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Comment by yamtaddle | Hacker News Reader

See also: Fight Club.

Or The Wolf of Wall Street.

Lots of folks just seem to get a vibe from what they watch, and that forms their entire view of what they've seen. The actual plot? What the characters do? Nope, all vibe.

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Yeah, people tend to misunderstand the points of those movies, even if the message is painted so thick, it feels impossible to miss, like in Fight Club.

The movie satirizes the entire premise, the narrator, Tyler, and their club at every possible step. The whole thing about how they are all "unique and different from the sheep", all while they end up shaving their heads, wearing the exact same clothing, and getting rid of their names to just serve Tyler as faceless "soldiers" felt like such a blatant mockery.

And yet, despite that, it fell on deaf years for many people.

A certain subset of viewers envy Leonardo's character -- hot wife, sycophant employees, yacht, Lambo, etc -- but the film never presents him as admirable or even talented (except at ripping people off). A little like the book Liar's Poker back in the 80s -- Michael Lewis (sort of) intended it as an expose of the toxicity, absurdity, and excess of Wall Street. But the book was so entertaining, it actually made it sound like the greatest place anyone would ever want to work. Having enough money to bet $10 million on one hand, talking shit about Equities in Dallas, and of course, becoming known as a Big Swinging Dick.

Fight Club is a bit more subtle, it doesn't really renounce (or endorse) anything, but its main character is (spoiler) obviously seriously mentally ill with two entirely distinct personas.

Walter White comes to mind, too. The creator was aghast at how much people _liked_ Walter and gave Skylar shit.

I can say, upon watching the series a 2nd (and 3rd!) time, I definitely came to dislike Walter.

Walt at least starts out with noble sounding goals motivated by pride. The show lets the mask fall so slowly on what he really is the viewer will probably have a hard time letting go of the initial appearance, especially if you identified with it personally. But even half way through the show you'd have to be deluding yourself if you still thought he was a good person, and by the end he's explicit about what a monster he always actually was.

To be fair, Walter indeed becomes one of the worst human beings (if not the worst) on the show by the end of it, in terms of morality and just in general. But he is entertaining to watch, even though at times it is frustrating.

Skyler isn't really a terrible person at all (the whole petty thing with Ted aside, which is really minor and understandable in the context). But I would be lying if I said she wasn't extremely annoying and frustrating to watch (which imo speaks well about the writing on the show).

I think it's tough to write characters who spend a really long time knowing far less than the audience does, even if they're mostly behaving very reasonably (generously, even) considering what they do know, and not have them become annoying. Especially when they get as much screen time as she did.

Which, of course, can also be blamed on the writers. No one made them write it like that.

Oh, let me clarify, I didn't mean that Skyler being written as an annoying character is necessarily a flaw. I don't know if it was intentional, but to me it feels like it works well within the story, and makes it feel more real to how real life often works out.

There are plenty of all around good people in real life who just happen to be annoying to interact with in certain contexts. That's just the reality of life, and imo the show executed it well.

To add, I found Marie to be written annoyingly as well, but in a very different way from Skyler, which further indicates that it was somewhat of a deliberate choice. Despite me finding both of them being frustrating to watch interactions with, I would say they were written well. And no, I don't have some bias against women in the show. One of my favorite, in all aspects, characters from the Breaking Bad universe is Kim Wexler from Better Call Saul spin-off, and by far.

I mean, one might take the couple most prominent women in the show being annoying on the one hand and frustratingly bone-headed on the other (Marie) as bias or misogyny... except that nearly all the guys are monsters, or worthless, or are also annoying (sometimes all three). I think it's just a show where almost no-one's good, all the way, entirely, or has always psychologically got it together. Even Hank gets pathetically sorry for himself and starts wasting money on his weird clearly-coping-for-something (ahem, PTSD, among other things probably) rock collecting (well, rock buying) "hobby"—except, I've seen people behave almost exactly that same way in real life! Its characters are human, often such that it's hard to fully like them, just as it can be hard to like most people in real life without some familial or long-running friend bond to get you over their quirks and weaknesses.

... still, there's a lot of time in those first couple seasons in particular when, to the viewer, Skyler kinda just comes off as a clueless nag, even when she's actually behaving reasonably, just because of how the show's presented. "Skyler, you don't get what he's dealing with, just back off!" you want to yell at the screen—then, if you think for a second, you remember he's dissolving bodies in bathtubs and living a secret life and lying to everyone and putting everyone around him in mortal danger and all kinds of messed-up shit, all because he couldn't swallow his pride just once for the sake of his family, so maaaaaybe we should go easier on her. But the presentation, the writing—it does tend to raise such ill thoughts of Skyler to begin with.

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