Selma's Choice

On the day that Homer, Bart, and Lisa plan to go to the amusement park Duff Gardens, Marge tells them that her aunt Gladys has died, and the family must attend Gladys's funeral instead. The family picks up Marge's sisters, Patty and Selma, and heads to the funeral home.

After the funeral, the family watches Gladys's video will, in which she advises Patty and Selma not to die alone, as she did. Selma is particularly affected and decides she wants a child. Attempting to find a suitable partner, Selma tries video dating, a love potion, and flirting with a teenage grocery store cashier before eventually going on a date with blind geriatric Hans Moleman. Unable to picture herself having Moleman's children, she considers artificial insemination.

When Homer gets food poisoning from eating a hoagie which had long since expired, Marge arranges for Selma to take Bart and Lisa to Duff Gardens while she stays home to look after Homer. At Duff Gardens, Bart and Lisa's hijinks wear Selma out and eventually land them in the park's security office. Meanwhile, Homer starts to feel better, and he and Marge enjoy their day alone. Returning Bart and Lisa home, Selma asks Homer how he manages to raise kids every day. Deciding she does not need to have children to be happy, Selma adopts Jub-Jub, Gladys' pet iguana, for companionship.

Writer David Stern said he wanted to go back to a "Patty and Selma episode", because it was sustained so well when he wrote "Principal Charming".[3] He thought it was important to "keep these characters (Patty and Selma) alive." The animators had trouble with the size of the characters' pupils during the season. In this episode, they are noticeably larger.[4] When the family watches the video will, Julie Kavner did five voices in the scene.[3] The scene of Great Aunt Gladys showing off her collection of potato chips was inspired by Myrtle Young, who appeared on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. During an interview with David Letterman, Young said she was working in quality control at a potato chip factory, and collected potato chips that looked like, amongst other things, celebrities.[5] The scene where Homer ate a chip is a reference to the Johnny Carson appearance, where, whilst Young was looking away, Johnny ate a chip from a separate bowl (not of the collection) and Young, thinking Johnny had ate a chip from her collection, was shocked, before Johnny cleared up the misunderstanding. Jub-Jub made his debut appearance in this episode; he was named by Conan O'Brien.[3]

Though research is usually done when real languages are used on the show,[3] the foreign language heard on Selma's ham radio is fictional.[5]

The episode title is a take on the 1982 film Sophie's Choice. Marge's flashback of her and her sisters swimming in a lake is based on The Prince of Tides.[3] Later, Homer and Marge watch the movie Yentl, making it the second reference to a movie starring and directed by Barbra Streisand. The singers at Duff Gardens, Hooray for Everything, are a parody of the musical group Up with People.[6] The group is seen performing a kid-friendly version of the Lou Reed song "Walk on the Wild Side". While on the way to Gladys's funeral, Homer and Bart start to sing "Ding-Dong! The Witch Is Dead" from The Wizard of Oz. The poem that Great Aunt Gladys reads at the start of her video will is "The Road Not Taken" by Robert Frost. Duff Gardens is a parody of Busch Gardens, originally developed as a marketing vehicle for the Anheuser-Busch brewing company. The song and ride that Bart, Lisa, and Selma go on, with animatronic kids from all over the world singing is a parody of the song "It's a Small World".[5] The Duff Gardens parade is a parody of Disneyland's Main Street Electrical Parade.[3] Lisa's hallucination after drinking the water on the ride is based on the work of artist Ralph Steadman, particularly in the novel Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. When Lisa says "I am the Lizard Queen!", it is in reference to "Celebration of the Lizard" and "Not to Touch the Earth" by The Doors. After acquiring Jub-Jub, Selma sings "(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman", a reference to the season four finale of the sitcom Murphy Brown, in which reporter Murphy Brown sings the song after giving birth to her baby.[7]

"Selma's Choice" finished 27th in the weekly ratings for the week of January 18–24, 1993 with a Nielsen rating of 14.2.[8]

The authors of the book I Can't Believe It's a Bigger and Better Updated Unofficial Simpsons Guide, Warren Martyn and Adrian Wood said, "A nice episode for Selma and good for Marge and Homer as well. But it's the kids who provide the highlights in this one, with their antics at Duff Gardens."[2]

In Planet Simpson: How a Cartoon Masterpiece Documented an Era and Defined a Generation, Chris Turner said it "Fills in with the usual grab bag of great gags" and "The episode had some crowd-pleasing moments." He went on to say, "The last few minutes of the show played out to continuous laughter [in the pub he was watching it in]".[9]

In The A. V. Club, Nathan Rabin said Selma's adoption of Jub-Jub is "the perfect resolution to both Selma’s dilemma and an episode that’s both sour and sweet, quietly understanding and hilariously cruel."[10]

Bibliography

Wikiquote has quotations related to "Selma's Choice".

• "Selma's Choice episode capsule". The Simpsons Archive.
• "Selma's Choice" at IMDb