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| Tugboats aren't called tugboats because they tug whales around. |
With the electric bill high, Homer takes advice from Lisa to seek alternate energy solutions. Ultimately, Lisa convinces him to try out wind power, and gets a fan to collect wind energy. Homer is happy with the new arrangement and calls the electric company to get off the grid. This also means that whenever the wind is calm, the Simpsons get no power, but they make due. Soon, though, a destructive wind storm blows through, giving the Simpsons too much power but, more importantly, gusts that bring damage all over the place. The wind collector gets broken, but later on the house gets plenty of power anyway somehow. The next day, Bart and Lisa decide to survey the damage across town. Upon reaching the beach, they come across a startling discovery: a whale has washed ashore.
Lisa quickly gets people to help the whale stay wet while she gets her parents to come up with a plan to get it back in the water. Privately, Marge tells Homer she's aware what often happens to beached whales and she doesn't want Lisa's to get her hopes up. Homer is defiant, though, and promises to save the whale. However, several attempts by him and the other townspeople prove fruitless. Lisa stays with the whale overnight, but falls asleep. Lisa wakes up to find that an entire army corps has come to successfully rescue the whale. Lisa is ecstatic, but as the whale starts jumping around in the stars, Lisa realizes its a dream and wakes up for real, learning in horror that the whale has actually died.
Homer tries to comfort Lisa, but nothing doing. The whale's carcass is eventually blown up, its parts harvested for various exploitative products. Lisa goes back to the beach afterwards, and sees two baby whales nearby, liking the offspring of the whale that just died. However, the babies are threatened by sharks, and Lisa has no choice but to accept nature's cruelty. However, Homer arrives on a boat he rented, and promises Lisa he'll save the whales from the sharks. He's stopped by some activists, who won't let Homer hurt the sharks either, and Lisa sadly agrees. Homer tries to counterpoint, but falls out of the boat and becomes the new target of the sharks. Just then, another gigantic whale, likely the father, appears below Homer and saves him and the babies from the sharks. The babies are saved, and Lisa is glad Homer reminded her to never give up.
Quick Review
Well, its a sweet episode. It has the emotion of the whale dying, and Lisa learning from Homer to never give up. It makes for a powerful episode if it could back it up with some funny material. Of course, its hard to have such a heavy episode be funny as well, and this episode is no exception to that. I appreciate what the episode tried to do, but it just wasn't that funny.
Final Score: 6.4
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