Spoilers for Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul below.

So, these are excellent shows. If you have not seen them, I highly encourage you not to read this post! Better Call Saul, especially, is rightfully heralded as one of the best shows of all time.

Please don't let me ruin it for you.

Spoilers for Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul below.

Breaking Bad's "bitch wife": For those who aren't aware: In Breaking Bad, Anna Gunn played Skyler White, Walter White's wife.

Her motivations are sympathetic and actions are reasonable, and she's ultimately right. Anna Gunn's portrayal is perfect.

But misoygnists adopt Walter's rationalizing behavior as rational and only see her as an impediment to the protagonist. The hate Anna Gunn received was monumental and awful.

"I Have A Character Issue" is Anna Gunn's 2013 opinion piece which describes this all. I think-- I'm not going to pay a NYT subscription to read that.

Spoilers for Breaking Bad, for real this time.

Relevant characters:

• Walter White, the main guy who cooks the meth

• Skylar White, the "bitch wife".

• Marie Schrader, Skylar's sister and Walter's sister-in-law. More on her later.

• Hank Schrader, Marie's wife and Walt's brother-in-law. He spends the series hunting "Heisenberg", only to find in the final season that it's Walt.

• Saul Goodman, Walter's lawyer, very involved in making the events of Breaking Bad happen.

Unlike Skylar, Marie... Actually does suck, kind of?

Her crimes are petty, her behavior usually peaks at "annoying", and she doesn't have the intelligence to participate in the high-stakes Machiavellian rigamarole. She's out of the loop.

But she loves the people around her, and other characters in the series are killing children and taking advantage of people with drug addictions. So, she's basically fine.

Spoilers for Better Call Saul, for real this time.

Better Call Saul is a Breaking Bad prequel, with very very brief glimpses into the world post Breaking Bad.

Each season is 10 episodes, except the last season. Season 6 is extended by a few episodes, these ones taking place chronologically after Breaking Bad. These provide closure and context for the events of both Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul, and are some of the best episodes of television.

In the final episodes, Saul is finally apprehended, and is on trial for his crimes.

And finally, Skylar will finally get the screen time she deserves...

Except...

I don’t know. now because it’s 10-plus years later, but by standing up and speaking my piece at the time, I felt like I had done what I needed to do and said what I needed to say and made peace with it in that way. It also felt to me like people were caught up in that particular zeitgeist way back then, and then things evolved to where people understood more. So I don’t know that I would’ve been particularly afraid of [a Better Call Saul cameo], but I don’t know that the writers could ever quite figure out a way to make that happen. The writers also felt so badly. Sometimes, they’d come to me and say, “We’re sorry!” So it’s a weird phenomenon. People love the antihero. They want to be the one saying, “Screw you,” to their boss, and, “I’m going to do what I want.” But Skyler was the only one calling out the lie.

Anna Gunn turned it down. Without Skylar, they wrote for her sister Marie, instead.

Betsy Brandt (Marie's actor) killed it, honestly.

People talk about Breaking Bad being "plot drive" (where the tension comes from seeing how the characters competing motivations are realized), while Better Call Saul is "character driven" (where the tension comes from seeing how different characters develop and interact over time).

I think that dichotomy isn't great! Or even good! But it helps express how I feel. Marie was made for a character driven drama like Better Call Saul, and felt out of place in Breaking Bad.

(It helps that Marie was also a tad flamboyant and wacky. It's a shame she and Saul never got up to shenanigans.)

So, while I would have loved to see Skylar White again, I think both stories were better served by finally giving Marie Schrader he place.

TLDR?

Anna Gunn, understandably, refused to return as Skylar for Better Call Saul because of the threats and abuse she suffered for her performance in Breaking Bad. This is awful.

But, on a good note, Betsy Brandt's character Marie finally got the place she deserved. Her story in Better Call Saul helped to finish her characterization in a way that complements both shows well.

I think Marie is very underappreciated.