this post was submitted on 01 May 2024
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The characters role is to be a controlling spouse. If Walt was gay married to a man who behaved the same way Skyler does, they would be just as frustrating to watch on screen. It's not inherently gendered, you're putting that on it.
She isn't a controlling spouse, she's a controlling housewife in an exaggerated disappointing version of a post-nuclear American family.
The show states over and over again that Walt believes a man provides for his family... a necessarily and pointedly gendered role that is central to his entire character's motivations. Skyler's nagging is framed exactly in relation to his perceived shortcomings with respect to this gendered expectation.
In a gay relationship you don't tend to just mirror straight relationships but the bottom replaces the women, or something. So you can't just conjure Skyler as a dude and make it make any sense as a family.
When there are two or more men coming together, usually they all have their own separate careers and plans for life. There is no template gay relationships have to build off of, and having children is way more difficult and complicated. We have to define everything for ourselves.
None of the tropes that are foundations of Breaking Bad work if you swap the genders of the characters. If walt were a woman nothing she does would make sense to the audience and the treatment from her annoyed husband would be absolute nonsense. Why would he expect her to provide for the family? Why would he expect her to man up? Etc?