We map Skyler White’s journey over the 5 seasons of Breaking Bad to answer the question — why was Skyler so disliked?
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Transcript provided by Youtube:
00:02
There was once a show about a man
00:04
who sold methamphetamine,
00:05
murdered his enemies and lied to his wife.
00:08
He threatened her, assaulted her,
00:10
and stole her baby daughter.
00:12
“I don’t accept that.
00:13
You’re my wife.”
00:14
“I’m not your wife.
00:15
I’m your hostage.”
00:16
Of course audiences were overcome
00:18
with sympathy and righteous anger
00:20
for this poor woman.
00:22
Just Kidding — they were not.
00:24
Some of them absolutely hated her.
00:26
“I have never hated a TV-show character
00:28
as much as I hate her,”
00:30
one person posted about Skyler White.
00:33
The vitriol even got directed at
00:34
the actress who plays Skyler, Anna Gunn.
00:37
She wrote an op-ed for The New York Times
00:39
which quoted the post:
00:40
“Can somebody tell me where I can find Anna Gunn
00:43
so I can kill her?”
00:45
So why was Skyler so easy for many to dislike —
00:48
and why did she arouse so much anger
00:50
in some viewers?
00:51
“For a fired school teacher who cooks crystal meth,
00:54
I’d say you’re coming out pretty much ahead.”
00:57
Let’s take a look at the character’s journey
00:59
and how the writers of Breaking Bad
01:01
held a mirror up to us
01:02
by masterfully manipulating our evolving feelings
01:05
toward Skyler White.
01:07
Before we go on, be sure to hit subscribe
01:12
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01:14
on all of our new videos.
01:16
“Look at that.”
01:17
“That is veggie bacon, believe it or not.
01:25
Zero cholesterol and you won’t even
01:27
taste the difference.”
01:28
Skyler is the show’s most consistent
01:30
opposing force to Walter,
01:31
so the writing set her up as a kind of his antagonist
01:34
to frustrate the viewer by getting in Walt’s way.
01:36
“I don’t want them dicking you around tonight.
01:39
You get paid till 5, you work to 5, no later.”
01:42
In the beginning, we’re led to, on some level,
01:44
blame Skyler for how disappointing Walt’s life is.
01:47
Her micromanaging juxtaposed with
01:49
his free-wheeling criminal shenanigans
01:52
makes her appear petty, even mean-spirited.
01:54
“Did you use the MasterCard last night?
01:58
Ah, $15.88 at Staples?
02:00
Walt, the Matercard’s the one we don’t use.”
02:04
So this is the portrait of a woman
02:05
who is so caught up in the minutiae
02:08
of deadening middle age logistics
02:10
she can’t even take a break for sex
02:12
on her husband’s birthday.
02:14
“Yes, fifty six!
02:16
Oh!”
02:17
It feels like Skyler is partly responsible
02:19
for Walter being the sad, pushover man we meet,
02:23
“Surprise!”
02:24
“Oh, you’re so very late!”
02:28
So the show uses this starting point of Skyler
02:32
to sneak up on the viewer.
02:34
Just one episode in you might find yourself
02:36
siding with a man who committed murder,
02:38
while at the same time being annoyed
02:40
by his wife for being “a nag.”
02:42
“So right now, what I need is for you
02:46
to climb down out of my ass.
02:49
Can you do that?
02:52
Will you do that for me, honey?”
02:55
Whereas if we look at the actual facts,
02:57
this response is hardly fair.
02:59
The thing Skyler mostly nags Walt about
03:01
is finding money for his treatment.
03:04
“Skyler, it’s charity.”
03:10
“Why do you say that like
03:12
it’s some kind of dirty word?”
03:13
And that makes him furious because it reminds him
03:15
of his inability to provide for his family.
03:17
“I don’t like the way you talk about
03:19
my private affairs.”
03:20
Unlike Walt, Skyler is not at all prideful.
03:23
“Got myself a job today.”
03:26
“As big as you are?”
03:28
Vince Gilligan, the creator of “Breaking Bad,”
03:31
knew Skyler had to be strong-minded
03:33
and strong-willed from the get go,
03:35
so that she’d be a worthy opponent
03:37
for Walt later on.
03:39
If Skyler were weak and helpless, it would be harder
03:41
to get the audience on Walt’s side
03:43
when he’s mistreating her.
03:44
“You have to tell me what’s really going on right now.”
03:48
“Tell you what?”
03:50
The lesson here is that it takes two
03:52
to create the dynamic of any marriage.
03:54
“Joan Epperman, you know Joan, suddenly has to
03:56
go through all these photos and turn them down,
03:59
because they show cleavage.”
04:01
“Did you get enough pancakes, sweetie?”
04:05
The viewer might subtly blame Skyler
04:07
for Walt’s sad state,
04:09
but really Skyler is hurting Walt’s pride
04:11
not through anything she does,
04:13
but simply through her very existence.
04:16
She IS strong and capable,
04:17
and so he seems LESS so by comparison.
04:21
“Since you’re scheduled for surgery,
04:24
I just thought it might be a good idea
04:26
to have some money coming in.”
04:27
“Well, Skyler, we need to think about
04:28
what’s best for the baby.”
04:30
No one likes the person who says
04:32
“I told you so,”
04:33
and in Breaking Bad that person
04:35
is most often Skyler.
04:37
“The worst thing you can do is shut me out.”
04:40
“Apologize!”
04:41
“People go to prison for this.”
04:42
She is always right.
04:44
Like the Virgin Mary, she wears mostly blue,
04:47
and she’s often seen cradling Holly.
04:49
Yet the viewer wants Skyler
04:52
and morality to fail.
04:54
“If you don’t get out of here right now,
04:56
I’m going to call the police,
04:58
and I’m going to tell them everything.”
05:02
Every time Skyler tries to call the police
05:04
or convince Walt to stop,
05:06
many of us are likely thinking:
05:08
“No, Shut up Skyler, Let him do his thing.”
05:10
The show from the start is telling us
05:12
that Skyler is virtuous —
05:13
she’s right —
05:14
but it’s also making us dislike her
05:16
for being virtuous.
05:18
Because we, like Walt, are so enjoying
05:20
this path of embracing what’s wrong —
05:23
that is, breaking bad.
05:28
The writers throw in a lot of small details
05:30
that make it easy to dislike Skyler
05:32
for specifically feminine sins.
05:35
In early seasons, most of her scenes
05:37
pointedly see her doing something
05:39
traditionally linked with feminine vanity —
05:41
putting on lotion, taking a bath,
05:44
brushing her hair.
05:45
So an impression is built up
05:46
that Walt is out providing for the family
05:49
at great personal risk,
05:51
while Skyler is at home complaining.
05:52
“So where have you been this time?”
05:55
And later on Skyler commits
05:56
more specifically feminine sins —
05:58
like smoking while pregnant.
06:00
“Perhaps you might know something about this.”
06:03
“Perhaps I don’t, Walt.
06:06
Perhaps I smoked them in a fugue state.”
06:12
Viewers want to see Walt take risks,
06:13
be powerful and provide for his family,
06:16
largely because we’ve been socially conditioned
06:18
to think of these things as male duties,
06:21
even male birthrights.
06:22
“You know why I do this.
06:24
I want security for my family.”
06:26
The story is infused with our social assumptions
06:29
about emasculation and reclaiming lost masculinity —
06:32
“You’re gonna man up, or you’re gonna puss out?”
06:35
part of what’s happening as Walt become Heisenberg
06:37
fits this narrative that he’s finally becoming
06:39
a “real” man.
06:41
Meanwhile, Skyler is failing in her role
06:43
as a “real” woman —
06:44
by getting in the way of that manhood,
06:47
and by not embodying supposedly feminine qualities
06:50
like being submissive, caring and sweet.
06:52
“Well I tell you what, why don’t you do
06:54
the grocery shopping,
06:55
and then you can get whatever you want.”
06:58
So the writers use our shared gender baggage
07:00
to manipulate us into some very questionable identifications
07:04
that we need to revisit later on
07:06
as things keep going south.
07:08
At the same time, this strategy of villainizing Skyler
07:11
partially backfired on the writers —
07:13
because not everyone did revisit
07:15
why they’d been so quick to blame her.
07:17
At times, the show made it too easy
07:19
to glorify Heisenberg-Walt,
07:21
and those viewers who took it too far —
07:23
like, um, for example, threatening Anna Gunn —
07:26
were seeing no problem with the misogyny
07:28
underlying that intense resentment for Skyler.
07:32
“Once again he’ll blame his bitch mother
07:36
for taking away what his loving father has given him.”
07:39
In Season 3, the audience’s dislike of Skyler
07:42
is expressed through Walter Junior.
07:43
“Mom, why do you have to be such a, a bitch!”
07:47
“Hey, hey.”
07:48
It’s as if the writers decided
07:50
“Hey, now we’ll show the audience
07:52
how their dislike of Skyler
07:53
looks from the outside.”
07:55
Skyler is doing everything she can
07:57
to protect her son from finding out
07:59
about his father’s activities,
08:00
“I don’t want my son to find out
08:03
that his father is a criminal.
08:06
which is also protecting Walt.
08:08
But Walter junior only sees fault in his mom’s actions.
08:11
Even when he gets a version that’s closer to the truth
08:13
about his dad,
08:14
Walter junior reacts with absolutely
08:16
no judgement for Walter,
08:17
but only admiration.
08:19
“Dad, you’re such a stud!
08:22
How much did you win exactly?”
08:24
If before Skyler’s hated for being strong,
08:27
in season 3 she starts getting blamed
08:29
for being weak and not leaving Walt.
08:31
But actually, the first thing Skyler does
08:33
when she learns that Walt sells drugs
08:35
is find a divorce attorney.
08:37
“Do you feel you have a good understanding
08:39
of your husband’s financial situation?”
08:41
It’s just that getting divorced
08:42
turns out to be very complicated.
08:45
Skyler initially has no intention
08:46
of using Walt’s drug money,
08:48
but she’s already been unknowingly using it.
08:50
“Skyler, how do you think we’ve been paying our bills
08:52
the last six months?”
08:54
Then, Hank is attacked by the murderous cousins,
08:56
and Skyler makes the decision to knowingly
08:59
use Walt’s money to pay for treatment.
09:01
“You will take our money.
09:06
Use it to take care of Hank.”
09:09
This decision invited a new wave
09:11
of hate against Skyler,
09:12
as viewers accused her of being hypocritical.
09:14
And it does seem Skyler is seduced by the money.
09:17
As Saul puts it,
09:18
“I guess when people see those zeros
09:19
dance before their eyes,
09:21
it’s kind of like highway hypnosis.”
09:22
But Skyler’s hypnosis also mirrors the moment
09:25
when Walt first sees a similar volume of cash
09:28
in season one.
09:29
For both, it’s a turning point,
09:31
and not for the better,
09:32
but Walt is often admired by viewers
09:34
for his desire and ability to earn money.
09:37
“I’m in the empire business.”
09:39
So the question remains —
09:40
why do we blame Skyler for the things
09:42
we excuse in Walt?
09:44
The money’s also not the only reason
09:46
for Skyler’s eventual acquiescence to Walt.
09:49
For most of season 3, She’s unwillingly
09:51
forced to interact with him,
09:53
because he literally refuses to leave.
09:56
Walt breaks into their home,
09:57
“We can’t arrest a man for breaking into his own house.”
09:59
but when she tries to call the cops of him,
10:02
this only makes her son angry at her.
10:04
“You called the cops on dad?”
10:08
Skyler is completely helpless —
10:09
a hostage in her own house.
10:12
And she begins to show clear symptoms
10:14
of Stockholm Syndrome.
10:15
“We have a history.
10:19
He’s the father of my children,
10:20
and maybe what he did, he –”
10:23
“He did it for the family.
10:25
Right?”
10:26
And eventually she falls into the same trap
10:28
that Walt does in Season One —
10:30
the trap of believing her own lies.
10:32
“I think that — he earned it gambling.
10:35
Walt and I, uh —
10:37
we’ve had our problems lately.
10:40
You know that.
10:43
And, uh, what it all came down to
10:48
really was money.
10:51
For better or worse, he wanted to provide.”
10:57
But these lies aren’t hypocrisy;
10:59
they’re self-preservation —
11:00
she’s trying to make an unliveable situation livable.
11:03
“Someone has to protect this family from the man
11:06
who protects this family.”
11:11
Season 4 Skyler is in full-blown accomplice mode,
11:13
and not surprisingly, she’s really good at it.
11:16
“If you’re gonna launder money, Walt,
11:19
at least do it right.”
11:21
She manipulates Bogdan into agreeing
11:23
to sell the car wash.
11:25
“He’ll call.
11:26
Ahem.
11:27
Just wait.”
11:28
She’s so thorough that she prints out an entire script
11:30
to make sure that their gambling story
11:32
holds up for Hank.
11:33
“The next logical question Hank will probably ask is:
11:36
‘Where are you getting the money?’
11:37
To which I’ll say: ‘We want to tell you
11:40
the whole story,
11:41
it’s a doozy, so hold on to your hats.'”
11:45
But when Hank compliments Gale Botticher,
11:48
Walt almost undoes the cover up Skyler’s worked on,
11:51
just because his professional pride is wounded.
11:53
“Genius?
11:54
Not so much.
11:56
To my eye, all this brilliance looks like nothing more than
12:02
just simple rote copying,
12:07
probably of someone else’s work.”
12:09
So Skyler turns out to be better
12:10
at Walt’s game than he is.
12:13
“How did Hank find out?”
12:16
“It was me.
12:19
I screwed up.”
12:21
Skyler’s altercation with Ted Beneke
12:23
repeats this same situation.
12:25
Skyler provides Ted the money
12:26
he needs to pay the IRS,
12:28
but he immediately spends it on flashy purchases.
12:31
“Three hours after leaving my office.”
12:33
“He bought a Mercedes SL550.”
12:36
While all of Skyler’s actions are calculated
12:38
to help herself and others,
12:40
the men in her life are primarily occupied
12:43
with their own self-image.
12:44
“So buying that car?
12:47
That was protecting your family?”
12:49
At every turn, Skyler has to navigate the prejudice,
12:52
unfairness and at times idiocy of a world
12:54
that is built to accommodate men
12:56
with big, fragile egos.
13:01
At the end of Season 4, Skyler comes to know firsthand
13:04
that Walt is more than capable of murder.
13:07
“You’re gonna show some kind of mild relief
13:10
that I’m alive?”
13:12
“I am relieved, Walt.
13:15
And scared.”
13:16
“Scared of what?”
13:17
“You.”
13:18
“Say hello to my little friend!”
13:23
For those who are still wondering why
13:24
she doesn’t go to the police at this point —
13:27
the answer is pretty obvious.
13:28
“All I can do is wait.”
13:31
“Waiting for what?
13:32
What are you waiting for?”
13:34
“For the cancer to come back.”
13:36
Because of the Breaking Bad tone,
13:38
the circumstances of Skyler’s abuse
13:40
may feel mythical and slightly comical in some ways,
13:44
but the feelings portrayed by Anna Gunn
13:46
are very real and tragic.
13:48
“I can’t go to the police,
13:50
I can’t stop laundering the money,
13:52
I can’t keep you out of this house,
13:54
I can’t even keep you out of my bed.”
13:56
Breaking Bad eventually pushes us to wonder
13:59
if we might have chosen the wrong side.
14:02
Anna Gunn wrote that she came to conclude
14:04
people’s hatred of Skyler had
14:06
“a lot to do with their own perception
14:08
of women and wives.
14:10
Because Skyler didn’t conform to a comfortable ideal
14:12
of the archetypical female,
14:14
she had become a kind of Rorschach test for society,
14:17
a measure of our attitudes toward gender.”
14:20
The way each of us reacted to Skyler may have said
14:22
more about us than it did about the character.
14:25
Yet it became clear that because viewers tended
14:28
to see Skyler as an obstacle to Walt’s plans,
14:31
her character inspired sympathy most
14:33
when Walt did not.
14:35
The more invested we are in Walt,
14:37
the more inclined we are to judge Skyler unfairly —
14:40
and the more horrified or disillusioned
14:42
we get with Walt,
14:43
the more we can acknowledge the terrible life
14:45
that Skyler’s persevering through.
14:48
So the writers masterfully played us
14:49
when it came to this couple —
14:51
not once, but twice.
14:52
They gave us a man who was turning
14:54
irredeemably evil, fast —
14:55
and somehow they got us on his side
14:57
and made us stay on his side much longer
14:59
than seemed possible.
15:01
And they gave us a woman
15:02
who was strong, mistreated
15:04
and trying to keep her family alive.
15:06
They gave us all the facts,
15:08
and somehow, we ignored them.
15:09
“You need to understand–”
15:10
“If I have to hear one more time
15:16
that you did this for the family –”
15:19
“I did it for me.”
15:21
Hey guys, it’s Susannah and Debra here.
15:27
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15:28
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15:31
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15:33
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15:35
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15:36
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This post was previously published on Youtube.
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