Audience misogyny targeted a female character who resisted rather than enabled the male lead

Evidence

Perhaps the most complex and powerful character in the whole series is Walt’s wife, Skyler, played by Anna Gunn. The actor has written of the misogyny she faced from some Breaking Bad fans online as a consequence of playing Skyler: in a piece for the New York Times, she described how the character seemed to have become “a flash point for many people’s feelings about strong, non-submissive, ill-treated women”. This is especially depressing because Skyler is a nuanced character, not at all someone who simply rejects Walt at the earliest opportunity. Even though she deplores Walt’s adventures in crime, it is only at the very end of the series, when Walt’s actions have manifestly brought catastrophe to Skyler’s family, that she definitively breaks with him. Until then she struggles, impossibly but heroically, to reconcile her roles as wife, mother and responsible citizen. — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 698

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Goth women’s power comes from staging the refusal to be what male desire wants — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 1036; Female agency is expected but punished in leadership roles

Broader Connections

• Female agency is expected but punished in leadership roles #expands (0.80)
• Goth women’s power comes from staging the refusal to be what male desire wants #exemplifies (0.75) — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1036