Skyler is breaking bad. Big time! What has been symptomatic of Breaking Bad is it’s willingness to break new unconventional grounds with characters. This time in Epsiode 3 of Season 4, I can see through their willingness to remove the limitations placed on the female character. This is just one reason (a big one at that) why I am glued to this TV show.
Skyler is slowly but surely becoming the ‘Boss’ of Walter. In fact, she is running the show as of now. The malicious way she has succeeded in acquiring the Car Wash is intelligent and expert. Walter and even Saul, the lawyer, have been completely out-thought and outdone by Skyler White.
She is officially a tactical mastermind. In Episode 2, “Thirty-Eight Snub,” her plan to buy out Walt’s former employer, Bogdan’s car wash, was met with resistance. She offered Bogdan $879K, to which he ridiculed Skyler with a $20 million clause, simply to spite Walt.
Skyler spends the entirety of Episode 3, “Open House”, devising a plan to wipe Bogdan out, though not in the Gus-and-his-box-cutter way. She finds a neat way to exert some “attitude adjustment” upon Bogdan.
[sws_blockquote_endquote align=”” cite=”” quotestyle=”style03″] A health inspector (comedian Bill Burr) shows up on the car wash’s grounds to inform Bogdan that water seeping off of his property has been merging with contaminants, and that it’ll cost a whopping $200,000 to get a new filtration system. Until he rectifies the problem, the car wash has to shut down. Boggie, infuriated, demands that the inspector cite the exact laws which he’s breaking, and that’s where Skyler checks in. Seated in her car, out of sight and with her baby in the backseat, Skyler reads off the laws—verbatim from an official text—into her phone and directly into the Bluetooth fastened to the inspector’s ear. [/sws_blockquote_endquote]
When Bogdan eventually calls Skyler to negotiate a fee, Skyler successfully talks the car wash’s Romanian owner down to $800K. Walt, highly impressed, pops open a $320 bottle of champagne, which he and Skyler use to toast to her accomplishment. But the ever cautious Skyler worries about the perception of an unemployed man buying an expensive bottle of bubbly for his equally broke wife. She incredibly compares the purchase to Watergate, though Walt calms her down and they begin to “destroy the evidence,” i.e. Drink up.
This episode lays claim to the versatility, depth and breadth that Breaking Bad continues to give its female characters. This shutters the glass ceiling that has since kept a tight lid on the flexibility of the female character in a Crime/Drama. If this Skyler trend continues, I can only be certain that Breaking Bad will become a household name in freeing the female character from the doldrums of parochial characterization.
A nursing mother who carries here newborn in the back seat of her unsuspecting car is a Godmother to watch!
Holy mother of God. I’m in Australia and we DONT GET THIS SHOW DOWN HERE. I adore it and have resisted been a sneaky-pee till now but had to. I KNEW Skylar would come on song in series 4. The boys are letting their testosterone get to them, as boys cant help. Skylar is the smartest mind in the room and would always run the show.
Pleaaaaaaasseeeeeee tell me Saul is still being Saul and ducking in and out of the show?
Saul is still Saul. Still ducking, lol.
But Skyler is the talk of the town right now. Her way of conducting business is stubborn, aggressive, resilient and above all, intelligent. I like the character quite much, in fact, like I said is this review, if this current trend continues, Skyler may just take over the show.
Obviously, Walter is not street smart at all and Skyler may just provide that much needed extra hand on the street that Walt and Jesse needs to outwit Gus, maybe?
Please tell me why Skyler is freaking out about a 320 bottle of champagne when they just spent 800,000 (!) apparently without the need for financing.