It’s Time to Join the Skyler White Apologist Army
Double standards. Like Jesse Pinkman’s outfits, they never seem to go out of style.
This year I took a leap of faith and ventured into one of the most intimidating and frightening terrains there is: the tv series Breaking Bad. Not only is it five long seasons of 47-minute violence-hefty episodes, but it is also known for having a remarkably interesting fanbase, to say the least. Based on internet talk, going in I had the expectation of adoring the alleged “king,” Walter White, a poor man with cancer who is trying to take care of his beloved family, how sad! But for Walter's wife Skyler, I was warned, she was the “nagging disloyal woman” who seemingly ruined the show. After viewing all 62 episodes of the series, I was confused as to how these misconceptions of the characters ever developed in the first place. Oh right, misogyny.
If you still haven't jumped on the bandwagon (I don't blame you), Breaking Bad covers the secret life of Walter White, a chemistry teacher who discovers he has stage three lung cancer. Scared that once he passes his family will have nothing, he turns to a solution: methamphetamine. As he continues to produce and distribute meth, his motivations change, as he does it less for family and more for his ego and the rush it provides him. Walt kills over 300 people, directly or indirectly, poisons children, and psychologically abuses his meth-making partner all while coming home to his children and wife as a poor man with a terminal illness. To me, he is kind of like a more menacing Hannah Montana.
Vince Gillian, the creator of the show, started the series with a list of intentions to follow for his character Skyler White. Anna Gunn, the actress who plays the scrutinized character, wrote an op-ed called “I Have a Character Issue” explaining these intentions, saying Skyler was meant to be a “woman with a backbone of steel who would stand up to whatever came her way, who wouldn’t just collapse in the corner or wring her hands in despair.” However, viewers decided to take their own spin on her, morphing her into a completely different character. As Walter spirals down a life of crime, Skyler is unable to support his motives for obvious reasons, like the security of herself and her two children, or maybe the fact that she is uncomfortable with living in the same home as a drug lord. Instead of viewing her as a “woman with a backbone of steel,” she instead was anointed a “whiny b*tch,” who according to a Facebook user “can’t see that Walt has done this for her” and “once she takes a 5-minute break from yelling at everything around her and actually *listens* to Walt, she begins to understand that it was all because he loved his wife and children.” Right, it’s my dream to have my dad care about me enough that he’d start selling drugs and hiring hitmen to do his dirty work. In short, Breaking Bad’s audience was unsettled with Skyler opposing Walt, as to them, she was a barrier to him. She should have simply supported and loved him no matter what— not attempted to take him down—for he was just a man trying to provide for his family.
This all comes down to the likability bias, a tale as old as time. The likability bias tells us that we tend to favor people or characters more based on if they match up to their stereotypes or what we expect them to be. In terms of gender roles, in media and in everyday life, we predict men to be assertive and confident in themselves; it is natural and correct. If men aren’t assertive and confident, they are weak, they are failures; they are lost. For women, it is the opposite: they are envisioned to be forgiving, submissive, and to take whatever is thrown without struggle. If women are assertive, they are deemed disrespectful. As Breaking Bad has had a recent resurgence in popularity, it seems that with time this likability bias has remained prevalent in its fanbase. The Anti-Skyler movement is still creating waves on the internet, and without any proper justification, might I add. A TikTok comment underneath a Skyler White hate edit exemplifies this by saying, “she stood in the way of Walt's freedom and manipulated him into getting chemo when he clearly didn't want to. Yes, she is worse than Walt.” I don't think I need to elaborate.
But it’s not like this fanbase doesn’t have a heart. Jesse Pinkman, Walt's meth-making partner is one of the most beloved of the show, even though like Skyler, he opposes Walt towards the end and even teams up with his brother-in-law cop to take him down. This, however, was deemed courageous with fans affirming him with sentiments such as: “good for Jesse” and “it’s about time Jesse stood up for himself.” Jesse, again, like Skyler, endured severe psychological manipulation from Walter, but the generosity and understanding given to Jesse were never extended to Skyler— or any woman on the show for that matter. Women in TV are not wanted as complex characters with self-righteousness, because that would be too much of a threat to the traditional gender roles that plague our everyday life. As Anna Gunn said in her op-ed, “because Skyler didn’t conform to a comfortable ideal of the archetypical female, she had become a kind of Rorschach test for society, a measure of our attitudes toward gender.”
Don't get me wrong, Skyler is by no means the perfect character. She makes her own various mistakes along the way, such as being manipulated into eventually helping Walter, cheating on him in the past, etc. Yet, what is interesting is that Breaking bad grapples with Neo-Nazis, druglords, corrupt cops, and hitmen, but low and behold—Skyler White, the morally compromised wife, turns out to become one of the most despised characters on television.
As we continue to discover more women-identifying characters on TV, it is good to ask when analyzing their characterisations: are they truly unlikeable, or are we just uncomfortable with women who oppose men? Are we holding them to the same standards as male characters? Did they truly do anything bad enough for us to dislike them so much?
If you have watched Breaking Bad, and harbor the opinion that Skyler is the worst character, I urge you to watch it again, and this time, pay attention.
