Return to Recap: The Smurfs (1981).
In a follow-up to the previous two episodes, the seventeen Smurfs reside in a cave and are homesick about their village (excepting Vanity, who still looks at himself in the mirror). Without the aid of the Ruby Key, Papa Smurf decides to reconstruct the time crystals by hand until he can find the right combination to bring everyone back home. Brainy offered to help, but his attempts proved disastrous and disassembled the time crystals without thought. Enraged, Papa Smurf throws Brainy out of the cave with his own book. Greedy comes out of the cave, telling Brainy that Papa has to reassemble the time crystals and that he's starving. Meanwhile, on top of a mountain nest, the mother bird leaves to find something for her young to eat. The eggs rolls off the mountain nest and rolls to a nearby tree. The baby hatches and wanders off somewhere in the forest.
Back on the ground, Brainy tries to offer a book on his "Food for Thought". Greedy refuses and tells Brainy to wait here while he heads off for a snack. With that said, Brainy starts writing a new book about living in the Prehistoric times. Greedy tries to get a fig by climbing up the tree, but ends up falling off. He then uses a rock to cut off a fig from its tree and ate it up in one bite. Meanwhile, the baby bird interacts with Brainy, to which the latter at first thinks it's going to eat him. As the baby hugs Brainy, it thinks that he's its mother. When the mother bird returns, she finds out that her baby is gone.
This episode provides examples of
- Balloon Belly: Greedy Smurf eats a fig larger than him in seconds.
- Distressed Dude: Greedy Smurf is scared of being trapped in the nest of the mother bird and calls for help.
- Getting the Boot: Brainy is thrown out of the cave for disassembling the combination of the time crystals with one crystal. Strangely, he is pounded flat like an accordion into his own book rather than being thrown out like normal with his own book landing on his head. This is an obvious example of exaggerated Toon Physics.
- Mistaken Identity: The mother bird mistakes Greedy for her baby.
- Nothing but Skin and Bones: Greedy does this when he shows Brainy his inner ribcage in a cartoonish way, which didn't happen in the previous eight seasons.
- Out-of-Character Moment: Papa Smurf gets hit with this hard. He inflicted physical abuse on Brainy Smurf, when he didn't earlier in the series.
- Paper-Thin Disguise: Hefty Smurf is disguised as a bird to lure the mother bird away from Greedy, with only an attachable beak on his nose, fake wings through his arms and three feathers tied to his hat.
