[freerider]

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/24/opinio...html?_r=1&

It doesn't matter that the character she plays is a hypocritical and insufferable bitch. It's cause she's a woman. Classic. Guess I have a reason to hate her in real life now as well.

[Cattle Rustler]

(08-24-2013 08:05 PM)freerider Wrote:  

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/24/opinio...html?_r=1&

It doesn't matter that the character she plays is a hypocritical and insufferable bitch. It's cause she's a woman. Classic. Guess I have a reason to hate her in real life now as well.

That bitch is bipolar or something. She's always getting on my nerves, it's a miracle Walter puts up with her. Marie? Even worse, always babbling everything.

Skyler is not "strong, nonsubmissive, ill-treated"...she's angry, irrational, and selfish. She sends her kids with Hank because a rival dealer might shoot them. If someone wants to harm your family, they will find your family and harm them...DEA bro-in-law or not.

Quote:

As the one character who consistently opposes Walter and calls him on his lies, Skyler is, in a sense, his antagonist. So from the beginning, I was aware that she might not be the show’s most popular character.

BS. She's the one with the lies, banging Beneke and cooking his books. Walter lies to her because she asks too many questions and acts irrational, as previously noted. The only good thing she did was buying and running the car wash.

They need to go to Belize.

Insert Ron Swanson GIF

[WestIndianArchie]

She's probably right though.

Skylar's character, for the most part, is behaving rationally in an irrational situation.

The writers don't really do much to make her sympathetic, unlike Jessie, who turned from eternal burnout fuck up, into the heart and soul of the show.

And what's interesting to me, is that the typical Breaking Bad viewer is a cut above the typical Duck Dynasty viewer. It's not just slack jawed middle america fly over country yokels that are giving her grief, but college educated fairly affluent AMC watchers.

It's very interesting when you see how this plays out.

WIA

[Roadrunner]

"My character has become a flash point for many people’s feelings about strong, nonsubmissive, ill-treated women."
If that is what you call a fat, insufferable, hysterical, dramatic, anal, controlling, cheating bitch then sure yeah. And I would welcome anyone to try and prove any of the adjectives I used wrong.

[Tuthmosis]

Fuck that bitch. (On the show and in real life.)

[Roadrunner]

Marie might be hysterical but she stuck by hank when he needed her. Skyler, on the other hand made Walt's cancer about herself.

[Roadrunner]

(08-24-2013 08:15 PM)WestIndianArchie Wrote:  

Skylar's character, for the most part, is behaving rationally in an irrational situation.

I don't see how screwing and giving Walt's money to her boss is rational. She cheated on her drug dealer, murdering husband. There isn't much more you could do that is as irrational.

[eradicator]

We are supposed to hate skylar and be rooting for walt(the mass murdering meth cook). As such, I thought the actress does an incredible job.

In season 6 part 1, if you notice, Skylar no longer does any cooking, it is just Walt going and heating up some food in a microwave because he knows she would likely try to poison him. It is never explicitly stated, and I only figured that was happening after re-watching it but I am convinced that is the case.

[Hades]

I don't know why she blames it on misogyny. Walter White, with all his "moral failings" is one hell of a great man, who almost single-handedly forged an empire despite all odds, selling drugs and killing rivals, and he did it to leave his family a nest egg. Skyler, on the other hand, continually makes the worst of a bad situation, and is incredibly selfish. Her way of acting out is being a bitch, fucking her boss, having some cigarettes while pregnant, and giving her boss like a million dollars of Walt's drug money. She's the most worthless "load" of a character. I don't think she's thought about making Walter's life easier in like twenty years even though making her life easier is basically all that he is preoccupied with.
I think it's AMCs way of being red pill to show that when shit hits the fan, the first people to go hysterical-retarded are women while highly resourceful men do exactly what has to be done. TWD is the same way.

[Tex Pro]

LOL! I hate Skyler too.

I think she is taking the hate personally because she put some of her real personality into her "Skyler" character in order to make it more relatable.

[iknowexactly]

She kept quiet when Hank the DEA guy was trying to turn her. Next to that, everything else pales in importance.

[Sumanguru]

http://partialobjects.com/2012/12/the-pr...-cable-tv/

Quote:

...I’d change the word “hated” to hatable. If suicide is a selfish act, then it was perfectly in character for Skyler. Why is it so easy to hate her?

The simple reason why men don’t like the wives in TV shows is that it is impossible to like a character who doesn’t act, do. Surprise, men don’t like passive women (characters.) Even if the doing is preposterous (superheroes). Do something. Men, generally, hate the women in stories who are simply supporting cast. The examples are myriad: porn is beloved, and women are the stars. Rom-coms, by contrast, and Twilight, and The Hunger Games, all have female leads but they’re not doing, they are reacting or emoting or waiting. The first move is the man’s.

The women never act as independent individuals. Their thoughts and actions are always in response or in reaction (or even in support) of their husbands; there’s never a sense of them as women. No TV show could be made about Lori.

What women in TV do a lot of, to the exclusion of everything else, is talk. Three dimensional characters come into conflict, but these cardboard cutouts criticize. Endlessly. At least if they were moral criticisms we could say the women are personifications of superego, but their criticisms aren’t about right and wrong, they’re essentially selfish: what’s this going to mean for me? This isn’t just the wives. On Homeland, the 16 year old daughter is portrayed as a selfish brat, but she is merely a more unfiltered version of her mother. Every line of dialogue for both of them is some version of “what now?” Note that the daughter and her boyfriend have killed someone, and while the boy tries to cover it up, all she does is talk about it. “What now? This isn’t right…”

To mask this inertia, this awful lack of agency, dialogue for women is often (forgive me) “chirping”: staccato zips that substitute for meaningful content, snappy dialogue with barely a pause in between responses, emphasized with popping piano notes as soundtrack, and if you need examples watch anything on network TV.

...

Ultimately the biggest problem for the wives of AMC may also be the most intractable: “Women are socialized to identify with both male and female protagonists, but I don’t think men are socialized to identify with female protagonists. When they are asked to do so, they rebel,” argues Holmes.

This is wrong. Men accepted Homeland no problem, and a decade ago they loved Alias, and there are plenty of female superheroes men love.

If you start from the perspective of “men don’t like strong women” or “there’s an undercurrent of misogyny”, like many silly people do, you’ll miss the point. When Jezebel or other “feminist” outlets try to tell you that these characters are “strong women” or female role models, they are, of course, doing a terrible disservice to women; but what’s fascinating to me is how they think they are advancing the cause. I want my daughter to watch Lori and Betty and Skyler and think, “Jesus, these people are idiots.”

A separate question is why actually strong female characters rarely exist, especially on network TV which is watched mostly by middle aged women. And that would be your answer, unfortunately: the audience can’t relate.

Interestingly, the one show that does depict a female with thought, action, agency, is Homeland– and she is explicitly depicted as mentally ill, and it’s hard not to read this as, “only a woman who was broken already would be this fiercely independent, able to do all these things.” But instead of feminists posing this interpretation, they praise her for being able to do so much in spite of her mental illness. Ladies, this is a story, this isn’t real life– there is no “in spite of.” It’s all “as a consequence of.”

[WestIndianArchie]

(08-24-2013 08:22 PM)SexualHarrasmentPanda Wrote:  

(08-24-2013 08:15 PM)WestIndianArchie Wrote:  

Skylar's character, for the most part, is behaving rationally in an irrational situation.

I don't see how screwing and giving Walt's money to her boss is rational. She cheated on her drug dealer, murdering husband. There isn't much more you could do that is as irrational.

Then you really don't get women. Walt is torturing Skyler by that point, he's become a full blown monster. It's not unreasonable for her to act out.

WRT to the money, she was trying to take something bad and do good with it, only to be blackmailed by Ted Beneke (the boss).

WIA

[Damedius]

I gave up this show early. I never thought it was as good as everyone raves.

However that first season she was a cunt with a capital C. There is no way I would have stayed with her for longer than a week. If that makes me a mysogynist, fine. I can live with that.

[w00t]

(08-24-2013 09:41 PM)iknowexactly Wrote:  

She kept quiet when Hank the DEA guy was trying to turn her. Next to that, everything else pales in importance.

Because she wants to save her own fat ass. Not because she is a loyal wife.

[TheMachinist]

To me in a marriage if a women isn't down for her man till the very end she's worthless. Skylar bothers me because when Walt got sick with cancer and he was going thru it in the worst way she was not even the least bit concerned about what he was going thru.

[Vronsky]

Walt White got himself a real partner in crime. Once she bought in, she bought in fully. Credit for the buying and running if the car wash goes to her. She gave money to Ted to deflect government attention from her and her family and when Ted didnt catch a hint, action was taken.
It was when Walt put his family in direct line of fire that she turned against him and I can't blame her for that.
She knows their fates are intertwined and that's why she didnt squeal on him to Hank. Hell, she is the one calming Walt down at the end, telling him that Hankhas no proof.
I understand why she is unlikable as she has a cold and reserved demeanour about her but she is a complex character who uses her brains.

[Roadrunner]

(08-25-2013 02:01 AM)WestIndianArchie Wrote:  

(08-24-2013 08:22 PM)SexualHarrasmentPanda Wrote:  

(08-24-2013 08:15 PM)WestIndianArchie Wrote:  

Skylar's character, for the most part, is behaving rationally in an irrational situation.

I don't see how screwing and giving Walt's money to her boss is rational. She cheated on her drug dealer, murdering husband. There isn't much more you could do that is as irrational.

Then you really don't get women. Walt is torturing Skyler by that point, he's become a full blown monster. It's not unreasonable for her to act out.

I'm going to ignore the personal remark WIA but the comments I made were judging her how a male was to be judged. She wanted to be judged like a man and I did just that. Any man who did what she did (with the genders shifted) would be asking for holy retribution from the drug-dealing spouse.

[Lord_Perseus]

(08-25-2013 03:01 AM)w00t Wrote:  

(08-24-2013 09:41 PM)iknowexactly Wrote:  

She kept quiet when Hank the DEA guy was trying to turn her. Next to that, everything else pales in importance.

Because she wants to save her own fat ass. Not because she is a loyal wife.

I disagree to an extent. To the original point of this thread, men at least hated her because she was quite clearly the stereotypical shrewish, nagging, emasculating wife who steamrolled BP Walt & had him controlled right under her thumb, the type which has lead to so many of us swearing off marriage lest we get saddled with a broad like her.

However as Walt has undergone his metamorphosis from Blue Pill schlub into the alpha as fuck Heisenberg, Skyler's changed too, albeit far less dramatically.

Her feminist social conditioning is telling her to hate what Walt has become but her naturally ingrained womanly desires have caused her to become more attracted to her husband because as we all know all women want some grade A Alpha dick up in them. She has acquiesced & aligned herself with Walt even to the point of involving herself in his illicit activities, for the basic reason the new Walt is a man she cannot help but be attracted to.

To paraphrase Jesse: Yeah biology Yeah Science!

[iknowexactly]

The real interesting thing here is that it's a credit to the writers, actress and director that you (at least I do) perceive her as a real person when of course it is an actress presenting an imaginary person.

Whether you like the character as a theoretical person or not is really irrelevant, if you have any emotion at all it means the creative team made it real for you, that is the magic of drama.