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"Gargamel's Time Trip" is a Season 5 episode from the Smurfs cartoon show.

Characters[]

Synopsis[]

Gargamel travels back in time to change his first meeting with the Smurfs.

Plot Summary[]

Papa Smurf and the Smurflings are walking through the forest, happily singing the Smurf song, when Gargamel decides to "drop in", so to speak, wearing glider wings and carrying a pot with him to scoop up Smurfs. As he dives down toward the Smurfs, Papa Smurf tells his little Smurflings to run toward Gargamel -- which they do except for Sassette, who is pleased to see her "Pappy Gargamel". As Papa Smurf grabs Sassette out of the way just in time, Gargamel misses them and ends up falling to the ground, cursing the Smurfs and saying they have been trouble ever since he first met them. Gargamel wishes he could go back and do it all over again when he realizes something -- there is a way for him to actually do that, and that way is right there in his forest.

That night, as Papa Smurf tucks his little Smurflings into bed, Sassette is sobbing because she feels Gargamel hates them. Papa Smurf tries to comfort her by saying that being hated by Gargamel is just part of being a Smurf. Sassette wishes that Gargamel could be their friend, who Papa Smurf agrees to, but sadly tells the little Smurfling that being a "friend" just isn't what would describe Gargamel. Meanwhile, the evil wizard, with Azrael in tow, is trying to break into Father Time's workshop with a set of skeleton keys when he finds one that opens the door, allowing him entry while the time guardian is away at a wizards' banquet, to which Gargamel is not invited (though he doesn't mind because of the opportunity it gives him). Searching through Father Time's books, Gargamel finds the one on how to travel in time, and in it, he finds the most obvious solution of all -- and that is by using Father Time's hourglass which is lying right on the table for him to grab.

Later that night, Sassette decides to sneak out of the tree stump playhouse and go to Gargamel's castle to make him see it would be better for him to stop chasing Smurfs and be friends with them. Meanwhile, Gargamel and Azreal have returned home with Father Time's hourglass and book on time travelling, from which the wizard reads that he must not let himself be seen by anybody when he is in the past or else the spell will be broken. After he recites the incantation, the hourglass sucks him and Azrael in -- and they find themselves in their castle at the time when Gargamel was just a baby, and his mother was still living there. The evil wizard realizes he's gone too far into the past, but before he can do anything, he hears his infant self crying from his cradle, which is in the room, and the sound of his mother coming in response. Ducking into the closet with Azrael, Gargamel looks wistfully on as a younger and surprisingly gentler version of his mother arrives and tenderly holds her now quiet infant son, hoping aloud that someday he will be a successful wizard and be able to take care of her in her old age. Hearing this, the adult Gargamel sadly reminds Azreal that his mother never forgave him for flunking Wizard's School, implying that is the reason she eventually moved out on him. He is moved only for a moment, however. As soon as the coast is clear, he looks back into Father Time's book and decides he will jump ahead to his school days when he first met the Smurfs, whom he blames for his flunking, and make sure that this time it will be they, not he, who will fail.

Back in the Smurf village in the present, Papa Smurf is sleeping in his bed when Father Time pays him a nightly visit of importance -- someone has broken into his workshop while he was at the wizards' banquet and stolen both his hourglass and book on time travelling. Papa Smurf knows that it takes a wizard to make use of both things, and the only wizard he can think of who that would do is Gargamel. Father Time concurs with this, acknowledging that Gargamel was the only wizard not invited to the banquet.

Gargamel's Time Trip - Smurfs

Gargamel and Azrael successfully go back in time.

As they both head to the wizard's castle, Sassette is already there seeing "Pappy Gargamel" with Azrael inside his "night light", not knowing that they are really traveling through time in Father Time's hourglass -- and are now preparing to jump ahead to at least an hour before they first met the Smurfs. Soon they find themselves outside the Wizard's School, watching Gargamel's younger self (sporting a full set of hair) with his pet kitten Azrael as they leave the school, saying that the Dean of Wizards has told him that his magic project had better be spectacular or else he could face a future of selling used cauldrons. Realizing that their younger selves are heading toward the Great Oak Tree, where they first met the Smurfs, Gargamel says to his cat that they must get there first.

Soon, Gargamel has a rock hanging off a branch of the Greak Oak Tree, right over the spot where he first saw the Smurfs standing on, preparing for the moment that the Smurfs would arrive, singing their Smurf song. Gargamel tells Azrael his memory is blank on how his first attempt to catch the Smurfs was foiled, but as they continue to hide, the wizard's younger self walks past the oak tree still pondering about his project when his kitten Azrael sniffs and spots something hiding behind some grass. It is a Smurf, and soon Azrael tackles Brainy to the ground, allowing the younger Gargamel to get a better look at his catch and to figure out what it is.

Gargamel Brainy-0

Gargamel meets a Smurf for the first time. It was hate at first sight. And the start of a lifelong obsession.

Back in the present, Sassette is still seeing the past unfold in the hourglass, and she decides to go get Papa Smurf when she realizes she might get into trouble for leaving the village alone. She rushes quickly out the door, but Father Time arrives before she can leave, and Papa Smurf is with him, wondering what Sassette is doing there. As she humbly answers that she wanted to make friends with Gargamel, Father Time notices what Sassette has told Papa Smurf -- that Gargamel is in the hourglass right at this moment, trying to change history by hurting the Smurfs. Unfortunately, there isn't anything they can do but hope that somebody in the past will see Gargamel of the present being there and break the spell.

Back in the past, Gargamel watches his younger self realize that what he caught was a Smurf, a necessary ingredient for the formula for turning base metals into gold. He decides to go home with his prize catch when Papa Smurf of the past trips him, rescuing Brainy and apologizing to the wizard for hurting him. Present-day Gargamel sees that the Smurfs are now standing on the stump that his rock is hanging over, and now he just needs to let the rope loose and smash them where they stand -- when a younger Bigmouth encounters him and Azrael, asking where the river is so he can go swimming. As the older Gargamel and Azrael end up going back to the present, the rock now falls on the younger Gargamel as he and the younger Azrael chase the Smurfs, cutting him off in the middle of his first of many threats that he will get the Smurfs no matter where they go.

As present-day Gargamel and Azrael are shifted back from the past to the present, the former seemingly suffering a headache from his younger self's getting beaned by the rock, they come face to face with the time guardian himself. Father Time sternly tells Gargamel that he has a punishment for wizards who dabble in time travel. But as he turns Gargamel's head into a cuckoo clock, Sassette tells Father Time that she deserves the same punishment as well for breaking Papa Smurf's rule of not going over to Gargamel's castle. This makes Father Time wonder what to do, with Papa Smurf reluctantly agreeing with whatever the time guardian comes up with.

Soon, in Father Time's workshop, a restored Gargamel is working together with Sassette, polishing all of Father Time's clocks, the time guardian telling the wizard to make sure that they are so shiny he can see his face in it ("such as it is", he drily adds). Meanwhile, Papa Smurf and the boy Smurflings just watch, unable to do anything to help since Sassette wanted it this way -- so she could be with her "Pappy Gargamel" doing something useful together. Though Sassette is glad that she is finally spending time with Gargamel, he on the other hand just sees what a rotten time this is.

Trivia[]

  • This episode seems to establish, at least in the chronological history of this show's storytelling universe, what would motivate Gargamel to destroy the Smurfs with the creation of Smurfette in the Season 1 episode "The Smurfette".
  • Many foreign DVD releases carry the syndicated Smurfs Adventures repackaging of this episode, as opposed to the rest of the episodes, which were uncut, although this episode has also used the modified intro and credits for foreign markets.
  • The episode's name in the title card for the international restoration is misspelled as 'Garagmel's Time Trip'.
  • This is the episode that shows how the Smurfs met Gargamel and how their feud started.
  • This marks the final appearance of Mummy in the 1980s cartoon show.
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