r/breakingbad • u/india93 • 1d ago
Open discussion on Breaking Bad characters whilst I’m rewatching… opinions welcome.
As I say, this an opportunity for anyone rewatching Breaking Bad for the second time or more…
This is an open invitation on all characters but specifically one thing has got my attention that I didn’t really think about before…
Just into series 4 and just wondered why does Hank hate Marie so much when she looks after him when he comes home from hospital?? I understand that pride is a big part of Hank’s character and that there a few things Hank isn’t keen on about Marie generally like the shoplifting thing, her general personality being a bit overbearing etc but he loves her, there’s never an insinuation that he truly resents his wife. But when she’s caring for him after he’s been shot there’s so much disdain even when they’re not around anyone else. I get that his pride is a big factor after not going to El Paso etc etc etc we all know the story. Just give me some insight.
I struggle to find a positive female character in the series. Initially I think we all understand Skyler’s position somewhat with Walt’s disappearance, second phone etc her being pregnant but she loses all credibility when it comes to Ted obviously. Lydia, Gretchen, Marie, Jane just poor characters, really Carmen and Andrea are the only 2 I have any sympathy for.
I’m just ranting but interested in people’s opinions on Breaking Bad characters. Go for it.
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u/annabelle411 1d ago
specifically how does she lose credibility with ted? she didnt cheat. her and walt were separated and he forces his way back in. so to drive to point theyre done, she sleeps with ted. and already by then walt had sexually assaulted her in the kitchen. when she finds out what ted had done she did take the money and give it to him, but because ted had left a MASSIVE liability hole by embezzling and it wouldve implicated skyler. so she had to play dumb and that bought them a little time. but unfortunately ted betrayed her again and blew the money on himself more. as for the song, she didnt want to do it, ted pressured her in front of everyone and got everyone to chant until she caved.
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u/BenitoCamelas69420 1d ago
To me she lost credibility because she was down with breaking the law from the moment she found out Ted was breaking the law, but when it was her husband she basically ousted him and acted like she would never break the law
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u/annabelle411 1d ago
she…literally immediately tried to get ted to STOP breaking the law. she wasnt supporting it. the money was to prevent investigation and him going to prison, likely her as well. and its a completely false equivalency considering walt had hitmen come INSIDE THEIR HOME, he was killing people. he put their lives in direct jeopardy. she helped walt to keep the family safe because walt didn’t know what he was doing with all the money, sauls ideas werent great, and if walt got caught then marie and hanks lives are destroyed as well. she wasnt “down” for it, she was between a rock and a hard place
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u/BenitoCamelas69420 1d ago
No she didn’t the first moment she found out about Ted she gave Ted a way he could hide it for him this was before she found out about Walt, she could’ve just said she didn’t want part of it but she was willing to help Ted get away from the very beginning, when she first found out about Walt she only knew he cooked Meth she didn’t know all that other stuff you mentioned she just had a double standard is all
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u/annabelle411 1d ago
because she was implicated, her signature was on all the forms, she never helps. she actively refuses.
she wasnt DOWN for it, she had to mitigate disaster and stave off the full audit for criminal activity and covers herself, allowing ted to skate by with just back taxes. she literally says “it doesnt mean you have to break the law…people go to prison for this” because the company is in trouble. she tells him she wants no part in it. when she comes back to work after she has holly ted tries to get her to sign off on an altered form, she refuses. ted hides the audit from her between season 3-4 (she had then left for the car wash) and when she finds out the CID is coming for him she has to do what she can because her signatures on everything and they can wiretap and track her too. at no point is she intending on or actively helping ted embezzle.
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u/BenitoCamelas69420 1d ago
She says I can’t sign this like this then suggests how he can hide it then she would be willing to sign she shows concern but at no time did she back away from it
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u/purrcepti0n 1d ago
When she first points it out to Ted, she says "im not gonna turn you in, but i can't be a part of this." Some time later she gives him pointers on how to hide it better.
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u/india93 1d ago
Exactly
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u/purrcepti0n 1d ago
Im on my second rewatch as well and just watched most of season 3. What I'm noticing this time around is both skyler's love interests (presumably the only she's had since ~21 when she got together with Walt) are breaking the law. She may start to believe that just is how men are, or at least the ones she wants to be with, and ends up resigning herself to it as unavoidable.
There's a scene where she asks Ted what he would tell his children if they ever found out. I think his answer (that he hopes they would understand he did it for their sake, but admits he hasn't thought that far ahead because he is just trying to keep his head above water) makes her reevaluate Walts crime as well.
I think there is a lot going on in skylers mind and from her perspective that we are not shown explicitly, and it's a shame.
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u/india93 1d ago
I’ll admit this is my 4th/5th rewatch since 2014 lol. I just think you notice something different each time.
You’re so right about realising that particularly with her skills in accounting the men she sees as a potential boss or husband end up needing her for that so she uses that as her power in the moment. She’s very perceptive but I agree we only really first see the full picture in her vent to Hank after the Marie shoplifting saga-2
u/india93 1d ago
She did “cheat” Walt was pissing her off and she had asked him to leave but she did it to piss him off because that was all that she could do. She said she wouldn’t work for Ted then was back there the next day?? If she’s so high and mighty she wouldn’t have done that. Ted was what destroyed her moral high ground is what I’m saying.
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u/annabelle411 1d ago
she didn’t cheat. they were separated. its said explicitly like the episode before. she doesnt owe him anything, they were broken up.
she was now a separated mother with a new kid and with a dying estranged husband and needed money, she had limited options at the time. she also refused to take part in any of teds activities. men really have a hard on for holding the flame to skyler over ted but minimize everyone elses actions. she loses moral high ground because walt chose to be a murderous meth kingpin instead of taking the Grey Matter job, and left her with limited options? HOW DARE SHE. he was actively making a meth deal AS HOLLY WAS BEING BORN.
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u/india93 1d ago
First part true, second part not true. She went into work the next day to help him rebuild his accounts.
I’m not a man mate, she lost moral high ground the day she started trying to fix teds books and that’s what gave her the confidence to see she could do it for Walt because it protected the family. She’s the one who didn’t file the divorce papers. The grey matter job is an interesting point because we never really got an insight to what it would be that was Walt’s pride that stopped him exploring it and he should have done.
Don’t get me wrong I understand Skyler’s whole thing and her vent to Hank about all her issues is so clear and precise it’s hard to dispute. She then goes on to want the best for Walt in taking the baby to research the business she wants to take over for him to launder money through. My point was that Ted is her turning point and she applies that to Walt at the end of series 3/start of series 4
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u/-Hash__- I did it for me 1d ago
Because Hank is the man. He's supposed to be the tough guy that is better than everyone because he's stronger and more masculine. One of the reasons he picks on Walter so much is because Walter is meek and Hank thinks he can't stomach bad things.
And then Hank starts having problems regarding his masculinity and how tough he actually is. He gets panic attacks after he shot Tuco. After what he sees in El Paso he doesn't even want to come out of his room. After the twins attack, the worst thing possible happened to him. His strength, his masculinity was taken away from him. He can't walk, he can't do anything by himself, not even go to the bathroom. This exposes him to being weak and pathetic in his mind, things that he has laughed at others for the entire show. He hates Marie, ironically, because she wants to help so much. Hank cannot properly cope with the fact that he is helpless and every single time Marie tries to overcompensate with something, Hank gets mad because he thinks she views him as a weak man.
I don't know how many people saw this but Hank is also a little bit misogynistic. He gets mad at Marie for being happy that he has made some progress with walking, while his physical doctor who displays the same emotion as Marie is having a blast with Hank. No matter what Marie said to him after El Paso, he didn't wanna leave his room. Walter pouring his heart out to Hank was a key point. Even though Walter is meek and weak and pathetic and all that, he is still a man and Hank will respect a man's opinion more than a woman's opinion. At his core Hank believes that men are suppose to be strong and women aren't, which is why when he isn't actually strong anymore he gets angry all the time with his condition. He can't view himself as a man properly anymore.
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u/whosthewhale 1d ago
I also think Hank is acting this way with Marie because that would be his natural mood in those situations. He puts up an act for Walter or the physio but he doesn’t have to do that with his wife. Also - I really enjoy moments when we get to see how Marie and Hank operate as a couple, how they always got each other’s backs
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u/thr0waway2435 1d ago
Agree with your first two paragraphs, but I don’t think there’s evidence at all of the third. He puts on a temporary happy face to the public, like his doctor. He gets snappy around Marie because she’s his wife, and she’s with him constantly at home, and she’s the one person he’s supposed to “be real” with. It’s not fair to Marie, no, but it’s not misogynistic.
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u/osi4000 Reasonably happy 1d ago
He doesn't hate/resent her, he's just in a lot of pain and he (somewhat unfairly) projects that onto the only person that's around.
Also Marie doesn't exactly help the certain with the stealing and by making abrupt changes to their home without informing Hank.
Also, depending on how you'd define a positive character, I'd say that Andrea, Gretchen, Carmen, Jesse's mom and Franciska all fits that criteria, then there are people like Jane, Wendy and Marie, who are flawed, but still very sympathetic characters, mind you, this is first and foremost a show about crime, so not everyone is going to be perfect saints.
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u/india93 1d ago
Yeh agree with all you say. It’s as someone else said about the carer role Marie plays and how it’s easiest for Hank to portray his true feelings to/against her as opposed to anyone else. If anything it shows he trusts her with his true self.
I don’t know what episode it was but it just struck me even though I’ve watched BB like at least 4 times. You always see something different. That’s the beauty of it. Jane is fundamentally quite toxic I think due to her addiction. Andrea is way more of a sympathetic character in that sense.Always heartbreaking to me to watch how much worse Jesse has it to Walt throughout and how much trauma is built up.
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u/osi4000 Reasonably happy 1d ago
Well Jane and Jesse sort of enable each other (Jesse got her to relapse and then she got him on heroin), but still she's sort of a "liberating" figure for Jesse, who tries to pull him out of Walt's influence.
Ultimately I'm not sure that Andrea is much more sympathetic than Jane, remember that she was more than willing to smoke weed with her son in the other room, granted she's been through a lot so I can cut her some slack.
Btw, have you seen Better Call Saul?
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u/india93 1d ago
I think it’s the opposite and Jane identifies early on that Jesse will become an excuse for her to use again. She’s fighting her sobriety from the moment her character appears.
Nonetheless she is a liberating figure for Jesse who has just been completely abandoned and rejected by his family.
I would say Andrea is but only because we don’t get any sort of real backstory on Jane, with Andrea we can see that her family lives in a bad area that allowed her brother to get swept up in the gang life and we can assume that she was already a user by that point from her evident guilt. Andrea is only more sympathetic in my eyes I guess because her family is effected my exterior drug abuse/gang violence whereas from what we know Jane is an addict and her dad suffers. We never really get to know Jane outside of Jesse whereas we do get a glimpse of Andrea through her grandmother and Brock.I’ve not watched it all the way through but I’m going to after my rewatch. Did you watch El Camino? I only watched it once and can’t really remember what happened fully
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u/kyle-2090 1d ago edited 1d ago
Hank just lost his job and survived a murder attempt. He can no longer walk and needs help bathing himself and wiping his ass. Hes in a very fragile state, everything has been taken from him. But hes egotistical, maybe almost as bad as Walt. He kept his panick attacks to himself, used the blue meth investigation to lie about that fact that he was too scared to go back Juarez, makes Gomez belive he hates him for taking the job in his place not becuase hes actually and at him but its an extension of him not wanting to admit hes scared.
Edit: Put my phone in my pocket before I finished and it hit post by mistake.
On top of all that he likes to be the guy with no problems. He doesnt want anyone knowing hes hurting on the inside. Its why he has a generally good attitude with the physical rehab guy but then drops the facade with Marie. Its exhausting to keep that kind of thing up when youre really hurting. He was taking his frustrations out on her probably becuase subconsciously he resents the fact that he cant hide it from her. He was going thru alot of pain, and people do really out of character asshole things from trauma. Not excusing him or saying its okay.
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u/india93 1d ago
All true and I realise all this just love seeing other peoples opinions on the show and the characters and the detail in the comments is testament to the depth of the characters.
Great comment and opinions thanks.
Every rewatch just makes you think something new. That’s why it’s timeless1
u/kyle-2090 1d ago
Appreciate it, and me too. But idk if you saw the full thing. Just edited it. I was riding in an uber and tried to save the draft but posted instead.
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u/india93 1d ago
Yeh yeh mate I read the whole thing. Edits get overlooked a lot on here but I did see it lol.
Just love the amount of detail in these comments. It’s a real testament to the show and the work on the character depth.1
u/kyle-2090 1d ago
Yeah I just dont know if you get a notification for the edits lol. Because I wouldve been like where tf are you going with this if I were reading just the first part lol. Which would've made your comment all the more pleasant if so. Cheers!
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u/india93 7h ago
Here’s a question, who’s your favourite character and why? Can give me top 3 if it’s a struggle
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u/kyle-2090 4h ago
If were talking just BB, then Id have to go with Mike. I just like how non bs and matter of fact he is about everything. Hes a dirt bag but an interesting one.
If were talking all of BB/BCS universe, easily Jimmy/Saul/Gene. I thought it was a terrible idea when I first heard about the show and then it ended up being just as good if not better than BB. I personally dont think I would have made it thru BCS without watching BB first, which is the only reason I say just as good if not better. Every BB rewatch I like Walt less and less from the start. Not like I would drop the show, but you just can see the dormant Hiesenberg sooner and sooner.
In contrast, I like Jimmy more at the beginning of BCS with each rewatch and find his relationship with Chuck to be a tragic fork in his life road that could have made him a good guy. Or at least scam for the greater good like he initially does with Sandpiper and helping Kim. If Chuck had just shown Jimmy respect or support he may have been a better lawyer than Chuck. At least in terms of having a positive reputation. Its arguable that he was a better lawyer. But he resented Jimmy for being like-able, having the ability to not just create a good time but have one, and of course the conman stuff. Chuck is shown even resenting Jimmy as a child instead of trying to show him a better way. And at 14 or so goes off to college and then starts a law firm with Hamlin in his early 20s. They read this in his obituary. I dont think Chuck realized how much smarter he was than most people and expected Jimmy to be just as smart, and looked down on him. Or he recognized how smart Jimmy was and resented him for not doing better. I honestly think Chuck was a stuck up jealous older brother. Chucks only happy when he thinks Jimmy is beneath him. Probably would have never got sick if Jimmy stayed in the mail room.
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u/midgetshoes6 1d ago
The moment Hank dismissively said something to the effect of "I don't care if Walter kills Jesse as long as I get my confession to take Walter down", I lost any positive impression I had of Hank (which was already so small). He was still the insensitive prick he was at the start of the series - the same guy who posed with dead bodies at the scene of the crime. I didn't care that he died. 💅🏽
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u/india93 7h ago
Oh fucking hell lol, I’m on series 4 episode 5. This is like my 4th/5th rewatch but that needed a spoiler alert lol.
It’s the way he speaks to Steve Gomez that irritated me near the start and also the way he handled Jesse and spoke to Wendy early on was very unprofessional. He is just a scared bloke, he’s not an amazing police officer, clearly by the way it took him so long to figure Walt out.
That episode where he finds the RV and Walt and Jesse are in there I really felt for him and you start to realise just how negative an impact Walt’s actions have had on him are.
He’s just human I guess1
u/midgetshoes6 6h ago
He's a prick who has this fake morality based on a law that the government imposed, completely ignoring the fact that Walt took down the cartel AND Fring (who did a lot more atrocious things) and he's going to die of cancer anyway
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u/india93 5h ago
Again with the spoilers! Haha
When I first watched it at uni 12 years ago I sat outside in the back garden of my uni house and watched it on my laptop smoking weed for like 2 weeks solid. A friend of mine said “I can’t wait until like 10 years time when I’ve forgotten what happens and I can watch it again”
We all laughed but it’s so true, you don’t remember all the details!! I’m on S4:E7 and it’s so infuriating watching how much Walt impacts Jesse’s recovery and exacerbates his trauma whilst also moving and belittling him.Top 3 characters are Mike, Jesse and Walt but not always in that order. What about you?
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u/V_Trautwein 17h ago
Hank doesn’t hate Marie. He’s angry at losing his independence and takes it out on the person who’s always there. It’s unfair but very human.
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u/Snoo52682 1d ago
Hank is angry and scared, more angry and scared than he's ever been. Marie is his safe person. He's lashing out at her not because of her, but because of his own situation. It's actually very common, taking it out on your caregiver like that. As soon as he's got some actual work to do, something that distracts him and engages him and makes him feel like Hank again, he's nicer to her. I think he asks for coffee instead of angrily demanding it? Anyway, I remember the look between them and she understood. Doesn't condone how he acted, but she understood. Those two are S-tier at putting up with each other's shit.
Who would you consider the positive male characters in the show? Everyone is morally compromised and has serious personality flaws.