In a style reminiscent of old Simpsons, this week's episode opened with a fairly funny attack on alternative energies, and quickly switched over to a completely irrelevant Lisa-driven story line about a beached whale for the later two-thirds, from which the episode gets its title, "The Squirt and the Whale."

As much as we're pro energy conservation and alternative energy, we loved all the jokes at some of the solutions.  The salesman telling Homer the wind turbine will pay for itself in 18... lifetimes.  Homer deciding the Simpsons will begin living life intermittently?  Great jokes.

Unfortunately, not much else was done with the story line and the episode quickly switched to Lisa and her beached whale, Bluella.  Unlike classic Simpsons episodes of old, the original story line was never brought back or even mentioned again in the latter half.  We basically were given two completely unique episodes.

Lisa's whale tale was surprisingly morbid and dark for a Simpsons episode.  Lisa is clearly no stranger to tragedy of all the characters on the show, having gone through such issues as her mentor, Bleeding Gums Murphy die on her.  However, we were still pretty shocked to see them blow up Bluetella with some TNT.

Overall, there were touching moments, and it was cute to see how hard Homer would work to keep his daughter happy.  However, the ending and parts of the episode just felt too random and almost cheesy.  There were plenty of laughs to make us give the episode an above-average rating, but we still expected more.

We normally never comment on the chalkboard intros, but we have to also gives The Simpsons credit for giving South Park a shot out given all the ridiculousness surround the Muhammad controversy surround the 200th episode.

Now for our favorite Simpsons quotes from the alternative energy / beached whale hybrid of an episode after the jump.

Homer: From now on, the Simpsons are living intermittently. | permalink

Comic Book Guy: Behold! I am Captain Kirk from Star Trek 1! 2 ... 5 ... Generations ... Boston Legal. | permalink

Homer: I'm not made of money, I'm made of man meat and an a skeleton. | permalink

Antonine: Without that horn, I can't make a living. | permalink

Eric Hochberger is the programmer of TV Fanatic, so please forgive his mediocre writing. His programming is far better. Follow him on Twitter and/or email him. Just don't request threaded comments. They're coming.