It’s inevitable that acting roles bleed into the public perceptions of the actors themselves. After years of seeing Gillian Anderson on The X-Files (serious and tough), I caught her on Leno. There she came across as giggly, kind of shy, and a little obsessed with her cats. I was struck by how dumb it was for me to expect her to be like her character.
People are personally targeting Anna Gunn? I hope that kid who plays Joffrey Baratheon is hiding in an underground bunker.
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I don’t think you have to be an asshole to want Walt to win. He starts out as an every-man that we can all relate to. He’s in a stable. ho-hum position in life where he isn’t living up to this full potential and he has regrets of not doing more with his life. The idea of leaving something for his family after his death is a noble one. Even as his character progresses, we still remember where he started from and I think we still see Walt as this earlier version of himself.
As Walt spiraled down, we followed him. But let’s be honest, many of us want to be “that guy”. We want to be the bad ass people don’t fuck with. We want to be able to tell the social norms to fuck off and play the bad guy sometimes. Why do you think the 501st is so huge?
You can also sort of rationalize his behavior in that most of the people harmed by him, directly or indirectly, were not “good” people. Jessie’s girlfriend’s kid and the boy Todd shot are two “innocents” I can think of. Everyone else had it coming. Mike was not a “nice” guy. The guy was a hired killer. He may have showed glimpses of compassion, but he slept just fine at night.
Speaking of Todd, the creepy thing about him is he looks like a Boy Scout or maybe a 4-H kid showing off a prized calf. But he is one of the most cold blooded characters on the show.
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I’ve not seen a single episode of Breaking Bad yet, so sticks fingers in eyes (it’s a forum tree, not video) “lalalalalalalalalala”!
My problem is with Law & Order UK. It’s only been two episodes into the new season, and already I’m hating the fuck out of the character Kate Barker (Georgia Taylor in real life).
At first Xeni had me a little worried, “Am I really having issues with a strong, nonsubmissive, ill-treated woman?”, and I had to think hard about what it was that I disliked about her. Then I remembered that she (the character, not the actor) is an English solicitor(?) who totally thinks it’s okay to snoop into other people’s cellphones. Yup, can’t stand her.
Anna Gunn should probably stop reading what trolls have to say about her character or anything else for that matter. It’s a fruitless waste of time.
I just watched the first 5 episodes because my partner’s never seen the show.
You’re wrong. She’s not contemptuous of Walt, just freaked out by his weird, sketchy, withholding, angry behavior. They have a pretty typical neglected, disconnected, distracted by day to day crap, middle-aged marriage that both of them are a little checked out of, but she’s got the burden of all the day to day stuff that Walt just totally ignores. And once he turns down the job with Grey Matter and attacks her for letting his friend know that he’s sick? Screw Walt.
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I’ve heard many a celebrity say that googling ones own name is a path to madness.
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Kind of a given though…
I think you are projecting your later knowledge of Walt’s development onto the scene I referenced.
The moment I mean was 14 minutes into the pilot, chronologically before Walt collapsed at the car wash, before he was diagnosed, before he went on the ride-along and saw Jesse’s lab.
Certainly the scene of him crashing the RV in the flash forward was established, and Walt himself had preexisting personality issues that are hinted at in the back story with Gretchen. But at that moment, we in the audience had seen only the beaten-down weakness of Walt, and that moment was part of it.
A pity-fuck would have been a monument of dignity compared to that.
yes jimh, I’m with you and Gilligan. Its disgusting and stupid and very very misogynist. As one of the commenters to her piece in the Times put it: these aren’t exactly the best and brightest throwing around all the hate. But it does amaze me how hateful people can get. I have to think its their own horrible insecurities they are giving voice to: perhaps they hate their own tendencies to be a doormat; perhaps they feel weak and incapable of her character’s strength. I mean damn, I still know people who freak out when my wife gets mad at me for doing something stupid – they’re like, damn she’s harsh! And I’m like, but I really fucked that up and her reaction was just a bit of anger, what’s the big deal? It seems to me that some people, male or female, have a much harder time coping with anger or strength from a woman than from a man.
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Maybe Gunn will become a beloved figure of geek culture in the future. After all, everbody hated the character of Wesley Crusher back in the day but Whil Wheaton seems to have a good thing going these days…
I think you’re right about Hank/the DEA catching up to Walt. But I still remember the last time they used flashforwards like this, and it was a total red herring. My latest pie in the sky theory (ie, my “if they were totally fucking with us, this is what might be what’s REALLY happening” theory) is that those flashforwards are actually for Walt coming back to take care of Todd and his uncle and their gang, for some reason. Walt seems to have very successfully disappeared himself and started over. Why is he coming back? And why would he need that huge gun to deal with Hank and the DEA? I am thinking Todd and his uncle and their gang have kidnapped Jesse, because they’re still not able to cook to the quality level of Walt/Jesse, and the flashforwards are actually going to be showing us Walt’s redemption, where he comes back to save Jesse even though he’s managed to start over with a new identity and is, in theory, completely safe.
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He has always had a strong impulse to look out for Jesse’s safety. It is the redeeming character trait.
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If I google my name IRL. it shows a line of products specifically for gay men. I just make a joke of it at parties and stuff.
Funny, if I google mine, it comes full circle:
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Yeah, I think there must be something pretty badly wrong with me, because I don’t understand what all these people are talking about when they call Walter a sociopathic amoral monster and such. Sure, he’s made some questionable decisions and done some fucked up stuff, but he didn’t kill that kid by the train, and he didn’t seem real happy about it happening. What’s he supposed to do, sacrifice everything he’s worked for in a futile attempt to bring a dead kid back to life through the sheer power of his moral conversion?
While taking it out on Anna Gunn is clearly insanely inappropriate, I don’t think people dislike Skylar for being a strong woman. We dislike her because she’s been constantly, coldly unpleasant since Season 1, and righteously hypocritical besides. I would dislike her just as much if she were a man. Off the top of my head I can’t think of another character on the show I would less want to interact with socially — Fring, Hank, and Jesse’s idiot pals included. The Salamancas, I guess.
Maybe, maybe not. Robert Kazinsky, who played Warlow on True Blood recently (why am I still watching that crap?) had a much hated character on Eastenders.
“In England I’d be at dinner and they’d throw bread rolls at me. I hope that doesn’t happen here.”
He had 10 witnesses killed in a 2 minute period, just to keep himself from going to jail. And that’s just the first thing that popped into my head.
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Yeah and all of them were tied into the drug trade. Hardly choir boys.
What about Brock? The Lily of the Vally? He poisoned that kid.
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