You actually have to be a dumb cunt to hate Skyler, I remember hating her when I first watched BB, because she was the bitch wife messimg with badass Walter, now that I rewatched it as I am older and damn, walter is a proper cunt the whole way through and she is trying navigate a really fucked up situation, I just felt bad for her the whole way through
Nah man, I hated Walter from the get go and still hated Skylar. Basically the only characters I liked ended up in Better Call Saul, outside of Hank and Jessie
Hank was a douchebag, and it took Jesse a good while to become somewhat of a decent person.
Hank was pretty much the only character who wasnt doing anything wrong (or at least for the most part, I havent watched Breaking Bad in a really long time) the entire show
you should rewatch it, Hank is far from a good person.
season 1: he puts away the Janitor for stealing the chemistry supplies because he had a joint, so casual police racism (I know he is DEA)
then he goes and does a lot of extra-lawful activities, tracks a citizen without permission in Gustavo Fring, you and I know he is guilty, but think about if he was just randomly following and bugging the vehicle of another PoC US citizen.
Then he straight up beats up Jessie Pinkman and puts him in a hospital, that is after he tries to break the law again and do an unlawful search on the RV without a Warrant.
He was borderline abusive to Marie when he was recovering from his shooting
Tbf I think I hated Marie more than anyone else in the show
He’s a fed so his whole existence is being wrong
Yeah, she fucks up but like damn give a girl a break her husband got cancer and keeps lying about where he is and what he’s doing.
Her husband becomes a psychopathic mass murderer and drug manufacturer
Yeah, but most people start hating her in season 1/2 where she’s kinda a bitch or when she cheats.
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It’s been a while since I’ve watched, too, but I remember this part because most people misunderstood her motives for cheating, and I’ve had to explain it before. Walter had shown her, at this point, how awful he was and he had also made it clear that she was stuck with him, doing whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted, and that he wouldn’t leave and she couldn’t leave. She was trapped with him. The cheating was a chess-move, a deliberate choice to make him leave, because it was the only way she could make him.
So I’m disagreeing with you here. I think she has reason to believe that her husband is cheating on her at that point and that while not ok behavior, listen she starts the series as stressed as she probably thinks she possibly can get, and then as her husband gets meaner, starts treating their kid worse and in some cases abusively (forcing him to drink alcohol), and then starts behaving in textbook cheater fashion. She snaps and cheats with her boss who shows her kindness and desire. I get it. It’s not good, but if a male protagonist behaved that way he’d be seen as complicated.
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Her cheating is a response to when she finds out Walter is putting her family at risk and tries to push him away, you should probably rewatch the series.
Divorce is the answer.
Divorce means you possibly get murdered, Walter’s a psychopathic drug kingpin working with the cartel who, for all she knows, has probably gotten a lot of people killed already.
Divorce is also usually a long and convoluted process in the US, I assume it is in NM too. At the very least it would have put some eyes on them and made other people (including her DEA AGENT BROTHER) confused and possibly looking for answers as to what happened suddenly, especially right after they just had their 2nd kid and are seemingly happy together despite Walt’s cancer diagnosis. At that point she didn’t want Walt getting arrested (possibly because that would also completely shake up her own life), she was just waiting for him to die of his terminal illness so it’d all be over soon.
It’s always crazy to me when someone suggests that a person stuck in a dangerous relationship just breaks up/divorces/leaves. That’s not how it works.
Her divorcing Walt would just be completely illogical and serve no purpose other than introducing a whole lot of new worries and complications in her life. As far as she was concerned, Walt would die of cancer in a few months and that’d be that. She didn’t want to bring more risk into it than there already was.
If she was so worried about divorce what about cheating which is way worse?
I mostly dislike here because he is annoying not because she cheated.
what do you think she was trying to force?
Force?
I haven’t watched the show in a while but did she file for divorce or not? If not I don’t care if she was trying to “force” it or not when she obviously didn’t.
Bro! Spoilers!!
breaking bad ended over a decade ago…
Did I really need to include the /s on that one? It’s old AND everyone knows that’s the point of the show. Figured the sarcasm would be obvious
you dont have to be a dumb cunt to hate skyler, she is there to disrupt the part of the show that is the most fun to see (walt’s rise to kingpin)
like no shit people are going to hate that
I could have just said immature cunt, but those kinda go hand in hand, but kinda good on you come on here and prove my point, so thanks for that.
Nothing more fun then ruining the lives of your Wife, her Sister, your children and getting your Brother-in-law killed, not for money, because he could have made all the money he wanted with gus and got out, no, because of his fucking ego, because he liked it.
i didnt say it was fun watching him ruin his family, i said it was fun watching him rise in the criminal underworld
can’t separate one from the other, and you also said you disliked her because she was standing in the way of that…
The entire reason I couldn’t get through the show the first time I tried to watch it was because I despised ALL the characters.
It was years before I was able to get through the first season and on to the rest of the show which was amazing.
Kai Winn
And Nurse Ratched! Louise Fletcher is the best at being the worst.
I was gonna mention this character as well! I was really surprised that Louise Fletcher wasn’t in the photo.
Nurse Ratched legit fucked me up, and it’s a fictional character! Louise Fletcher was in the elite league that is basically her and Javier Bardem as Anton Chigurh. Incidentally, both got an Oscar for these roles.
Grammy Gallagher on Shameless (US) too!
I was having a good day, and then you uttered her name -_-
Kai winn and nurse ratched, if you ain’t on louise fletchers level you just playing
We don’t speak of the unspeakable in this sub mister.
I never hated Skylar, but I get why she’s in the meme. Anna Gunn does severe so damn well.
I also don’t mind Dolores Umbridge’s actress because I hated her in the book far, far more.
Jack Gleeson should come back and give it a shot again. And I can’t tell who the other one is.
Jeffery Dean Morgan as Neegan (sp) in The Walking Dead.
I think his role as the Comedian in The Watchmen was more hatable, at least the character was pretty awful in a grounded way instead of the silly over the top Walking Dead kind of way.
That character was so well done (The Comedian, I don’t remember Walking Dead well enough). He’s more tragedy than contemptable depending on your sympathies, but that was kinda’ the point. It’s almost the point of ANY “good” bad character. Give them motivations that are understandable by non-psychos, just make the character make poor (poor, not stupid) or mean decisions.
… and his acting helped round out the character instead of flatten. He genuinely seemed like a good guy that got insanely jaded and went off the deep instead of just a bad guy.
He was contemptible as Neegan. Very well played.
I think he was only starting to be introduced by the time I wandered away from the walking dead. Though the little I remember, he was definitely all asshole and killing it.
Good-looking bad people are always liked no matter how badly behaved their characters are.
I’m not sure that applies to The Comedian, but then I’m not particularly attracted to guys, and some people find some weird looks downright hot.
… Though I still hate how right you are. Looks or power. People respect them when they should NEVER respect looks or power. Ever. Sure, many good looking people are respectable, but not because of looks. It’s NEVER looks or simply having power (or money) that makes someone respectable.
Heck, maybe the problem is people conflate “like” with “respect”, like I did above. Or maybe the problem is those words aren’t so different in practice…
The Comedian was my favorite character from Watchmen. Not because I think he was good, misunderstood, or any kind of role model. I just found him very compelling.
That movie is so fucking good and Jeffrey Dean Morgan absolutely killed it as the comedian.
I never watched that show, thank you.
I stopped when he showed up, not because of him as I enjoyed him in other roles, but because it was when two of the last three characters I enjoyed watching were killed off. One character wasn’t enough to keep me interested, and it was looking like they were just going to be doing the Governor 2.0 with how much they were playing him up.
He was also great as the Winchester’s dad in the early seasons of Supernatural.
The Comedian somewhat repented though. He hated himself for all the evil he’d done. He was awful, but at least he realized how awful he’d been in the past and felt bad about it.
Skylar wasn’t even evil or anything. Just a normal good person. Walter was an absolute piece of shit who chose to reject legitimate help and support, and instead do illegal villainous things.
But that’s also the mark of a well written show, when you’re compelled to take the side of a man making the wrong choices, to walk that line with him. And then be yanked the fuck back by the writers at the end.
“I did it for me. I did it because I was good at it.”
Masterful.
Do good people fuck Bob?
Jack Gleeson is acting again. I saw him pop up in the last season of Sex Education in a small role.
The more I hate a character, the more respect and admiration I have for the actor/actress. I don’t know what the fuck is wrong with people who can’t differentiate between fiction and reality.
Look around. People are idiots.
People that hate Skylar are idiots. If they hate the actress, they’re even worse.
Being hateable doesn’t mean you’re wrong. Obviously Skyler was acting in her family’s best interest and walt was a psycho POS but she played such an unlikeable character.
There are plenty of likeable “evil” characters and plenty of unlikeable “good” ones. People act like if you hate Skyler you somehow don’t get the show, but no, I understand her character just fine, it’s just that she’s insufferable about everything.
Regardless, hating the actress for the character is smooth brain shit
I empathized with Skyler more than anyone else on the show. I was constantly asking myself what I would do in her position.
I feel like if someone found her insufferable, it was because you either agreed with Walt or were pissed that her character prevented shenanigans you wanted to see. I’ll admit I fell into the latter category in the first season or two but by the end, she rocked. If neither describes you, feel free to explain why you thought she was insufferable
I think she was one of the most realistic and best-written characters in the entire show. I also don’t think she got/gets nearly enough hate to even be a part this meme
Shit isnt black and white like that. Disliking Skylar does NOT mean you like or agree with Walt. I hated both characters
I didn’t imply it was black and white. Why did you hate her?
It’s been a long while since I’ve watched breaking bad, so I cant fully remember the details, but I guess generally she was annoying and I didnt like her personality. The only character of the main two families I liked was Hank.
Indeed, I really hated her character, though the actress did a phenomenal job.
In the realm of toxic masculinity power fantasies there is no room for a woman who acts kind of like a normal person.
The show was written to make you root for Walt and dislike Skylar because of that, but is she really that unlikeable if you step back and look at her actions and motivations?
Edit: Sorry for being terse and using charged language in this comment.
I’m a fan of Breaking Bad. I wasn’t trying to put it down or to say that people disliker Skyler because she’s a woman.
Upthread I clarified things a bit, hopefully.
This the kind of surface level interpretation that makes me question people’s ability to reason.
Edit: I was being harsh, ignore me lol
Sorry, I should have said that Skyler, the character, did nothing to deserve being disliked. The show was rigged to make you dislike her, in the sense that the storytelling was solely through Walt’s eyes, even in scenes he wasn’t present for.
But I didn’t say that. Vince Gilligan, creator of the show, said it.
I also called it a “power fantasy.” The show’s pitch was to show a man turning himself from “Mr. Chips to Scarface.” It’s not a criticism, I loved the show. It took the power fantasy tropes and subverted them frequently. But at its heart that’s what it is.
If you’re upset that I said that it was about toxic masculinity, then I apologize. That was reductive of me. It explores hegemonic masculinity through the power fantasy trope, and it can be interpreted as either a celebration of or criticism of toxic masculinity depending on how you approach it.
Plenty of more well reasoned people than I could hope to be have written in depth on the subject. Someone even wrote a book in the subject.
If you were reacting to thinking I was putting the show down, which I wasn’t intending to do, then my bad. I could have worded it better. I was trying to make the point that it’s both intentional to not like Skyler, and also the obvious wrong take to not like her.
Alright I love this, thank you! And I apologize for reacting strongly
My whole point was that her motivations and actions are reasonable and she is mostly in the right (ie she is “good” not evil), but her character’s mannerisms are still extremely hate-able.
It’s not about acting like a normal person and it’s certainly not about being a woman.
I hear what you are saying, and while I don’t fully agree that she’s inherently unlikable, I understand why you’re saying that you find her to be so. I mostly was asking you to question your assumptions on it, and I used some charged up language that wasn’t meant as a knock at the show.
To elaborate, what I meant was that the show exaggerates her mannerisms to give Walt motivation rather than to create a fully fleshed out character. She’s not a woman, but a symbol of how men have become emasculated by their wives’ “wearing the pants” in the family. At least early on she’s not much more than a framing device and justification for Walt’s decisions.
She grows as a character, and ends up having more agency, but only in the confines of Walt’s domination of their lives with his selfishly motivated, and traditionally toxic masculine, choices.
And I don’t think you meant it this way, but you can’t really easily separate disliking her from being a woman. I don’t mean to imply that you dislike her because she’s a woman, but that her character’s role is to be a controlling wife. It’s an inherently gendered character that relies heavily on preconceptions of what a woman should and shouldn’t be in a relationship with a man who is a main character in a story.
I think it’s telling that she is considered unlikable enough to even warrant discussing in a show where the main character is a multi-murderer monster who destroyed the lives of everyone he loved, and the main villains include nazis, cartels, lawyers and corporate shills.
That, for anyone, she’s the most hated character on the show is enough for me to take a minute and question my assumptions on her, at least. So I thought it was worth pushing back on your comment asking you, and others reading, to do the same.
The characters role is to be a controlling spouse. If Walt was gay married to a man who behaved the same way Skyler does, they would be just as frustrating to watch on screen. It’s not inherently gendered, you’re putting that on it.
She isn’t a controlling spouse, she’s a controlling housewife in an exaggerated disappointing version of a post-nuclear American family.
The show states over and over again that Walt believes a man provides for his family… a necessarily and pointedly gendered role that is central to his entire character’s motivations. Skyler’s nagging is framed exactly in relation to his perceived shortcomings with respect to this gendered expectation.
In a gay relationship you don’t tend to just mirror straight relationships but the bottom replaces the women, or something. So you can’t just conjure Skyler as a dude and make it make any sense as a family.
When there are two or more men coming together, usually they all have their own separate careers and plans for life. There is no template gay relationships have to build off of, and having children is way more difficult and complicated. We have to define everything for ourselves.
None of the tropes that are foundations of Breaking Bad work if you swap the genders of the characters. If walt were a woman nothing she does would make sense to the audience and the treatment from her annoyed husband would be absolute nonsense. Why would he expect her to provide for the family? Why would he expect her to man up? Etc?
Nah, that lacks nuance. People who hate Skylar for just crushing Walt’s vibe or being unlikeable are idiots. I have watched the show in its entirety three times, and my opinion on all the characters has evolved - my opinion of Skylar is more negative than it used to be. If you believe that Skylar is just a victim, you are denying her character agency. She is highly intelligent and capable and simultaneously intends to benefit from Walt’s actions while being arrogant enough to assume she can control the situation, outsmart the authorities, and get off scott free - much like another main character.
Skylar made certain choices to support Walt because she thought it was in the family’s best interest (including hers), then she later reneged on those choices when things didn’t turn out like she expected and ultimately forced Walt to take the blame for choices she willingly made. Skylar is as relatable and flawed as she is unlikeable: just like we would in her circumstances, she lacks the courage to do what is necessary to stop Walt and protect herself and her family.
She did not have to support Walt in the first place but instead did so even when given many opportunities to get out of the situation with minimal consequences. She may have paid a price for doing so as time went on (asset seizure if she went to the cops, social ostracization, her kids disliking her, etc), but the consequences were initially fairly trivial - divorce from a criminal who was putting the family at risk, embarrassment, harming her relationship with Marie, etc. And, while Walt obviously was callous/cruel/self-righteous/arrogant/and even evil, maybe - as was the point of his whole character, Skylar chose to support Walt in his criminal enterprise when she didn’t have to - going so far as to come up with money laundering ideas, encouraging him to expand his operations to an extent early on, helping him come up with cover stories, etc. and only later turning on Walt when she felt like she could no longer benefit from assisting him and would benefit more by betraying him - going so far as to physically assault him with a knife and threaten to kill him, lying to the police about his treatment of the family and also giving them his location which put his life in further jeopardy while he was trying to get the family to safety since he was being pursued.
In fact, Walt saw a way to use Skylar’s betrayal to protect the family and takes the blame for Skylar’s actions, goes along with Skylar’s lie that he was physically assaulting the family, threatening them with death if they didn’t comply, etc. all to take the heat off Skylar for the sake of the family. That doesn’t mean Walt is a saint. He should’ve stopped long before that and did many things that put the family in danger. But, his taking the blame for Skylar’s part in the operation shows that she did have a real part in it - he had to lie to say he forced her to be a part of the operation to put her in a better light and get her off the hook.
When Skylar initially began to support Walt, she was not under significant duress. There was a significant degree of duress later, with Walt acting intimidating, Meth Damon coming to “talk” to her at her house, etc. But you could say that just like the situation got away from Walt and was out of control, the same happened for Skylar. She thought she could control things and continue to benefit from Walt’s operation to provide a better life for the family. Then, when things got out of control, she flipped on Walt. The difference between Walt and Skylar is that Skylar got dragged into the situation by Walt, but remember, he really did try to keep her out of it. At a certain point, she chose to insert herself into it rather than leave the situation.
People dislike Skylar because she lacks courage. Courage to get out early when she had the chance, courage to report Walt to the police despite having many allies to help her and numerous opportunities, courage to stick to her moral convictions about what Walt was doing, courage to ensure her family’s safety before doing things that jeopardized her chances of full custody, courage to tell her kids the truth about Walt, or alternatively courage to stick with Walt since she had committed to doing so and was (at first) a willing accomplice. But, most importantly, the courage to face the consequences for her part in the whole ordeal - except at the very end when it was already too late. She lacks courage and is self-interested, wanting to benefit from Walt’s dealings while bearing none of the risk or responsibility for her part in them.
Meth Damon cracked me up. But this is an amazing essay on Skyler and have me a lot of perspectives I had not considered. Nice job.
How is she criticized for not having courage to report Walt but also not having courage to stick with him?
Nope read again, I said alternately for that second bit. You couldn’t think both of those at the same time, but thinking them separately is valid. Either she sticks with Walt or not, those are her two possible endings.
But, these should be different groups of people criticizing her for different reasons then, right?
Like, having courage to report Walt is specifically because reporting Walt is the right thing to do.
And, having courage to stick with him is because of a belief that loyalty (or submissiveness) matters more than one’s obligation to the social good.
I think it’s mostly related. People see her behavior as hypocritical. She says she cares about the moral aspect, but never follows through. She says she cares about her family’s safety, but doesn’t really act consistently with that. And she starts to manage Walt’s business (willingly at first) but turns on him even when it might put the family in danger (like giving all their money to Ted).
She’s inconsistent/hypocritical because she lacks courage and conviction
I am extremely confused by this.
The Ted situation had to be handled. Like, not handling it was not an option. Isn’t trying to handle it, then, to keep the family’s secrets out of the IRS’s eyes, an example of her acting in the interest of the family’s safety? Are there different examples of her being callous and reckless?
That’s fair, I didn’t put much thought into my response. I never said she was callous or reckless, though. The main thing is that she acted hypocritically and in a way that is inconsistent with her stated values. I think that’s a big reason she is disliked other than just being an “unlikeable” character
I want to add that an annoying character can act morally totally OK but still be disliked. That is because the annoyance is real and their actions and their consequences are not.
You could have a saintly character that always does the “right thing” but if they have an obnoxiously annoying way of speaking (extrem high pitch, extremely slow or fast or something) I would still dislike them.
That is because I actually get annoyed watching the character while I do not react that harshly even to a drug kingpin as the consequences of their action is fictional.
I have that kind of feeling of annoyance for skyler. I really do get annoyed at her controlling and arrogant way to handle things as it reminds me of real people. I do believe that this was intentional to make her unlikeable on first glance.
No matter how moral or “normal” her choices are the consequences are still fictional while my annoyance is real.
Edit: irl the situation is of course reversed. The consequences are real and the annoyance temporary.
Yeah I’m pretty convinced that people who hate Skylar missed the point of the show. Skylar acted like a normal person would.
Before I watched the show I thought she betrayed Walt last second because of all the hate she was getting. What the hell.
David Tennant’s performance in Jessica Jones stuck with me for a while. It took a while for me not to assume his characters would be evil after that, and I was already familiar with his run as The Doctor.
his role in JJ made me realize what a damn good actor he is. I love his evil roles! he played petulant psychopath so well.
Funnily enough, he’s also a good psychopath in Harry Potter, but he hardly has any screen time. He has impressive range of being able to easily portray the most good characters and the most vile.
He also played a pretty convincing psychopath in Secret Smile.
He’s spectacular at playing psychos and mansluts which is hilarious given he’s such a twee little Scottish presbyterian irl
Louise Fletcher is the Goat of making you utterly despise them.
Nurse Ratched.
Kai Winn…
I just ruined a whole bunch of people’s days with 2 names.
I just ruined a whole bunch of people’s days with 2 names.
Well, let me add something to that, just to make the day even worse:
My child
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The girl who tried to seduce Jim on The Office has said she gets a ton of hate IRL.
Those same people justify all of Pam’s mistakes throughout the series. That whole love story was just Jim being too perfect.
It’s such a trash take to put Skylar on this list. She reacted reasonably, understandably and went way above what could be expected to protect Walter.
To hate Sky is to misunderstand the entries show.
Misunderstanding an entire show seems to be more common than understanding it.
The dude who played Anakin in The Phantom Menace
Jake Lloyd. His performance just makes me hate George Lucas more.
I do let that hate flow through me!
We weren’t supposed to hate Anakin, though.
Let the hate flow through you
Poor guy, what a sad story his life turned out to be
Yeah, really sucks and I wish things would’ve turned out better for him.
What happened?
Skylar being in this group is low-key insane. She cheated on her narcissistic drug dealing murderous husband. The rest of these folks are murderers or magical torturers.
I didn’t even dislike Skyler because of her personality or the things she did, she was a great character, well written and acted. I didn’t like the time spent on her b-plot when there were so many much more interesting things going on (in my opinion).
I didn’t dislike her at all at first, because I didn’t start watching the show until season 4 was airing. While I was binging the first few seasons if a Skyler heavy episode came on when I was super keen to know what was going on with Gus, or whatever, I’d just continue watching the next episode.
But once I got to the point where I was waiting all week for an episode, looking forward to seeing what happens with the cartels, cops, etc., that was when I found myself thinking “fuck, it’s a God damned Skyler episode.”
The hatred for her ran deeper than it should have.
But she was a nag, so on the list she goes.
/s
Janice from The Sopranos
Ooh that’s a good one.
She’s the cousin of John turturro.
She had a one episode guest appearance in What We Do in the Shadows, and killed it.
Michael McKean as Chuck McGill.
He is such an awesome actor and generally a truly extremely sweet human, but he played his character so well I cannot cringe whenever I see him. Really well played!
God you’re right, I hated him so much I forgot he was just an actor. Him and Howard’s actor did so much to make BCS easily the #1 show of all time imo. It surpasses BB in narrative/storytelling, and really makes Breaking Bad look like the spinoff lol. The only thing is BCS takes so much time to build up that people attracted to the frequent action/story movement of Breaking Bad might get bored for much of the first 3 seasons, and it’s so important for the plot that you really shouldn’t skip it.
/r/fuckchuck
I hated Laura Linney for her portrayal of Meryl in The Truman Show
Well, she REALLY made it clear she was out of her depth when it spun out of control.
Just watched it with my kid and they loved it and were actually treating it like a scary dystopian flick, which I did not see until through their eyes. Fascinating.
People need to get some emotional intelligence.
