![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
canyonwalkerBreaking Bad episode S5E4 entitled "Fifty -One" marks one year of time in the story. The first episode in the series opened with Walt celebrating his 50th birthday and wondering what meaning his life had. A few days later he got a terminal cancer diagnosis that sent him spiraling. It wasn't just a midlife crisis that amplified his questions about meaning... it was also his terror and considering that there's no way he could afford the costs of treatment on a meager teacher's salary and limited health care benefits. (Yes, foreign readers, people being bankrupted by medical bills is a real and not-uncommon thing here in the US. Though our health care system is still the envy of the world, a lot of my fellow countrymen will assure you with completely unearned confidence.) To find both meaning and money, Walt turned to a life of crime.
The fact that it's 4 years later in viewer time but only 1 year later in the story is a bit odd. Serial show writers typically align their stories with real-world time. It helps things flow better for viewers and, if nothing else, ages the characters as the actors portraying them grow older, avoiding believability conflicts. Though that's more important in shows featuring younger adults and kids, not the primarily middle-age cast of Breaking Bad.
A year after Walt suffered a midlife crisis, it's Skyler's turn. But her crisis is one of people's choices, Walt's and hers; not one of externalities, like cancer. She is scared of the danger that Walt's criminal life bring to her family: that someone looking for revenge or leverage against him might harm her or their kids. And though she doesn't say it, she's also scared of the willing participant in crime she's become. If the cops ever catch her for laundering drug money, she'll go to prison, lose her kids, and have nothing left when she gets out. So at Walt's small and uncomfortable 51st birthday party, Skyler drops into the swimming pool and tries to drown herself.
It's almost too bad Walt jumps in to save her.
I say it's almost too bad because Skyler is not a good person herself. She sees herself as Walt's victim— his "hostage", she calls herself when confronting him— but really she's his enabler. His shrewish enabler. Walt's on the highway to hell, and she's going along for the ride— not to try with any meaningful effect to stop him, but only to whine at him about his driving.
The fact that it's 4 years later in viewer time but only 1 year later in the story is a bit odd. Serial show writers typically align their stories with real-world time. It helps things flow better for viewers and, if nothing else, ages the characters as the actors portraying them grow older, avoiding believability conflicts. Though that's more important in shows featuring younger adults and kids, not the primarily middle-age cast of Breaking Bad.
A year after Walt suffered a midlife crisis, it's Skyler's turn. But her crisis is one of people's choices, Walt's and hers; not one of externalities, like cancer. She is scared of the danger that Walt's criminal life bring to her family: that someone looking for revenge or leverage against him might harm her or their kids. And though she doesn't say it, she's also scared of the willing participant in crime she's become. If the cops ever catch her for laundering drug money, she'll go to prison, lose her kids, and have nothing left when she gets out. So at Walt's small and uncomfortable 51st birthday party, Skyler drops into the swimming pool and tries to drown herself.
It's almost too bad Walt jumps in to save her.
I say it's almost too bad because Skyler is not a good person herself. She sees herself as Walt's victim— his "hostage", she calls herself when confronting him— but really she's his enabler. His shrewish enabler. Walt's on the highway to hell, and she's going along for the ride— not to try with any meaningful effect to stop him, but only to whine at him about his driving.
