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How Anna Gunn’s Performance as Skyler White Changed Television.

Gunn’s performance was not that of an action heroine or a television genius, and it was not meant to be. Skyler carries the weight of Walt’s actions. Plenty of people hated her for it, Walt sometimes included. But Gunn’s performance pushed both Walt and the people who wanted to see him as a hero to increasingly contrived and ludicrous justifications for treating Skyler like she was a worse person than Walt.

Gunn’s drawn face in the last two seasons of “Breaking Bad” might not have brought about the end of the anti-hero era in television. But Gunn’s performance marked the end of a time when the creators of such shows could get away with writing anti-heroes’ wives as flat, cartoonish characters, or when audiences could get away with worshiping difficult men without encountering strong opposition.