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"Essence Of Brainy" is a Season 6 episode from the Smurfs cartoon show.

Characters[]

Synopsis[]

Scruple uses an essence remover to bottle Brainy's personality.

Plot Summary[]

One day in the Smurf Village, Brainy creates a panic among his fellow Smurfs as he cries that there's a killer bird on the loose and dives into a barrel for safety. Papa Smurf hears the commotion outside his laboratory and goes to see that it's just a harmless carrier pigeon that arrived with a message attached to its leg. The message comes from Homnibus, requesting Papa Smurf to come visit him since it's been a while since they last saw each other. Papa Smurf says that it would be nice to go and visit, but that there's so much work to be done in the village. His little Smurfs, however, encourage Papa Smurf to take the day off, telling him that they can manage things on their own without him around for a day. Papa Smurf decides that he will go and visit Homnibus after all.

Meanwhile, in Gargamel's castle, the evil wizard's apprentice Scruple complains about always having to do housecleaning when he really wants to learn how to do magic. Suddenly he gets a knock on the door from a delivery person with a package for Gargamel, which Scruple eagerly accepts in his master's place while sending the deliverer on his way. He sees that the package comes from Gargamel's dear old mother, and with a little shake decides maybe it's best to open it and find out what's inside the package. What he finds inside is some sort of magical gun that he fires at the flames in the fireplace, turning the flame white while filling one of the gun's glass tubes with its essence. Scruple realizes that the gun must be some sort of essence remover, and so for fun he tests it out on Azrael, turning him white while his essence is stored in another tube. Seeing that the essence remover works, Scruple takes it with him out into the forest to find his next victim.

Back in the village, Brainy decides to volunteer himself to help his fellow Smurfs out while Papa Smurf is gone. Of course, how he chooses to help them out leaves much to be desired. When Brainy takes a look at Painter's latest work and offers what he thinks is "constructive criticism" to the village artist, he gets so upset that he literally frames Brainy with his work. Jokey takes an opportunity to fool Brainy into opening one of his exploding "surprise" packages. Brainy goes over to give Hefty his commentary about how his fellow Smurf is stacking wood, which just earns him a quick flight out of the village.

Bottle Up Brainy (Essence of Brainy)

We can't say he didn't deserve it.

Out in the forest, Scruple is having fun zapping out the essences of various forest creatures and storing them in tubes when he sees Brainy come in for a landing after being tossed out of the village by Hefty. Scruple overhears Brainy referring to himself as Papa Smurf's assistant and decides that he will zap out Brainy's essence, believing that he knows a lot about magic. Clumsy comes by sometime later carrying firewood for Hefty when he trips over Brainy and sees that his friend looks rather pale. Even more disturbing to Clumsy is that Brainy just isn't acting like himself, behaving more like a polite stranger who had just met Clumsy for the first time. Clumsy decides to take Brainy back to the village to find out what's wrong.

Greedy And Pale Brainy

Brainy is now a pale imitation of his former self.

As the other Smurfs observe Brainy's behavior when Greedy offers him a smurfberry muffin, they notice for themselves that Brainy seems to be missing his very essence, although Greedy seems to like Brainy that way. Clumsy tries to show Brainy the contents of his Quotations books in the hopes that he would remember being the author of his own writings, but Brainy just seems bewildered by the very thing he's reading, wondering why he would ever write anything like it. His critique of Painter's latest work seems to be simply saying that it's "nice", which makes Painter so frustrated that he literally frames himself with his own work. Jokey offers Brainy one of his exploding "surprises", to which Brainy reacts by saying that he broke it and that he feels sorry, not getting that it was meant to be a joke.

The other Smurfs come to the conclusion that the "new Brainy" is just boring and have Clumsy take them out into the forest where he had found Brainy. As they return to that particular place, they hear evil laughter and hide out in the bushes to watch as Scruple uses his essence remover to zap out the essence of another forest creature, saying that he will show that old wizard who can do magic. Painter encourages his fellow Smurfs to work together in order to restore the essence of Brainy with a little pep talk, and so they all head for Gargamel's castle where Scruple is showing his master the essences that the essence remover has captured.

The evil wizard is amazed at what the weapon has done and wonders what's in the vial with the blue essence. Scruple opens it and reveals that it's the essence of a Smurf, which makes Gargamel so desirous of it in order to make gold that he demands his apprentice to hand it over to him. Scruple refuses to do so and even threatens to use the essence remover on his master, which makes him concede to at least having Azrael's essence back. With the cat back to being his old self, he soon chases after the Smurfs who have sneaked their way into the castle to get Brainy's essence back. Scruple fires the essence remover again and again to capture more Smurf essence, but instead hits nothing but other objects. Then Azrael sniffs and finds the Smurfs hiding within a sack on the table, although it's the bag that has the stolen essences of the forest creatures.

With no other way out of the bag, Hefty decides to toss out one of the stolen essences. The crow essence vial hits some books on the shelf, and the books start flying off the shelves like crows. The terrible trio hide themselves under a table and then watch as the Smurfs get away with the vial of Brainy's essence. They chase after the Smurfs into the forest, where Clumsy trips and tumbles, almost losing the vial of Brainy's essence before he catches it again, but just also at the moment when the evil wizard and his apprentice catch up to him. Hefty rescues Clumsy by tossing another vial of stolen essence onto a bush, which then makes the bush growl at them like a wolf, scaring Scruple to the point where the essence remover flies out of his hands and gets smashed to pieces on the rocks. Gargamel tells Scruple to run for their lives as the vicious bush goes chasing after them.

Dark Blue Smurf Trio

This is what happens to Smurfs who are overexposed to Brainy.

With the two evil humans and the cat safely gone, the Smurfs see that all they need to do is give Brainy his essence back. Clumsy carries the vial over toward Brainy when he trips and falls, causing the vial to spill onto Hefty, Jokey, and Smurfette, turning them dark blue and making them act like Brainy. This makes Papa Smurf so concerned for his little Smurfs when he returns and sees Brainy not being like he is and the other three being like Brainy was that he goes into his spell books and finds the solution to the problem.

Papa Smurf has the four Smurfs all join hands while he recites an incantation, and soon all four of them are back to being the same shade of blue. With Brainy's full color restored, so also is his personality, which he doesn't fail to exhibit much to the relief... and soon afterward, the consternation... of his fellow Smurfs.

Videos[]

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