


Walt White has no clue he's occasionally funny, but as an actor, I recognize when there are comedic moments and opportunities. But I think any good drama worth its weight always has a sprinkling of comedy in it, because you can ease the tension to an audience when it's necessary, and then build it back up again. should really focus on doing something else. P2P and methylamine form an imine intermediate reduction of this P2P-methylamine imine intermediate is performed using mercury aluminum amalgam, as shown in several episodes including 'Hazard Pay'. 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 2) as a catalyst, as mentioned in episodes 'A No Rough-Stuff-Type Deal' and 'Más'. The new method Walt chooses is a reductive amination reaction, relying on phenyl-2-propanone and methylamine. 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.

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. Jason Wallach of Vice magazine commended the accuracy of the cooking methods presented in the series. Cranston has said he was inspired partially by his elderly father for how Walter carries himself physically, which he described as 'a little hunched over, never erect, the weight of the world is on this man's shoulders.' In contrast to his character, Cranston has been described as extremely playful on set, with Aaron Paul describing him as 'a kid trapped in a man's body'. Cranston repeatedly identified elements in certain scripts where he disagreed with how the character was handled, and went so far as to call Gilligan directly when he could not work out disagreements with the episode's screenwriters. He collaborated with costume designer Kathleen Detoro on a wardrobe of mostly neutral green and brown colors to make the character bland and unremarkable, and worked with makeup artist Frieda Valenzuela to create a mustache he described as 'impotent' and like a 'dead caterpillar'. At the start of the show, Cranston gained 10 pounds to reflect the character's personal decline, and had the natural red highlights of his hair dyed brown. When Gilligan left much of Walter's past unexplained during the development of the series, the actor wrote his own backstory for the character. Cranston contributed significantly to the formation and development of the Walter White persona.
