The problem with Skyler and Walt is that they are from different social classes. He can’t love her because she’s too primitive for him. Walt is in love with Gretchen who is from his social class and closer to him in IQ.
There’s no love without admiration. You can’t love somebody you despise. Skyler does talking cushions. Look at Walt’s face in the scene with the talking cushions. And look at him in the scenes with Gretchen. After 20 years of marriage and two kids, you don’t react with great intensity to a discussion of who dumped whom with a random girlfriend from your youth unless your marriage is a sham.
Skyler is not bad. She’s just a vulgar person with unrefined sensibilities. You can’t have emotional closeness with somebody who’s much more primitive than you. The famous birthday hand job scene shows this perfectly. For Skyler, the thinking is, “husband has birthday. He deserves some form of sexual gratification. I provide it. Box ticked. Moving on.” That for people who are more complex sex is not simple mechanical release doesn’t occur to her. Similarly, it doesn’t occur to her that Walt might not want to be saved by a former girlfriend or a disabled teenage son. She sees everything mechanistically. “We need money. Here’s money. We take money. Problem solved. Moving on.” When she discovers Walt’s drug dealing, again, we see mechanistic thinking so common in primitive people. “Husband bad. Eject husband from life. Problem solved. Move on.” She is honestly confused that the teenage son doesn’t accept the ejection of the father he loves from his life. She doesn’t understand that other people don’t function like that.
The dumb confusion on Skyler’s face every time she is around people who are more complex is very typical. We can’t look at everything in terms of individuals. This isn’t about good individuals versus bad individuals. It’s a very well-written show about what happens when you don’t live your own life with your own people.
Clarissa's Blog 
what show are you talking about?
Amanda
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This one:
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you are definitely not discussing a Tucker episode here.
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Sorry, don’t agree with your take at all. Men have no problem with a woman who is not their intellectual equal, it’s pretty much assumed. Also for men sex is very simple, it’s women who complicate it. Skylars priorities are for her children, she nurtures it’s instinctive, Walts priority is for his family, as Gus Fring says, a man provides. For Walt this is a matter of honor, all men understand this. This is a difference between men and women. There was an excellent movie a few years ago called The Last Duel, in it a noble mans wife demanded justice for being raped, the husband agreed as a matter of honor but when she came to realize that this duel might result in her own death as well and deprive her infant son of his mother she regrets her decision. When her husband tells her that what she did was right she replies, a child needs his mother more than a mother needs to be right. Men and Women are different.
Walnut
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I’m not talking about the intellect as much, given that Walt isn’t too smart. He’s good at chemistry but he underperforms IQ-wise which is why his whole life is a flop. You can see his cognitive deficiencies in his incapacity to appreciate the most obvious consequences of his actions. That’s his whole tragedy. He’s a few IQ points short of what is needed to be successful in his field.
But that’s not the issue between him and Skylar. The issue is that she’s emotionally, not intellectually dumb. Where you see a nurturing presence in her I honestly don’t understand. This is a woman who hops into bed with a random dude immediately after giving birth. Who pays zero attention to her baby leaving her with sitters to run around feeling important. I remember myself when my baby was born. Wild horses wouldn’t have been able to drag I away from her. I didn’t write a single word in the first year of her life, let alone leave her to go sleep with some dude. Not that I would ever cheat on my husband at any time. But nurturing? I have no idea where you see that in this shrill, emotionally dumb woman. Maybe you watched a long time ago and forgot the details. We are now rewatching so it’s fresh.
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Walt is a genius thats a given. You know this especially by the exceptionally high praise he receives from Gale who at that point does not even know Walt. What Walt is not is a ruthless “businessman.” Walt is not corrupt, underhanded, treacherous, he’s not even greedy or particularly ambitious up until his diagnosis when he finally breaks bad. Walt describes it as finally being awake but what he means is he is finally awake to how the world unfortunately really works, that nothing succeeds like corruption. Theres a reason why Tesla died broke and it’s certainly not lack of IQ.
Men don’t care if women are emotionally dumb, again, its pretty much assumed. I’ll grant you that the Skylar character is inconsistent but not unrealistic. A woman scorned, in her mind at least.
Walnut
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Not being able to predict very obvious consequences of your actions is a sign of low IQ. Walt’s genius is in cooking meth in a method that even Jesse manages to recreate perfectly after a short period of time.
Skyler easily invents a plausible explanation for Walt’s sudden influx of cash: he’s a gambler. Why didn’t he come up with it himself without staging the moronic naked fugue? How could anybody with a functioning brain think that the fugue would work?
And how about the total incomprehension of the consequences of expanding your drug dealing territory? Dozens of examples of the guy simply being unable to see beyond the first step.
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You’re mistaking recklessness for a lack of intelligence. Remember, Walt is terminal, he will be dead by 52. His whole life he had played it safe and it got him nowhere, not for want of trying or brilliance but because in the real world cheaters prosper, honesty is the worst policy and the bad guys usually win. His risks all paid off and he died with his goals achieved. And a man provides.
Walnut
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“Men have no problem with a woman who is not their intellectual equal”
That’s true if there’s some other common ground. A very smart normie guy might be very happy with a normie woman who’s not his intellectual equal but who shares the same basic normie frame and values. He wont’ be happy with a woman who’s as smart as he is but is a diner goth.
I don’t know the tv show being discussed (saw the first episode years ago and then a few bits and pieces) but there seems to be a fundamental… life attitude mismatch. My vague impression was that his missing X was respect from those around him and his arc was about trying to get it in all the wrong ways while her missing X was… self-worth and she tried to get that in all the wrong ways (just a guess from fragments and comments I’ve read about it).
(missing X is a reference to what a character is trying to get/achieve/find that motivates their arc).
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It’s exactly what I mean by a different sensibility. You don’t have to be book smart to be able to perceive people’s emotional states.
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You have some 2013 posts about Breaking Bad that are interesting in retrospect, because you see it from a new angle now. Then, you were seeing it from a feminist angle and were more sympathetic to the Skylar character than you are now, and you were critical of Cranston’s acting. It’s fascinating to see your evolution here. (I have no particular opinion about the characters, though I did watch the show twice all the way through and am a fan, but not invested in any character very much.) Any way, it would be surprising if you had the same opinion now as 13 years ago!
Jonathan M.
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I had a child since then and things I didn’t pay attention to in Skyler back then look very different. I now know what it feels to be the mother of an infant. Everything falls away. Nothing matters. The baby becomes the center of the universe. I love my brother-in-law but I’d never leave my baby to sit at the hospital for days for him.
As for Cranston, he looked very old and wrinkled to me back then. Now he doesn’t seem that old. Which is definitely a function of my own aging. 😆😆😆
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