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[The Real Abed]

The kelptomaniac stuff was stupid, but the rest was wonderful.

Also I love Fly.

 

[crisdecuba]

Thanks to this thread I went back to the thread where folks were watching Ozymandius. It was fun to revisit the reactions.

 

[Liliana Eileen]

Gus secret best character

 

[Forearm Star]

It's why I gave up on the show after trying to hear out everyone's glowing praise.

I just couldn't push myself past season 1 (maybe season 2)

 

[Cipherr]

Hell, here's a 10-page thread from just over a year ago specifically focused on this sorta shit.

edit: Huh, you're in that thread.

I had forgotten I posted in that thread, but the example I used there is about as accurate as I could paint it.

I really hated how everyone tried to paint not liking Skylar as sexism just because Walt is a bad guy; when characters like Kavanaugh in The Shield were just as hated even though Vick Mackey was a 'bad guy' also.

It's all about how the character was written. I disliked Skylar for the same reasons I disliked Kavanaugh; For a long stretch both were written as obstacles to the protagonist I was pulling/rooting for. Lunatics that can't separate reality from fiction that harassed the actress IRL is a completely different thing, and trying to liken them to one another got old, fast.

 

[Bobby Roberts]

I really hated how everyone tried to paint not liking Skylar as sexism just because Walt is a bad guy; when characters like Kavanaugh in The Shield were just as hated even though Vick Mackey was a 'bad guy' also.

I remember that being a decent point you made, but there also wasn't a lot of complaining about how Kavanaugh "ruined the show" or "dragged stuff down." My perception of his character in that particular arc was that people hated him in the way the show meant for him to be hated (and Whitaker played him very, very well, just as Gunn played Skyler very, very well). I don't know that the show necessarily meant for Skyler to eat all the shit a lot of the fanbase gave her (which prompted Gilligan himself to speak out on that topic and use the term "misogyny" to describe a certain aspect of it). I'm pretty certain (although I wasn't very active in Shield discussions on internet forums at the time it was airing) people weren't using Whitaker's physical/vocal attributes and his race as easy go-tos when criticizing the character, either, where we both know that sorta shit tended to happen quite a bit with Gunn & her voice/gender.

I don't think everyone tried to draw as thick and clear a line between "dislike Skyler" and "sexism," but there were definitely more than a few instances in which it became sort of obvious in the way things were being argued that sexism was playing a part. It's why I was in there talking about strong, good faith arguments separating themselves out from the disingenuous ones trying to deflect/obfuscate the sexism at the root of their problems.

This sorta shit happened a lot in the Ghostbusters threads, too: It wasn't that everyone who disliked Ghostbusters (or even the idea of that reboot) was a sexist. Hell - I'm not a fan of that movie, myself, really. The problems came when people who had their own reasons for disliking Ghostbusters not only made those reasons known (fine) but further tried to assert that the obvious sexism underscoring many of the arguments wasn't really there (not fine) and people calling it out were somehow doing the discussion a disservice overall.

That's the point where most discussions derailed, because it was no longer a conversation about the fiction itself, it became a conversation about whether or not sexism could be observed to exist, and what it might have looked like, and whether you saw what it was you think you really saw. Which sounds like either set-up for, or the beginnings of a good ol' gaslighting session.

Anyway, Skyler isn't written to play like the "good guy" and Anna Gunn didn't play her as someone immediately, simplistically sympathetic. She's got a moral scale and hers tends towards the gray in its own ways. And her choices as an actor can be grating on top of her character being made to act gratingly in response to Walt.

but while I don't know that the majority of people who "hate Skyler" hate her because of ingrained (and possibly unidentified) sexism, I do know that dismissing that aspect out of hand as being unworthy of consideration doesn't make sense, and is probably a little unfair in some ways.

 

[Elegant Weapon]

I completely get rooting for Walt even though he's the devil; mostly because we saw his transformation into that devil but also because rooting for fictional bad guys isn't that crazy. I mean, who doesn't find Nino Brown compelling, terrible as he is(dude used a little girl as a shield)

It really wasn't just Skylar that people hated as they lived vicariously through Walt's descent into the kind of person who does what he wants; Jessie got a lot of hate in later season for not being a cold blooded murder. Like, plenty fans were annoyed when he wanted to quit the game multiple times. People couldn't understand why this formally low level dealer couldn't just be happy as a millionaire murdering high level drug producer.

 

[Bobby Roberts]

Yeah, people turned on Jesse in season 5.

I remember people calling him an "emo bitch" quite a bit. Which was crazy considering the situations he was consistently being put in, especially in Seasons 4 & 5. Like, the fact he would hesitate, react emotionally, cry (god forbid he cry) really, really rubbed some people wrong.

It was weird. "Walt needs to take care of that pissy emo bitch" kinda shit.

The power-fantasy aspects of Breaking Bad were obviously, for some of those viewers, the key (maybe even the only) aspect of the show that appealed to them. Anyone interrupting the forward motion of that got hissed at like an angry kitty.

 

[____]

Gus secret best character

Secret?

 

[Team Filler]

As someone who watched The Shield in its entirety as it aired, my anecdotal experience is that animosity towards Kavanagh was restricted almost entirely towards the character on account of deliberately being written that way, as those of us invested in the show wanted to see Lem and the rest of the strike team persevere against his machinations. Thankfully, I didn't hear of or experience any hate towards the character on account of him being black, though I don't doubt there was some in more disgusting parts of the internet.

I didn't catch Breaking Bad until the series had ended and I was able to binge through to the end, so I didn't particularly have any issues with Skyler (in fact, I regularly found her character quite sympathetic). That said, I could understand how her storyline could wear really thin for some when watching one episode per week and having to wait, similar to how watching seasons 3 and 4 of Arrow as they aired felt like watching the worst stinking pile of trash to ever grace television when in retrospect they probably aren't as bad as that overall.

 

[Lothar]

It's why I gave up on the show after trying to hear out everyone's glowing praise.

I just couldn't push myself past season 1 (maybe season 2)

The Better Call Saul episode of Season 2 is where the show goes from plain good to excellent if you want to ever give it a real try. After that, the end of Season 3 is where it goes from excellent to best of all time.

Saul, Mike, and Gus are introduced in the second half of Season 2. Those characters were so good and popular that there's a successful spinoff with the three of them. Quitting before you get to those characters wouldn't be a smart thing to do.

 

[Doctor Decimate]

I completely get rooting for Walt even though he's the devil; mostly because we saw his transformation into that devil but also because rooting for fictional bad guys isn't that crazy. I mean, who doesn't find Nino Brown compelling, terrible as he is(dude used a little girl as a shield)

It really wasn't just Skylar that people hated as they lived vicariously through Walt's descent into the kind of person who does what he wants; Jessie got a lot of hate in later season for not being a cold blooded murder. Like, plenty fans were annoyed when he wanted to quit the game multiple times. People couldn't understand why this formally low level dealer couldn't just be happy as a millionaire murdering high level drug producer.

The thing I found interesting about the show was the way it kept gradually ratcheting up the extremity of the "you've gone too far" situations for Walt, like the writers wanted to see how far they could get before pretty much everyone jumped ship on his character. It was this process of going:

"Is THIS too much for you to root for?

"No? Well, how about now?

"How about this one?"

 

[Cmerrill]

Jesse's non-stop whining and crying is much worse.

He almost ruined the show for me.

 

[Bobby Roberts]

It took five posts

 

[Poor GRIMES]

It took five posts

skylar was the secret best character smh

 

[blame space]

Leave Jesse alone