Breaking Bad and Women

First of all, I’m not here to slag off Breaking Bad – it’s one of the best TV programmes ever made. The acting is phenomenal, the writing is brilliant, the storylines are always engaging, and the characters are brilliantly thought-out and developed. There’s a problem, though – the women. Let’s check out the female characters in the show: there’s Walter’s wife, Skyler, who initially appears to be a solid, dependable person, not to mention extremely likeable, but gradually deteriorates into a neurotic mess; there’s Skyler’s sister, Marie, whose heart is in the right place but who is shrill, nagging and, in the words of her husband, “not exactly an example of perfect mental health; there’s Jesse’s landlady/girlfriend Jane, who originally appears to be a clean-cut, trustworthy recovering drug addict, but who backslides (with Jesse’s assistance) and leads Jesse into a spiral of drugs and self-destruction, culminating in the blackmail of Walter, following which she overdoses. Finally, there’s Gus’ old methylamine provider, whom we meet in season five – she’s a complete mess who gets several people killed through her paranoia and instability. Are you seeing a pattern here?

The word “hysteria” derives from the Greek word “hystera,” meaning uterus. It comes from the belief that mental instability in women is caused by the womb moving around in the body. In Breaking Bad, every major female character is hysterical. That’s not an exaggeration – literally every single one is mentally unstable. The male characters have their fair share of problems, but none of them are quivering wrecks like Skyler. Mike never breaks down, Walter just becomes steadily more aggressive, Jesse has serious wobbles but always gets back on his feet, Gus is a stone-cold badass who it’s impossible to imagine on a psychiatrist’s couch – the list goes on.

To clarify, I’m not saying that the writers of Breaking Bad are misogynists, but there is a misogynist undercurrent present in the presentation of women in the programme. Its always annoying when a TV programme falls back on stale clichés, but especially so when the clichés are sexist, and especially especially when the programme in question is something like Breaking Bad, which is never clichéd in any other way.