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Goo Goo Gai Pan |
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- "My life begins at last!"
- ―Selma Bouvier
- "That is quite an insult to your other children."
- ―Madam Wu
- "We understand, ma'am. We're pretty lousy kids."
- ―Bart Simpson
"Goo Goo Gai Pan" is the twelfth episode of Season 16.
Synopsis[]
Selma hits menopause while giving Mr. Burns his road test for a new driver's license and is upset that she won't be able to have children and not die alone. Lisa suggests that Selma adopt a kid, but the only place that has unwanted children looking for loving parents is China, and China doesn't allow single parents to adopt, so Selma puts down Homer's name on the adoption papers, prompting the family to come with her to China, with Selma and Homer pose as a married couple while Marge pretends to be their live-in nanny.
Full Story[]
Selma gives Mr. Burns his driving test to replace his old license, which expired in 1909. During the test, she experiences a hot flash and is later taken to the hospital. She learns that she is experiencing menopause (which is explained in a video with Robert Wagner) -- one of the things that video explains is that, once a woman experiences, she can't have children through biological means. This saddens Selma, but upon a suggestion from Patty, decides to look into adopting a kid. After her first choice (one of Cletus's children) is taken back by his biological parents, Selma (upon a suggestion from Lisa) decides to adopt a child from China. While her forms are in order, the adoption agency explains that only married couples can adopt children from China -- this ultimately leads to Selma putting down the name of her brother-in-law, Homer, who gets a weird feeling about what happened while on his lunch break with Lenny and Carl.
After presumably explaining the situation to Marge, Selma (with the Simpsons in tow) is soon on a flight to China to adopt her baby -- but when Selma explains the situation to her brother-in-law (namely in that he has to pretend to be her husband), Homer initially refuses to do it because of his dislike for his sisters-in-law. But after talking with his wife, he decides to do it for Marge's sake, as she ultimately just wants her sister to be happy. Upon finally arriving in Beijing (where the adoption agency is headquartered), the representative the Selma and the Simpsons meet up with is a woman named Madam Wu (voiced by Lucy Liu), who explains that everything is in order but Selma won't be able to receive her baby for another several days, but this gives the family time to explore China and learn about it's rich history and culture.
During their time exploring China, Homer (reasoning that he has no chance of being outed) claims he is an acrobat when asked and is later called to perform a stunt when the main performer in a show suffers a "bullet-related death" from questioning the Communist Party; Homer is told to perform to forestall a riot brought on by the audience's realization that the CCP is not infallible. Homer himself gets severely hurt performing and is treated in a hospital. There, Selma gets her daughter, whom she names Ling and who is fond of grabbing Homer's eyes. When everyone leaves, Homer and Marge snuggle and are caught by Wu watching through a painting, who takes back Selma's baby, much to Selma's and the baby saddens.
The Simpsons decide to bring back Ling. At the nursery, they dress and spray paint Homer as a golden Buddha statue. The Chinese guards bring him in, although Homer can hardly keep in the pain that they're causing trying to move him by inserting a hook into his nostril. He is able to find Ling and get her out. In Tiananmen Square, they are confronted by Madam Wu in a tank -- but Selma's able to convince her that she should keep Ling, although she needs to sign a form just to talk to her, from bureaucrat to bureaucrat.
It's ultimately revealed that Madam Wu's leniency stems from remembering what her own upbringing was like: when Madam Wu was just a baby, her father had choked to death on a ping-pong ball the day before the Heimlich maneuver was invented and, as a result of her father's death, her mother ended up raising her as a single parent.
In the end, after Madam Wu stops Homer from smuggling a panda cub to the United States, the family (Selma and Ling in tow) depart China via junk -- Selma tells Ling that she'll return to China someday, "as a spoiled American teenager". Selma then makes her signature laugh, while Ling is shown to have her adoptive mother's laugh.
Production[]
During the end credits, David Silverman shows viewers how to draw Bart.