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The Simpsons episode
"Goo Goo Gai Pan"
Episode no.	347
Prod. code	GABF06
Orig. Airdate	March 13, 2005
Written by	Lawrence Talbot (pseudonym for Dana Gould)
Directed by	Lance Kramer
Couch gag	The family is surprised by the townspeople and Homer collapses of a heart attack
Guest star	Robert Wagner as himself Lucy Liu as Madam Wu
SNPP capsule
Season 16 November 7, 2004 – May 15, 2005
Treehouse of Horror XV All's Fair in Oven War Sleeping with the Enemy She Used to Be My Girl Fat Man and Little Boy Midnight Rx Mommie Beerest Homer and Ned's Hail Mary Pass Pranksta Rap There's Something About Marrying On a Clear Day I Can't See My Sister Goo Goo Gai Pan Mobile Homer The Seven-Beer Snitch Future-Drama Don't Fear the Roofer The Heartbroke Kid A Star Is Torn Thank God It's Doomsday Home Away from Homer The Father, the Son, and the Holy Guest Star
List of all Simpsons episodes...

"Goo Goo Gai Pan" is the twelfth episode from the sixteenth season of The Simpsons, which originally aired on March 13, 2005.

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. Dr. Hibbert tells her that she is experiencing menopause (which is explained in a video with Robert Wagner). She is saddened that now she can't have children. Patty suggests that she adopt a child. She almost manages to adopt one of Cletus' many babies, but that falls through after Cletus reclaims the child. Lisa advises Selma to adopt a child from China. Although her forms are in order, Selma learns that she has to be married to legally get a child. When she finds out that the agency-person knows who MacGyver is, she puts down the second name she can think of : Homer Simpson.

She sponsors a trip to China for the Simpsons. While on the plane, Selma informs Homer that he must pretend to be her husband. Shocked, he later decides to do it for Marge. When they arrive, Selma claims that Bart and Lisa are their own children and Marge is their nanny. The Chinese adoption agent, Madam Wu (voiced by Lucy Liu), tells them that they will get a baby in a few days. When asked about his job in America, reasoning that he has no chance of being outed, Homer claims he is an acrobat.

As luck would have it, at an Acrobatics Show, it is announced that the main performer had a sudden attack of "outspokenness" and suffered a "bullet-related death". When people start to realize that the CCP is not infallible and start questioning everything, Homer is told to perform to forestall an impending riot. The stunt involves being catapulted onto a high stack of chairs. The stunt goes off smoothly, but Homer's over-enthusiastic chanting of "USA" causes the stack to topple and he gets severely injured 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. Selma thanks Homer for doing the right thing and decided to leave him to smuggle with Marge for a while. When everyone leaves, Homer and Marge snuggle. Unbeknownst to them, Madam Wu is watching them through holes in the nose of a portrait of Chairman Mao.

As the Simpsons and Selma are about to leave, Madam Wu arrives and takes Ling away, as Homer and Selma aren't married. At the airport, The Simpsons try to console a despondent Selma. Lisa has an idea of getting Ling back. At the nursery, they dress and spray paint Homer as a cross-legged golden Buddha statue. According to the custom, the Buddha statue must be taken indoors. The Chinese guards try pushing him in, but he's too heavy. They insert a hook into his nostril and drag him inside, causing Homer a great deal of pain, which he manages to keep in. They finally decide to chop the statue up into pieces as nothing is mentioned about the Buddha being in one piece. When they leave, Homer goes inside the nursery, looking for a Chinese baby... in a Chinese nursery (not an easy task). As he looks around, a baby grabs his eyes. It's Ling! He grabs her and runs out.

The Simpsons, Selma and Ling pass through Tiananmen Square, a place where "nothing happened" in 1989. Suddenly, Madam Wu, in a tank, confronts them and demands the baby back. Selma decides to reason with her, bureaucrat to bureaucrat. For that, she has to sign a form. After an impassioned speech, Madam Wu agrees to allow Selma to adopt Ling. Apparently, Wu herself had been raised by her mother, as her father was choked to death by a ping-pong ball the day before the Heimlich maneuver was invented. Selma, Ling, and the Simpsons depart China via junk except for Bart, who has been replaced by a Chinese midget who is masquerading him to Homer.

• Maggie does not appear in this episode. No explanation is given for Maggie's situation while the rest of the family are halfway around the world.
• Although Selma wants to take care of a child in this episode, she had earlier decided not to bother with kids after trouble with Bart and Lisa in "Selma's Choice". This is because she was getting tired of Jub-Jub getting too lazy and too boring.
• Robert Wagner is the second celebrity this season to host a Troy McClure-esque video. The first was Gary Busey in the previous episode.
• Homer believes China is a separate planet.
• This is one of the few times that the family isn't angrily and forcefully kicked out of a foreign country and forbidden from returning.
• The instrument the red dragon plays is an erhu, a two string Chinese fiddle.
• When the Air China plane is first shown, the tail has the hammer and sickle on it.
• At the end of the episode, director David Silverman appears showing how to draw Bart. Matt Groening did the same thing after Fox's original airing of "Lisa the Skeptic"; interestingly, Groening drew Bart with his right hand, despite being predominantly left-handed.

• When Selma says the car is too hot, Burns says it is actually cooler than Guy Lombardo, a famous Canadian band leader.
• Mr. Burns says his car once outraced the Flying Finn, Paavo Nurmi, an athlete who won 9 Gold Medals at the 1920, 1924 and 1928 Summer Olympics. Both this and the aforementioned references are among the many Burns age jokes that have been used throughout the series.
• The dragons Homer imagines are white, gold, and red, but at the end the white one is green. That first dragon also resembles the one who appears in Spirited Away.
• The Chinese play that the Simpsons watch is clearly based on Death of a Salesman. One of the performers says Ben's trademark line, "When I was seventeen, I walked into the jungle. And by twenty-one, I walked out. And by God, I was rich!"

• The title of this episode is a pun on moo goo gai pan, the name of a popular pseudo-Chinese American recipe, based on the Cantonese dish mah gu gai pin, which is composed of fresh button mushrooms and other vegetables with sliced chicken.
• China (except for Hong Kong, Taiwan and Macau) uses the Simplified Chinese characters, but many signs in this episode are clearly using Traditional Chinese. However, there are still signs that use Traditional Characters in China.
• The correct spelling of the Gate of Heavenly Peace, according to pinyin conventions, would be "Tian An Men", not "Tien An Men".
• When Selma stands in front of the tank piloted by Wu, the shot is highly reminiscent of the famous image of the Unknown Rebel blocking the line of tanks during the Tiananmen Square protests.
• While flying to China, the plane passes over a monument to "Warrior and spicy chicken pioneer" General Zuo Zongtang.

Flag of the Communist Party of China shown on the body of Mao in the original US broadcast.

• The original broadcast portrayed the body of Mao Zedong covered by the flag of the Communist Party of China with the hammer and sickle (as is the case in the actual mausoleum). However, in later broadcasts the flag was substituted for the Flag of the People's Republic of China.
• Inside the Mausoleum of Mao Zedong, Homer is seen standing next to the body and touching it. In reality, tourists are kept quite far apart from the body, and nobody would be allowed to be anywhere near the body as close as Homer was. Also, Mao's body is kept in a crystal casket, so it is virtually impossible for anyone to touch the body itself.
• In the Chinese consulate, the map displayed behind the consulate official shows Taiwan as a separate country, a violation of the One-China Policy and not something likely to be seen in an actual Chinese consulate.
• There is a plaque reading, "On this spot in 1989, nothing happened", in Tiananmen Square, a reference to the Chinese Government's denial of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre.
• In addition to being a sardonic reference to the massacre, the sign in the square ("On this site in 1989, nothing happened") is a parody of real signs. Available from catalogues, they are mock-historical plaques that say: "On this site in 1897, nothing happened."
• Madame Wu is similar to Maya Ming in Cross in appearance and speech.
• What's written on the adoption paper is gibberish, not Chinese, though this may be a play on the fact that computers which do not have Chinese text support installed may transcribe gibberish and random symbols in its place (mojibake).
• In one of the dialogues, Lisa says that she is pretty smart. To that comment, Madame Wu replies, "Well, Tibet was pretty independent. How did that turn out?"
• The Simpsons family arrived in Beijing, China, but left from Victoria Harbour, Hong Kong, as the Bank of China Tower could be seen in the background, and Beijing has no harbour or port to speak of as it is a landlocked city.
• When the Simpsons are visiting the Great Wall of China, three "barbarian invaders" (presumably Mongolians) are shown trying to leap over the wall with their po-go sticks. The wall no longer protects China from foreign invaders, as the entire wall lies very much inside China's present-day border. Much of the wall lies roughly along the southern border of Inner Mongolia, which is presently an autonomous region of China.

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