The Fake Smurf (1981 episode)

Title Translation ofThe Fake Smurf
French	Le Faux Schtroumpf
Spanish	El Pitufo Falso
German	Der falsche Schlumpf
Italian	Il falso puffo
Dutch	De Valse Smurf

You may also be looking for the comic book story by this name.

"The Fake Smurf" was an episode that appeared in Season 1 of the Smurfs cartoon show.

Summary

Promo for the episode on many DVD releases.

Hogatha the evil witch is in her castle, brewing up something that will help her get her revenge on the Smurfs since they have destroyed her magic locket in "Bewitched, Bothered, And Be-Smurfed", costing her one of her nine lives. Soon her concoction is ready, and as she takes a drink of the stuff from a test tube, she finds herself convulsing on the floor until suddenly, with a flash, she is turned into a Smurf. She goes over to the mirror to check out how perfect her transformation is until she notices something -- her Smurf impersonation doesn't have a tail. Climbing up to the table, Hogatha finds a pea that she paints blue, then sticks it to her rear end using glue, and soon she is completely a Smurf. Now all she needs to do is find a Smurf to lead her to the village.

The next day, as Vanity is busy admiring himself in a pond's reflection near a sarsaparilla field, Hogatha as a Smurf shows up to greet him. Vanity gives her a sarsaparilla leaf to chew on, which she finds disgusting to her taste. Vanity tries to tell her something in Smurf that she couldn't understand when he finally gets up and heads back to the village, with Hogatha as a Smurf following him. At the village, Papa Smurf is ready to conduct his Smurfs in doing the Dance Of 100 Smurfs when he notices one Smurf isn't joining in -- the Smurf that Hogatha is posing as. He tells that Smurf to get back in line and soon the dance starts with all the Smurfs dancing in formation, all except for Hogatha, who has no idea how to do the Dance Of 100 Smurfs and ends up bumping the other Smurfs out of formation. Soon Papa Smurf stops the dancing and tells the snorting Smurf that he'd better go elsewhere so that he doesn't cause anymore trouble. As Hogatha (now called Snorty Smurf) goes away, she mutters under her breath that she's only begun.

Soon she finds something that smells good cooking away in a kettle in some Smurf's house and decides to throw in a poison root to "spice things up". Then it is lunchtime, and all the Smurfs are in the dining hall eating what appears to be soup that Hogatha has poisoned. She just sits back and watches for the other Smurfs to start getting sick. They all end up looking at her wondering why she's not eating, and she says that she's not very hungry. But then she sees that the Smurfs aren't getting sick, and so excuses herself from the table claiming that she needs to get some "stale air", leaving her fellow Smurfs wondering. She goes back to the house where she dropped the poison root in the kettle and finds out that it's filled with dirty laundry. She lies on the floor throwing a tantrum, realizing that she's been outwitted, but she'll get them.

Later on, as the Smurfs are busy working on the Smurf river bridge, Jokey presents one of his "surprises" to Snorty, who then opens it up to find that it explodes. Jokey laughs at the sight of another Smurf falling for his joke before he runs off. Though at first angry with Jokey, Hogatha is then inspired by him to come up with a plan to destroy the Smurfs. At night, when all the other Smurfs are sleeping, she quietly creeps into Jokey's house and takes a good amount of his exploding "surprises" to set up below the Smurf river bridge.

The next day, after Papa Smurf cuts the ribbon at the inaugural ceremony for the bridge, Hogatha pulls on the cord attached to the "surprises" that were set up below the bridge to cause it to be destroyed along with the Smurfs. But to her surprise, the "surprises" didn't go off -- the Smurfs continue to merrily cross the bridge, singing the Smurf song as they do. She throws another fit again, believing that someone has sabotaged her sabotage, but when she crosses the bridge herself, the "surprises" go off and she alone falls into the river. As Snorty cries for help, Hefty swims out to save her, and soon with her holding onto him, he grabs a rope that Papa Smurf throws out to pull the both of them to shore.

Hogatha's masquerade is blown!

As Papa Smurf wonders what could have caused the bridge to collapse, he sees a fragment of one of Jokey's "surprises" floating downstream. He grabs it and then tells his little Smurfs that they have "a smurf among us", meaning somebody who's planning to destroy them from within. Having a feeling that she's going to be found out, Hogatha quietly sneaks away to plot her revenge elsewhere when her pea of a tail drops off. Soon Clumsy slips on that fake Smurf tail and, after checking to make sure it isn't his tail, goes over to Papa Smurf to present the fake tail, who then realizes that there's a fake Smurf among them. He calls all the Smurfs together to tell them this news, but as every Smurf checks each other to make sure that that Smurf isn't a fake, Hogatha realizes that part of her disguise is gone and soon tries to sneak off. But Hefty finds Snorty and soon the other Smurfs join him in chasing her, revealing that Smurf to be the fake.

Hogatha reaches Papa Smurf's laboratory, which she locks up in order to create a counter-potion that would enable her to return to her original form so she could squash and stamp them out. Papa Smurf calls for a battering ram to break down the door. After a few tries, the Smurfs break through, but Hogatha's already finished with the potion and soon has swallowed it, going into convulsions before she returns to normal -- though not quite. She thinks she sees that the Smurfs have gotten so tall, but Papa Smurf says that it's her that's gotten small. Hogatha tries to use her magic powers on them, but they don't work, and soon they grab her and send her out of the village, tying a rope around some trees to show that she's never to return there again. But though Hogatha runs off, grateful to still be living, she mutters that the Smurfs haven't seen the last of her, and that she still has plenty of lives left for her to get even with them.

Meanwhile, the Smurfs return happily to the village, singing the Smurf song as they do.

Background Information

The original Fake Smurf

• This episode is based on the original comic book story of the same name (also called "The Alien Smurf"), where Gargamel was the masquerading fake Smurf instead of Hogatha. (However, Gargamel would pose as a fake Smurf in the cartoon episode "The Mr. Smurf Contest".) Also, the original comic book story did not feature Smurfette.
• Before the Smurfs cartoon show series, this story had been previously adapted into animation for Belgian TV in 1965, though it wasn't part of Les Aventures des Schtroumpfs. As in the original version of the story, Gargamel is the character who had changed into a fake Smurf.
• This story follows what took place in "Bewitched, Bothered, And Be-Smurfed".
• This is probably the first episode in which a character switches genders, though here it's a physical gender switch rather than simply disguising oneself as the other sex.

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