YMMV / Good Eats

• Adorkable: Both Alton and his "nephew" Elton.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Colonel Bob Boatwright. Just check the YouTube comments of every episode he's in.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • In some episodes, after making a large batch of a dessert (such as chocolate mousse) Alton would half-joke that he would probably just sit down and eat the whole thing. Then come episodes like "Herbal Preservation" in Season 7 and "Live and Let Diet" in Season 13.
  • In the 2000 episode "A Grind is a Terrible Thing to Waste", Alton discusses how the hamburger may once have been America's trademark cuisine but has since been degraded to fast food fodder. Since that episode aired, burgers have undergone a renaissance, becoming cuisine once again.
  • In the 2001 episode "Scrap Iron Chef", Alton competes with a sweet old lady in an Iron Chef spoof. Four years later Alton became the host of Iron Chef America.
    • Similarly, one episode of Good Eats is an Affectionate Parody of MythBusters dedicated to "smashing" culinary myths. Jump ahead to 2012, and Alton guest-stars on an actual MythBusters episode.
  • Alton in a few episodes and appearances on other shows declared that he thought the "umami" craze was largely a marketing stunt and he thought it was pretentious and a little ridiculous. Cue his hosting of The Next Iron Chef, and he was having to hawk Kikkoman soy sauce and its "rich umami flavor".
  • 2002's "Scrap Iron Chef", a hybrid parody of Iron Chef and Junkyard Wars, has Alton facing off against "Chef Prairie" in a cooking competition. During the episode, both Alton and his competitor do diabolical deeds upon one another, such as stealing equipment and sabotaging the other's ingredients. Eleven years later, a cooking competition titled Cutthroat Kitchen debuts with Alton as emcee. And, much like "Scrap Iron Chef", Cutthroat Kitchen actively encourages its contestants to sabotage each other during the course of each episode.
• Growing the Beard: The show started hitting a groove after the problematic first season, but didn't really run at its full potential until Alton took over production (and built the now-familiar Good Eats Kitchen) in 2001. This was partially due to space constraints; the white kitchen was a small kitchen in a small house, which made shooting trick shots and gags difficult.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • In the "Amber Waves" episode, he praises the manager of the homebrew shop he visits. A year or two later, Marietta Homebrew Supply closed down because the manager in question was embezzling thousands from the family that owned the shop.
  • In The Return, in fall 2019, Alton did a post apocalyptic parody episode which starts with a global pandemic, and involved him making sourdough bread. In 2020, the COVID-19 Pandemic struck the world, which also caused a lot of people to try to make sourdough at home while quarantining.
• Memetic Badass:
  • Alton Brown once got carried away slicing carrots, and julienned his cutting board. Undaunted, he sauteed the splinters in olive oil and spices — and they were delicious.
  • To Alton, Louis Pasteur ("King Louie") is this. The man did once take down a Food Police helicopter with a flamethrower, and Alton has a shrine to the guy in one of his kitchen cupboards.
  • Also, W. Everyone is scared of her.
• One-Scene Wonder: Louis Pasteur only features in person in one scene of the series, but it's epic.
• Replacement Scrappy Series: Cutthroat Kitchen and even Iron Chef America to a lesser extent. Some people think Alton's hosting duties killed Good Eats^note Misblamed in this case. The show ended due to a combination of factors. Alton was worn down by the demands of production. He also wanted to end the show on his terms rather than be cancelled.. It doesn't help that a few people are turned off by the sheer mean-spiritedness of Cutthroat Kitchen either.
• Shipping: A lot of fans seem to ship Alton/W. The knowledge that the former is married does not dissuade them one bit. This was lampshaded in the behind-the-scenes episode, believe it or not; the mailman bringing AB his fan mail comments on all the letters asking if W is AB's wife.
• Squick: The Season 12 episode "Oh My, Meat Pie" was a parody of Sweeney Todd. Yes, folks, a Sweeney Todd-inspired episode, on a cooking show. Doesn't make it less awesome though. Indeed, in an odd way, it makes it even more awesome.
  Mr. Todd: What kind of pie is that, Mrs. Lovett?
  Mrs. Lovett: Shepherd's pie, Mr. Todd.
  Mr. Todd: I wasn't aware we had any shepherd.
  • The corresponding recipe in the Good Eats cookbook dutifully lists "1 1/2 pounds ground shepherd" among the ingredients for shepherd's pie (with a note suggesting ground lamb or mutton as a substitute should shepherd be unavailable).
• Suspiciously Similar Song:
  • W's Leitmotif theme music is a riff on Monty Norman's James Bond theme music.
  • Whenever Alton discusses how household items are constructed, the music is a riff on the Raymond Scott Quintette tune (and Looney Tunes mainstay) "Powerhouse".
  • The Good Eats theme done Tubular Bells-style for the episode "Give Peas A Chance".
• Tear Jerker: Alton himself mentions in Good Eats: The Early Years that he can't watch the 2003 episode "Casserole Over" anymore because it prominently featured his beagle/basset hound mix Matilda, who would pass away in 2007 at the age of 14.
• Ugly Cute: Alton's (most recent) real-life pet dog Scabigail, who is occasionally seen on episodes of Reloaded and The Return.
• The Woobie: Okra. You heard me.^note The anthropomorphic okra is actually the mascot for Delta State University in Cleveland, Mississippi. Seriously. We're not making this up.

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