in season 3 get discussed. She specifically slept with Ted because Walt broke back into the family home after she requested a divorce, called her bluff with the police, and forced her to play happy families with him. I was cheering when she threw that awkwardness right back in Walt's face by telling him that "I.F.T" right before joining Walt Junior and his friend for dinner. But so many audience members acted like a separation should only happen in Walt's terms, so if he forces Skyler to let him back in the family home then that means that they're still together no matter what and Skyler cheated on him. Being a bad wife will forever be the worst crime of all in the eyes of many of the fans. (And some argue that Skyler is considered worse by viewers only because her actions directly hurt her husband and family supposedly and Walt only hurt criminals and people that were already in the meth business, yet you never see the scene of Walt trying to force himself on Skyler getting the same amount of discussion as any of Skyler's perceived slights against him)

Fandom in general seems to divide into either seeing Skyler as an unsupportive bitch to Walt, or as some kind of faultless Goddess who wants nothing more than to protect her children, but really both sides are just as extreme with their views on women. I saw so much insistence that Skyler was this complete battered wife in late season 5 and would never have come back to Walt if she wasn't forced into it, and IMO it's really not as black and white as that. She did get lured back to Walt and tempted by the money in seasons 3/4, and it's okay to acknowledge that! Both of them were enjoying their newfound power a little bit too much, i.e Skyler was coming up with stories to gaslight the rest of the family and writing a script of what an unimpressed Walt should say and how many "sorry's" she wanted him to use in the story. IMO it wasn't Gus's shooting, but it was really Ted's injury that was her breaking-point when she found herself secretly enjoying the power that came with saying "good" when he swore to her that he wouldn't tell anyone what she did to him. That was what made her take a long look at the person that she was becoming and say enough. Was she ever as bad as Walt? No. Was she a blameless victim? No

Still in fandom neither side seem to want to recognise the times when Skyler did help Walt and when they worked together as a team, it's either she was always an unsupportive bitch wife full stop, or people only looking at her characterisation from season 5A and insist that she was always a domestic abuse victim trying to protect her children. And she was a far more interesting character than either side want to simplify it down too. Interestingly Vince and Anna also seemed to very much fall into the category of defending Skyler as always the one in the right, even though Vince's writing and Anna's performance made it clear that Skyler was in a lot deeper than that and that, after her initial protestations at Walt dealing drugs, she did end up working alongside Walt. She could absolutely be a very flawed character, but it's like people are afraid to say that out loud about a female character without appearing to be bashing them?

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Yeah I think a lot of fans had quite a one-dimensional view of Walt by the end, and so they ended up letting other characters off easy and blaming everything on Walt. I love Jesse as much as anyone, but he did cause an awful lot of his own problems and it seems like that's rarely acknowledged. I commented during my season 3 rematch that it frustrates me a little bit when viewers take his speech to Walt in the hospital as a total character truth and representative of making him some kind of woobie victim, but in the context of the episode I didn't see it that way at all. Yeah Walt had treated Jesse like crap when he cut him out of the business and Jesse was railing against that, but to blame all of his life up to then on teaming up with the great Heisenberg seems like a stretch when you look at where Jesse was already heading in the pilot episode. I always saw his speeches in that episode as meant to contrast with Hank confessing to the beating and taking full responsibility for it, while Jesse is coming up with elaborate revenge schemes and blaming Walt for his having nothing in his life.

Similarly Mike's words about Walt were taken as gospel by much of fandom, even though the hypocrisy in what he was saying about the set-up with Gus was blatant.

ETA And I'm trying to remember where I heard this now, but I'm pretty sure there was a commentary from the later seasons ( season 5?) where Vince talked about Jesse becoming the moral voice for Walt and Bryan Cranston saying that he doesn't see it that way at all. I wish that I could remember what he actually said now, but I think it was something along the lines of Jesse being an emotional voice in Walt's life sure, but not necessarily the moral one. And just YES to that. For example Jesse clearly felt horrible about the death of the little boy in season 5 and fell apart over it, but he wasn't exactly planning to go to the police either and bring closure to the parents, he got as far as quitting the business and throwing money around to try and ease his conscience. That puts him ahead of Walt for sure, but at the same time let's not go crazy here.

Edited 2014-01-22 00:48 (UTC)

while Jesse is coming up with elaborate revenge schemes and blaming Walt for his having nothing in his life.

Yeah, I saw it more as an angry rant than anything. I mean, Jesse is the one who caused all that. He's the one who started cooking again. I feel sorry for him because he tended to be the one who took the beatings, but he wasn't innocent in it all.

But it's rather common. The same sort of things went down when I dipped my toe in the Sopranos fandom. And you definitely see it in Buffy/Angel fandom. It's just annoying when the writers play to it, too...assuming they do. I wonder sometimes if Vince doesn't just say things to assuage the voice. He'll say on thing then immediately say it's open to the viewer. I usually much prefer Schnauz's take on things.

Honestly I think that some viewers were almost hoping that Hank and Marie would recognise Jesse as a tragic figure and take him in, so they were quite taken-aback when Hank shrugged Jesse off behind his back with he wouldn't be crying if a junkie criminal did get killed while trying to bring Walt down. Jesse was definitely manipulated by Walt and his life was horribly tragic by the end of the series, but at the same time he was just as at fault for the death of that kid as Walt (well actually Mike was most at fault for bringing in the Nazi Todd in the first place...), but many viewers seemed to forget that and only blame Walt for what went down simply because he had a colder and more contained reaction and Jesse is more loveable

It's all very well absolving Jesse of all responsibility just because he openly felt bad about the death, but he would have been held responsible for the death legally as it happened when they all were willingly carrying out a crime. And even after that, Jesse and Mike were still hoping to make a profit by selling their meth and Jesse was asking Walt for his share of the money.

And I think that Vince did intend all of the characters to come across as morally complex, but maybe got frustrated with the Skyler hate and so felt that he needed to emphasise that Skyler has every right to speak out about cooking meth, and he didn't want to then get into the rest of it when he was trying to defend her from irrational hate? I dunno, but I do think that he also has a sympathetic reading of Walt. A lot of viewers assumed that they were supposed to just hate Walt as the bad guy full-stop, but I don't think that Vince saw it that way. Nor do I think he had much exposure to those fans actually, when he was talking about the finale he seemed surprised at critics wanting it all to be a dream. He talked in terms of well that wouldn't be a very satisfying ending, as if he took for granted that most of the audience would want things to end with some closure for Walt.

I get the impression that many of the fans that loathed Walt assumed that he was in their wavelength after he spoke out against Skyler hate, and there was this assumption that he wanted the audience to hate Walt and side against him. I mean I can't speak for him, but I don't think that he ever wanted the audience to hate Walt as much as many of them did, any more then he wanted the obsessive stans to defend everything that Walt did and see him as the hero right up to the end. He mostly seemed interested in examining the character flaws that ultimately brought a once good man down, not telling some black and white morality play

Oh, I don't think Vince has any direct involvement with fans. My impression was he learned his lesson with the X-Files. I remember Schnauz once mentioning he went online after an ep and Vince just blurted out "Always a mistake. *Always* a mistake."

But I don't think he was unaware of it either, just because I know Kelly Dixon was aware of the fandom hate and thus made him aware of it. They talked about it in some of the podcasts.

He never seemed to make a conscious effort to put that onscreen, though. Were that the case, no way would Sky have suggested killing Jesse. He'll always have props in my book for not catering to one side or the other. Unlike some people who shall remained unnamed. :P

Yeah I got that impression from when Vince was talking about the finale and puzzling over well a dream wouldn't be such a satisfying ending for Walt, even though much of fandom *did* want Walt to suffer and be humiliated for the way that he treated the other characters and Vince seemed unaware of that. I guess that other people just tell him in general terms what the fans are saying when it comes to the widespread stuff like the Skyler hate

And yep Skyler remained very consistently written right up to the end thankfully, and there was never an attempt made to soften her, or fullfill the wishes of fans who wanted her to team up with Jesse against Walt when that would have made no sense whatsoever