A Textual Analysis of Skyler White

Next Sunday night will mark the ending of an era and the close to one of the greatest television series of all time, Breaking Bad.  Everyone has heard about the show at one point or another which tells the story of Walter White, a high school chemistry teacher who turns to the dark side and uses his chemistry skills to create a meth empire.  The show features a predominately male cast. Besides the various women that Jesse Pinkman dates throughout the series, there are only two consistent female characters, Skyler White and Marie Schrader. Recently, Skyler White has become the center of attention.

Audiences have consistently come to the same conclusion about this show, 1. This show is amazing 2. Skyler White sucks.  The first season begins with Skyler being a typical housewife who works and takes care of the children. But as Walter expands his meth cooking business, Skyler begins to pick up on Walter’s sketchiness. At the time it was understandable that his wife was questioning why her husband was randomly leaving at 2 am, or why he was found in his underwear in the middle of town. After a while it started to become annoying that she was always trying to play Sherlock Holmes. As a viewer my Skyler White tipping point was in the finale of season 2, episode ‘ABQ’, when she took advantage of Walter being under anesthetics to have him admit he had a second cell phone.  However, from a television critic’s perspective I think Skyler White is a very interesting character.

One of the main reasons why I think so many fans dislike her is because she is always interfering with the plot of the show.  As we have learned in class and seen throughout television history the antagonist is the evil anti-hero character. Viewers would think that Walter’s brother in law DEA agent Hank Schrader is his biggest threat.  But in fact, the woman closest to Walter is his own worst enemy and the shows main antagonist.  When you sign up to watch a show like this you expect certain, such as making drugs, getting money, and lots of action; Sklyer White doesn’t seem to quite fit into this.

Viewers have taken to the internet voicing their hatred toward Skyler White, as there are many ‘I hate Skyler White’ Facebook groups popping up. The hate mail and constant threats have been pouring into actress Anna Gunn’s (Skyler White) mailbox.  Last month Anna Gunn took to the New York Times to write an editorial about fans hatred towards her as a character and even as a person.  She tried to make her own sense of the hatred by saying “I finally realized that most people’s hatred of Skyler had little to do with me and a lot to do with their own perception of women and wives. 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.” (Gunn) This is where she is wrong. Let’s pretend that the roles were reversed, Skyler White is a chemistry genius who starts a drug empire and her husband Walter White works part time and stays home with his family. Walter has taken the exact same actions as Skyler and Skyler has taken the exact steps as Walter. Would you still hate Skyler? Would you still like Walter?   The answer is no. This whole issue of people disliking Skyler because she is a woman is wrong. It’s that fact that the main characters enemy is the person closest to him, not gender.

Even though I don’t like her as a character, I decided to look at her from a different perspective. An in depth image analysis of Skyler White tells otherwise of what fans are saying. An image analysis, as described by Jason Mittell “Ask two basic questions, are images accurate, and are images positive?” (Mittell 308) Which begs the question, is the image portrayed by Skyler White an accurate portrayal of what would happen in real life? The answer to this question is yes.  She is doing what most women in this situation would do. What person wouldn’t question their significant other if they found out randomly they were in the drug empire business.   As Walter says all of his decisions are in the best interest of the family, the same can be said about Skyler. All of Skyler’s moves are made to protect her children but she often times doesn’t make the best decisions and can be very naggy at times. 

Overall, if you think of her character in a real world setting it makes sense and is absolutely realistic. If her character had been written unrealistically and she simply sat back and let Walter do his thing, the show would be too predictable. It’s easy to dislike her character, not because she’s a woman but that she is the voice of morality in a world of bad. People aren’t watching this show because they wanted to see people doing morally correct things; they are watching this show to see good people do bad things hence the show’s title Breaking Bad.

-Paul Herskovitz 

Works Cited

Gunn, Anna. "I have a Character Issue." New York Times23 08 2013, n. pag. Web. 26 Sep. 2013. <http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/24/opinion/i-have-a-character-issue.html?_r=0>.

Mittell, Jason . Televison and American Culture. Oxford University Press, 308. print.