Like you, I have sympathy for her position, but not her choice of a solution.
And, I think the worst part, from an entertainment POV, is thats its a very stereotypical reaction/solution you’d see in just about any old show.
All the other problems, solutions, complications the other characters are dealing with are interesting, entertaining, disturbing, damned if you do and damned if you don’t, holy crap did this just happen?, WTF do I do NOW? sorta things.
Then we have wife/mother is mad at dad. Won’t let dad see kids. Wants dad out of HER :rolleyes: house. Doesnt want to talk about it. Fucks some other guy to make a point/get even/get her way.
I can find that lame old song and dance anytime of day on regular tv.
She’s not just “mad” – you get mad if your spouse overdraws the bank account or gets drunk and wrecks the car. She’s found out that her husband is the worst kind of criminal, one who destroys lives for money.
There will be times when we’re disappointed by someone we love, but for Skyler, what she’s learned about Walt goes far beyond that. It’d be an understatement to say that he’s not the man she thought he was – what he’s done is vile and degenerate, and it doesn’t matter why he did it.
Dad manufactures meth. What kind of people is he associating with? You want your kids exposed to that?
Dad makes meth. If he’s discovered, the house is forfeit, also the car, any money they have in the bank, etc. Plus, it’s as much her house as his. If she’s going to take care of the kids, she needs the house.
What’s there to talk about? What he’s done could cost them everything, including their lives. He didn’t rob a bank or run a Ponzi scheme – he made and sold meth. People have died because of Walt. Skyler doesn’t know about the plane crash or the people Walt killed, but she certainly knows that meth kills. We’ve seen her have a hard time with Ted and his books – how much harder would it be to accept what Walt did?
Something she wouldn’t have done if Walt hadn’t broken into the house and made it clear that he wasn’t going to leave. She had to do something to make him see that the marriage is over. The only other thing she could have done was tell Walt Jr. what he was doing. Would that have been less hurtful to Walt?
I think Walt showing her the money was the last straw. He was telling her that he thought she could be bought. How insulting is that?
I didnt say she didnt have good reasons. I am saying the producers solution to the problem is the same lame old stuff you can find about anywhere. Given how creative they have been with most other stuff, IMO they really dropped the ball on this part. Didnt you read the first sentence or two of mine?
I did, but it looks like I focused on the solution part.
I know that infidelity is a common situation in TV and movies, but the reason for Skyler’s infidelity is not common. She didn’t sleep with Ted because she was horny or because she cared for him or even to get back at Walt – she slept with Ted to put the last nail in the coffin of their marriage, to break through Walt’s wall of denial. That’s quite different from the standard infidelity story line.
Remember, she quit this job before because of “grabby hands”. The writers have set it up that Skylar - even though she’s attracted to Ted - has quit her job rather than have an affair. We see Skylar struggle, we see Skylar’s ethics, we see Skylar’s intelligence, and we see her have to go against everything she believes in in order to protect herself and her family.
I don’t agree that this was a cop-out on behalf of the writers. I don’t think this was an easy thing for her to do at all. I don’t think she was just trying to get back at Walt, but rather to level the playing field and to force the divorce. Walt, IMO, destroyed everything she thought she knew about her husband. Turned her life upside down. Forced her to be in a house with a person who’s behavior she despises. Perhaps it’s useful for Walt to experience first hand what that’s like for himself.
Walt who had a very easy straightforward solution to his problem, but chose his hubris and his pride over his family. He chose to torment her with his lies when he knew that she was suspicious. He chose to break back into their house when he knew she didn’t want him there. He chose to torment her in front of the police and Walt, Jr. He chose, also, a course of action that he should have known would destroy her emotionally if she ever found out. (And he should have known he would be found out. He discounted how smart Skylar obviously is.) He cares more about himself than her, more about his pride than her, regardless of what honorable spin he tries to put on it.
A common solution to even an uncommon problem still sucks as far as a TV show meant to entertain goes IMO. It is the very antithesis of the premise of this show, a real life problem with a very untypical solution that leads to all sorts of interesting unforeseen complications.
Woman uses vagina to solve personal/life problems, news at 11! If I was a rabid feminist I’d be having a cow right now.
That about as old and stereotyped as the Good guy beats the shit out of Bad guy, problem solved.
Maybe they WILL use this common solution to cause all sorts of uncommon complications and it will make it all worth it in the end.
But, again the whole thing came off lame. A supposedly smart woman calls the cops to kick out her husband when the divorce isnt final, there is no restraining order, she isnt willing to say whats really going on (and as an observer you KNEW she wasnt going out Walt), he hasnt threatened or hurt her (and she isnt even willing to lie about that to get him out). The whole thing had my eyes rolling about as much as the cops that showed up. Heck, I can just watch an episode of Cops to see that kind of stuff in real life.
Then when that lame ploy falls flat, its I’ll screw someone else, that will get the message across. Lame again IMO.
Something like she played along/changed and TOOK the money, did something “fancy” with it so that she could blackmail Walt or it would dissappear (and maybe it accidently does), making all his efforts/sacrifices wasted and in doing so THAT opens up another Oh crap problem with the IRS/Homeland Security/the Mob or something would have been sooo much better IMO.
Hey, I aint no TV guru, and these folks have done good. But this episode? mehh…
When was she ever shown as being smart or rational? Seriously.
Something like that isn’t going to happen in one episode. This episode was Walt offering her the money. The next episode will show us that she’s considering her options and how exactly she’d use such a large amount of cash. And so on and so forth.
I assumed she fucked Ted in order to be able to get a divorce on the grounds of adultery, rather than on the grounds of “my husband cooks and sells meth.” That way, Walt Jr. and the rest of the world need not know the worse dirty secret, and she can still have a divorce.
The title of the show ain’t Breaking Good. People in the show behave badly and y’all are surprised? Walt is a “noble” man who makes bad choices and does bad things. He is noble since he was put in an impossible situation and is only thinking about his family… right? Except he apparently wasn’t thinking about his family when he turned down the Gray Matter money.
And then we have Skylar who thinks she is completely ethical… except when she has to fake giving birth to get out of a shoplifting charge, or when she decides to work for grabby-hands Ted, or when she doesn’t report the illegal accounting, or when she doesn’t report her husband, or when she sleeps with Ted.
People will try to make excuses, but there were always ethical alternatives to the bad choices. Skylar could have accepted the shoplifting charge and paid the fine or turned in her sister. Skylar could find work elsewhere, even if the job isn’t as easy. She could choose not to sleep with Ted. She could wait for Walt’s situation to resolve on its own instead of forcing the issue with divorce.
A smart, intelligent, ethical Skylar would work with Walt to immediately establish a trust fund for the kids once the duffle bag o’ cash appeared.
Frankly, the only one who hasn’t done anything bad is Walt Jr. And how boring would the show be if all the characters were as saintly as Walt Jr.? Face it, we need bad choices to drive the plot, if not for the purpose of schadenfreude.
IMO, that plot would not have been consistent with Skylar’s character. From the beginning of the show all we know about Skylar is that she wants to be a “boring” house wife. She did after all marry Walt, who when the series started out was anything but exciting. Skylar is also very ethical and devoted to her children. She’s strong willed, because Walt wasn’t and she had to pick up that slack for her family.
So her solution to the problem had to be typical because from what we know of her, she’s a very typical person. She’s a serious person, who takes her responsibilities to her family seriously. Her values are mainstream and she hasn’t been shown to think outside the box.
Because she is so ethical, what Walt does repulses her. She did not plan to be involved with a meth dealer. She did not plan to be Bonnie to Walter’s Clyde. That’s not the life she wanted. In reality you’d be hard pressed to find any suburban mom to go along with this. Middle class women are turned on by drug dealers only in Hollywood movies. Skylar was visibly distraught every time she had to fight Walt. She never imagined she would have to take on her meth cooking husband, so when she calls the cops she hasn’t mentally accepted the situation yet. “This isn’t supposed to be happening,” is what I imagine she was thinking throughout this episode.
She’s holding on to the life she wants for herself and her kids. She never wanted her kids to grow up knowing their dad was a drug dealer and she never wanted to be married to a drug dealer. Walt doesn’t just interfere with those plans, he royally fucks them up. She tried to compromise, but Walt could not accept that. He messed up her life and wanted to Skylar to accept it as if he did nothing wrong. In addition to that he passive aggressively flaunts it in her face.
She was pretty patient with Walt, but when he showed her the money that was the last straw. So I thought it was natural that Skylar would be out for blood. She wanted to hurt Walt. At the same time, she made Walt understand how much she despised him, because he obviously wasn’t getting it.
What else could she have done to Walt that would (1) hurt him (2) let him know she hates him and (3) keep her kids from finding out their dad was a drug dealer?
What Walt’s done might be worse, but he did all his things for the sake of his family. She did what she did (and I’m half expecting we may later learn she didn’t actually fuck Ted, backed out at the last minute and then lied out of desperation) was solely to hurt the family.
Why doesn’t Jesse have any furniture? What happened to all his stuff from the apartment?
He may have initially cooked for his family, but once he got the offer of money from his friends and he turned it down, he was no longer just cooking for his family.
I think he was. He just found cooking the meth a better solution that taking charity, especially from the people that he already has personal problems with.
But some of us think that the writers did think outside the box. What Skyler did opens up new possibilities, not just for the plot but for character growth.
It could get much more interesting now, more interesting than Skyler doing nothing (boring) or Skyler turning Walt in (show over, unless the DEA offers Walt a deal in order to bring down the cartel).
How will Walt react? Will he go after Ted? Follow Skyler around? Tell Walt Jr. his mom’s a slut?
Maybe someone can help me understand here - the cousins and Tortuga’s boss are the ones who killed Tortuga. So why are they allowing Tio to think Walt was responsible and agreeing to kill Walt for him as a result? Has that been explained yet?
