"The Squirt and the Whale"

The Squirt and the Whale

The Simpsons return in "The Squirt and the Whale", episode nineteen of season twenty-one. Wind turbines, a beached (and then blown-up) blue whale, sharks and an unintentionally harpooned seagull come together for an entertaining, if slightly disappointing episode, where Lisa learns an important life lesson and Homer saws into his brain. 

The jokes start even before the episode kicks off, with this week's chalkboard gag reading "South Park - We'd Stand Behind You If We Weren't So Scared". It's funny (and brilliant) how in one single line, The Simpsons can say so many things. The couch gag, with its Onion-like headlines about the couch's escape from (and reconciliation with) the Simpsons, is similarly well done.

 After having only one scene and no lines in last week's "Chief of Hearts", Lisa finds herself befriending (and desperately trying to save) a beached blue whale that washed up on the shore. The whale got there because Bart prayed for wind, in order to power the family's newly-bought wind turbine (which, to Homer's disgust and horror, works only when the wind blows). But either way, there's a blue whale on the beach. Despite everyone's best (and funniest) attempts to return Bluella the whale to the water, she doesn't make it. As Lisa comes to terms with the fact that her best efforts have come up short, she sees Bluella's calves being threatened by sharks, and seizes her one last attempt at redemption.

In terms of laughs, the first two acts - the adventures with the wind turbine and Lisa keeping Bluella company - are infinitely funnier than the concluding part of the episode, where Lisa learns that even though she couldn't save the day, she shouldn't stop trying. On the whole, "The Squirt and the Whale" is the funniest installment of The Simpsons to have come along in a while, but the forced attempts at inducing emotion let it down. When the episode is humorous, it's hilarious; when it tries to hammer home "Lisa + whale calves +Homer = happy ending", that's when we can feel the ride slowing down.

The ostensible focus of "The Squire and the Whale" is Lisa, but Homer gets so many great lines that he steals the show without much effort. I don't want to make it sound like he single-handedly saves the episode from the scrap heap, but that statement wouldn't be entirely inaccurate, either:

"It's time to unplug these vampire appliances that plunge their prongs into our creamy white outlets, to quench their unholy thirst for electrons!"

 

"I'm trying to be a sensitive father, you unwanted moron!" (to Bart)

 

"Aw, it kills me to see [Lisa] like that! And if there's one thing I can't stand, it's being killed!"

 

"Typical eco-jerks! Using words to talk!"

 

"Sharks!? Innocent!? Please! Every year they kill a couple of innocent people who do a series of stupid things. A shark's reptilian brain understands only one thing - the crime of murder!"

There are many great scenes in the episode: Bart and Lisa fighting with their Wii controllers after the power goes out (and their virtual counterparts hitting each other with tennis rackets when the power comes back); Ned Flanders angrily canceling Homer's "fan club" meeting (dozens of electrical fans, powered from Ned's house, being used to move the blades of the wind turbine); the three symptoms on Dr. House's whiteboard ("Headache/brain tumor/decapitation"); and finally, a touching scene of a desolate Lisa, and a huge blue whale carcass, on a silent beach.

I can't write about this episode without mentioning a hilariously horrifying moment when Homer (while napping) has an unfortunate accident with a table saw. It (and the follow-up gag in the next scene) could well be the funniest moment we've seen in The Simpsons in a long time. It's ironic that while the humor came so naturally in "The Squirt and the Whale", these cheese factor ruined what could have been a true happy ending.