List of Breaking Bad episodes
Over the course of its broadcast, "Breaking Bad" aired 62 episodes over five seasons. The pilot episode was first aired on January 20, 2008, and the series finale was broadcast on September 29, 2013.
"Breaking Bad: Original Minisodes" is a web series based on the television series "Breaking Bad". On February 17, 2009, five "mini-episodes," which were more comedy-oriented than most full episodes, were made available online before the premiere of the show's second season. Additional minisodes were to be produced before the premiere of the fourth season, but these did not come to fruition. The first five were included with "Breaking Bad: The Complete Second Season".
Breaking Bad
Jason Wallach of "Vice" magazine commended the accuracy of the cooking methods presented in the series. In early episodes, a once common clandestine route, the Nagai red phosphorus/iodine method, is depicted, which uses pseudoephedrine as a precursor to d-(+)-methamphetamine. By the season 1 finale, Walt chooses to use a different synthetic route based on the difficulty of acquiring enough pseudoephedrine to produce on the larger scale required. The new method Walt chooses is a reductive amination reaction, relying on phenyl-2-propanone and methylamine. On the show, the phenyl-2-propanone (otherwise known as phenylacetone or P2P) is produced from phenylacetic acid and acetic acid using a tube furnace and thorium dioxide (ThO) as a catalyst, as mentioned in episodes "A No Rough-Stuff-Type Deal" and "Más". P2P and methylamine form an imine intermediate; reduction of this P2P-methylamine imine intermediate is performed using mercury aluminium amalgam, as shown in several episodes including "Hazard Pay".