A shell game is a street level confidence game that employs legerdemain to separate contestants (marks) from their money. Typically a pea is slipped under one of three walnut shells and these are then shuffled at high speed. The contestant wins if he can guess which shell contains the pea. Usually he cannot because the pea was slipped out of the shell. The mark never gets to see where the pea was if he guesses incorrectly, so he never realizes he's been scammed. Alton's series within a series is about various shellfish.

Locations: A meeting house on “Spamity Island, Maine” and Captain Squint’s houseboat. Except for a few seconds at the beginning, this entire episode is filmed “on location.”

Alton: What’s that? Swimmer attack off Spamity Island? By a scallop? I’m on my way!

Alton: A trip to Spamity means getting to consume my weight in scallops! Meaty morsels which are nothing if not... (Good Eats theme plays)

Alton: Since they are crazy perishable, the method by which scallops are captured greatly affects their freshness. Ships that dredge the open ocean floor for scallops don’t just mangle the seabed. They have to stay out quite awhile in order to make the trip worthwhile, so they either shuck and freeze their catch or they treat them with chemicals. Either way, the quality is compromised. Now, boats that go out in the morning and return to dock in the evening deliver far fresher scallops which are called “day boat scallops.” The freshest of all are “diver scallops” which, as the name suggests, are harvested by folks with tanks on their backs.

Alton: When you shop for [scallops] they should never be floating around in pools of milky goo.

Captain Squint: Hurry up with that grub! And be sure to make enough for the dock hands! Feedin’ them’s good luck, ya know!
Alton: No, I didn’t know...

Captain Squint: Don’t ya know we got hungry guests up there? Now… finish platin’ those salads and get to work on another dish!
Alton: But I wanna come up on deck…
Captain Squint: NO! No, no… Coast Guard’s coming and… you’re not wearin’ a life vest. Don’t wanna go ta jail now, do ya?!?

Alton: In eight to ten minutes, your scallops will be cooked through and the top will be golden brown and delicious.
(Captain Squint enters.)
Alton: What are you doing?
Captain Squint: I’m going to make a ceremonial offering to Poseidon... bring us good luck! Gimme that! (He snatches Alton’s scallops on the half shell.) You keep the dishes coming, you goody dry pants! We need all the luck we can get!

Captain Squint: These Coast Guard fellas wanna slap a fine on ya for scallopin’ outta season. I think I can hold ‘em off with a few snacks if you… ah… get mah meanin’

Captain Squint: Business wasn’t so good so I made up the attack thingy. Now people are lining up at $250 a head. And I woulda gotten away with it, too, if it hadn’t been for your meddling!
Alton: Fifty-fifty.
Captain Squint: What?!?
Alton: You heard me.
Captain Squint: (reluctantly) Deal.
Alton: Well, shiver me timbers, I guess I’d better get below and whip up some more o’ them scallops for you good folks. Sure would hate for you to run outta... Good Eats, eh?

The episode is loaded with references to Jaws (1975), perhaps the prototypical modern “terror from the deep” film. They include names: Spamity Island (the film was set on Amity Island), Police Chief Brooding and Captain Squint (the original pair was Chief Brody and Quint), the basic plot (although here the attack by a sea creature wasn’t what it appeared to be) and even snippets of music like that John Williams wrote for the film.

Captain Squint tells Alton he “would have gotten away with it if it weren’t for your meddling!” Almost every villain unmasked by Scooby-Doo and his hapless friends said this or something very much like it to them at the end of the episodes of Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!.

Part of a series-within-the-series about cooking shellfish. The other episode is Shell Games. Shell Game II and Shell Game III do not exist.

Those who enjoy scallops, or think they might, will undoubtedly find value in this episode, which focuses exclusively on the bivalves. With several preparation ideas, Alton may even win over a few individuals otherwise disinclined to try this kind of dish. But he makes it clear that the very best scallops will be found only close to where the creatures live – seaside towns. Scallops found at inland grocery stores are likely to be the disreputable wet packed variety, laden with tri-sodium phosphate to keep them moist. This makes the episode less useful to cooks in those areas – Alton does offer a recipe suitable for such scallops, but it is a mousse.