We may conjecture that she opposes Walter because he has acted in ways that affect the entire family without having consulted her and, as such, unilaterally has altered the family’s fundamental operations, practices, beliefs, and values. We can suppose that she does not approve of Walter’s drug involvement on moral grounds, as well as because they are illegal. And certainly we can surmise that Skyler is in conflict with Walter’s choices because they endanger not solely himself but the entire family, for example, as Gus’ threats of physical harm or Saul’s explanation of the economic risk make evident.
Ultimately, Skyler manages to recoup some power later in the episode “I. F. T.,” if only temporarily. The turning point occurs when, at work, she resolves to have sex with her boss, Ted (Christopher Cousins). Approaching Ted in the photocopy room, she kisses him, then asks the divorced Ted if his children are at home with him. This scene then immediately cuts to Skyler returning home later that night. None of the sexual encounter between Skyler and Ted is shown. For, the point of her ‘extra-marital’ affair, in a situation in which the couple disputes whether their marriage remains intact or not, does not rest with the act of having sex with Ted. Therefore, their sexual encounter is treated in a narratively expedient manner, implied not visualized. Rather, the significance of the event resides in the emotional impact it has on Walter when Skyler tells him. The motivation for and importance of Skyler’s affair with her boss lies not in the physical action but in her ability to affect her husband.
Thus, she returns home that evening to find Walter reveling in his domesticity, cooking a family dinner for the waiting Walter Jr. and his friend Louis (Caleb Jones). Wearing an apron, Walter calls Skyler into the kitchen where, while preparing a salad, he pretends family normality as he asks Skyler how her day was and chatters away about inviting Walter Jr.’s friend to stay for dinner. He also tells her that he feels better about their talk that morning—although she was not given the opportunity to speak—concerning the drug money and his motivations for earning it.
Skyler remains silent, simply staring at Walter from the doorway as he cheerily prattles away until, finally, she approaches him, picks up the finished salad, looks him directly in the eye, and utters a mere three words: “I fucked Ted,” the I. F. T. of the episode’s title. Now their positions are reversed as Skyler takes the salad into the dining room and calls the two teenagers in to dinner, her turn to chat in a normal family manner while Walter remains stunned and speechless in the kitchen, leaving him as the spouse who feels alienated in his claimed home, as the episode ends.
Skyler’s hard-won victory provides her with some measure of feeling she retains control over her own life, however fleeting that sensibility. Walter has prevented Skyler from voicing her own position or has failed to actually listen to her when she does. By having sex with Ted, Skyler has managed to command Walter’s attention, making her presence felt. Initially, her act of having sex with Ted may seem disconnected from the core of the couple’s conflict, concerning Walter’s drug-related activities. On further reflection, however, we can see that Skyler also stakes her claim on the rights and responsibilities involved in marriage and family.
Walter conceives of Skyler’s objections as existing only in the means he has taken to reach his end goal—providing financially for the family. He cannot comprehend that she could object to the end he has achieved. For this reason, Walter remains firmly convinced that his wife will accept his behavior once she has heard his viewpoint, constituting why he has done what he has done. Yet Walter’s end goal, in addition to his means, is precisely that to which Skyler takes exception. For, the couple contest different meanings of what it is to ‘protect’ or ‘take care’ of the family; indeed, of what ‘loving’ one’s family means. Walter situates his role in taking care of the family in financial terms. In contrast, Skyler prioritizes guaranteeing the family’s safely from physical harm and, in addition, from emotional harm or pain, as events involving her son make clear.
On the one hand, Walter’s and Skyler’s characters are intended to represent role-reversal or gender neutrality, exemplified by his participation and delight in domestic tasks and her strength and independence as woman, wife, and mother. On the other hand, to the degree that Walter asserts his economic role as breadwinner while Skyler fights for the physical and emotional safety of her family from her position as nurturing mother, the two take up traditional gender stances.
Skyler and Walter are arguing their divergent views of ‘marriage’ and ‘family,’ given that Skyler’s sexual act addresses expectations between the couple—from Walter’s perspective regarding marital sexual fidelity. Her action is not intended simply to grab his attention but is intimately connected to the contestation they are engaged in over the emotional values and ethical meanings of marriage and family. Walter pauses in his headlong rush to justify his actions to Skyler only once he believes she has betrayed him, in terms of the rules and expectations of their marriage.
Yet, from Skyler’s perspective, Walter as spousal partner has betrayed her by failing to listen to her “side” of the story, in refusing to consult her over drastic changes in the way the family operates, by taking unilateral actions that affect the entire family and, perhaps most of all, in failing to preserve the family from physical danger or emotional harm. Skyler, then, attempts to convey the marital betrayal she feels through an act she recognizes Walter will perceive as the breaking of a marital trust. The emotions negotiated and exchanged between Walter and Skyler are effective precisely to the degree that they link closely to the meanings of marriage and family because, in light of recent changes to the ways they have previously functioned as spousal partners and as a familial unit, the meanings and feelings each holds now differ sharply. At stake are their expectations, rights, and responsibilities as spouses, contested over their divergent meanings of marriage and family, and enacted through their respective emotional feelings and expressions, that is to say, performed via their affective positions. Breaking Bad, then, recognizes and frames marriage as an emotional institution as well as an economic and legal one.
Skyler’s sexual act has proven effective—and dramatic from the audience’s perspective—because she has rightly gauged Walter’s emotional response. He receives her sexual ‘infidelity’ as an act that destroys the sanctity of their marriage, even as he fails completely to see that his own actions have undermined the trust between the marital partners, from Skyler’s point of view. Although Walter proves incapable of grasping the points that Skyler strives to express, arguably the audience does.
In order for her sexual act to prove effective, Skyler must recognize and operate upon the basis of Walter’s system of values that, in turn, determines his emotional susceptibilities. Her familiarity with and correct assessment of his emotional makeup enables her to act on that which resonates for Walter in feeling terms. Indeed, the entire storyline of their relationship is dependent upon their mutual capacity to recognize and act upon the other’s emotions, although usually in the negative sense of making the other ‘feel bad.’ The most significant point here, however, is that theirs are not ‘private’ or merely personal sets of feeling but, rather, a high stakes struggle, involving repeated acts of emotional contestation, to determine who holds power in the family and over the family.