799. Aunt Misbehavin’

Original airdate: November 30, 2025

The premise: Irritated by her sister, newly promoted DMV supervisor Selma fires Patty. The rift between twins continues to deepen, leading to Patty moving away after Selma shacks up with a new boyfriend.

The reaction: I feel like I’ve opened many a post about my long-felt feelings that this show should take advantage of its wide cast of secondary characters, exploring different facets of their lives, showing us sides to their personalities we hadn’t seen before. We’re a week away from this show’s eight-hundred episode, there’s basically no excuse not to do this. Some characters are richer in potential than others, as I’ve also talked about certain cast members that I view as perfectly fine to stay as one-note goof characters. Alternatively, there’s a lot you can unpack with Patty and Selma, two major recurring characters who got a couple episodes to themselves in the classic era, who could function just as well in joke contexts as they do in actual, emotional, human stories. These two women who, in the absence of any sort of acceptance in society, retreated within each other, creating an insular life of shared loneliness. They’re mostly portrayed as a unified force (most commonly as a two-headed Hydra constantly needling Homer), but as any siblings do, we’ve seen them disagree and fight before. What if they separated from each other? What individual lives would they lead? It’s a burden that all identical siblings must face, despite how close your camaraderie might be with your doppelganger, one yearns for a life of one’s own too. But the big split here doesn’t take place until the halfway point of the episode, so let’s lay all that out first. After their previous supervisor wins big at the lotto, he randomly gives Selma the position, one that she starts to take seriously, bossing around her perpetually loafing sister. Separately, after discovering Bart has an axe to grind with his father, Patty lets him in on her secret plan against her most detested brother-in-law: use the DMV to have him declared legally dead to fuck with his life. Enraged that her sister pulled this plan off without her, Selma fires her. At this point, the two sisters try to exert their own individual independence. Patty gets a new haircut. Selma starts sleeping with a new man. Then Patty takes off to live in a new town. In a story line about who these characters are separate from their existence as like-minded twins, you’d think we would learn something new about them here. But, as is almost always the case with this series, the name of the game is tell, not show. We don’t get a single scene of Selma holding a conversation with Merle, or on a solo date with him, we have no idea what she sees in him or vice-versa, because we have this great joke about him being obsessed with credit card points that later drives the plot forward. But what does Selma want in a partner? What does it add to her life? What is their relationship like? Not important, I guess. Similarly, Selma moves to Palm Springfield, but outside a single scene of her new “job” which is also a joke scene, minutes later, we have Bart explain that Selma is miserable in her new town, flipping through photos of Selma looking sad at the pool and at drag brunch. Wouldn’t it be a little illuminating to see an actual scene of her and learning why she’s not connecting with these people or where she lives? Doesn’t this interest any of the writers? Instead, their fights come off as non-specific, and when all else fails, they have them argue in their nonsensical twin language, because they’re twins and that’s funny, right? The ending involves Selma “moving out” on her own, quickly revealed to be their next door apartment, before immediately coming next door to watch MacGyver with her sister. Will this create any new interesting story potential in the future? What do you fucking think?

Two items of note:
– At this point I have to assume the writers have completely forgotten about the existence of Selma’s daughter Ling. She apparently did appear in season 34’s “My Life as a Vlog,” but in this big Patty & Selma episode that examines their lives and living space, it was odd that Jub-Jub got a shout out and cameo but not a mention of Selma’s living, breathing (presumably) human daughter. Ling stands as an emblematic example of seemingly major changes this show gives to certain characters only for them to have no real impact on future stories, or at worst, completely forgotten about (see also: Kumiko and Maya.)
– Patty and Bart’s scheme to make Homer legally dead backfires, as he finds out that he can escape from bills, parking tickets, and more of life’s inconveniences because of his new status. But would that affect his ability to go to work? If he were legally dead, Burns would probably fire him, or exploit him to continue working for no pay. In any case, the family would basically be screwed, but none of that is addressed. It’s basically a build-up to a joke where in order for Merle’s credit card scheme to get Patty and Selma back together to work, Homer has to make himself legally alive again (“Now that I’ve tasted the sweet release of death, I don’t want to live! How much longer do I have?” “I’m sorry, but you’re out of time.”) I get it, it’s cute, but I can’t help but think about “Mother Simpson” and how rightfully pissed Marge was at Homer and demanded he fix this shit immediately. Here, she barely has anything to say about it until the very end when she pleas that her husband make things right for her sisters’ sake.