The Smurfs (1989 sitcom)

The Smurfs is an American-Belgian animated sitcom based off the comics by Peyo. The show was produced by Gracie Films in association with Lafig S.A., Great American Broadcasting (uncredited, seasons 1-2), Turner Broadcasting (seasons 3-7) and Warner Bros. Television (season 8-present), with animation produced by Hanna-Barbera Cartoons (seasons 1-3), Film Roman (seasons 4-27), and Warner Bros. Animation (season 28-present). The show premiered December 17, 1989 on TBS. The show's original showrunners were Peyo, James L. Brooks and Sam Simon. In 1993, Theirry Culliford took over for his father as one of the executive producers, credited as Peyo.

Characters

 * Papa Smurf (voiced by until Season 7 and Scott Innes on Season 8 onwards) - Papa Smurf is the leader, father, chief, king of the Smurfs, and can be easily distinguished by his red clothes and bushy white beard. Smurfs turn to Papa Smurf when things go wrong. Papa Smurf is skilled in making magical spells and potions. He is much older than the other Smurfs. (except for Grandpa and Nanny, who are older than Papa.) Papa Smurf often serves other Smurfs with his knowledge and wisdom and usually devises a plan how to get out of trouble or save the Smurf village from attacks of Gargamel.
 * Brainy Smurf (voiced by until Season 20 and Fred Armisen on Season 21 onwards) - TBD
 * Clumsy Smurf (voiced by until Season 7 and TBD on Season 8 onwards) - TBD
 * Hefty Smurf (voiced by Frank Welker) - Hefty Smurf has incredible strength and often is seen doing a lot of the heavy work in the village. He also has a tattoo on his right arm (or sometimes both of his arms) of a red heart with an arrow through it. His favorite activity is lifting weights and doing other forms of exercise, and is often the one to kick Brainy out of the village whenever he is boasting. Hefty takes pride in being tough, sometimes doing it just for attention.
 * Handy Smurf (voiced by Michael Bell) - TBD
 * Grouchy Smurf (also voiced by Michael Bell) - Grouchy Smurf is the misanthropic grouch of the Smurf village. His catchphrase is "I hate (something somebody else mentions)", yet it shown during the show is good observer and notices kindness in others even if not playing active role in an event. Even though Grouchy Smurfs portrays a role of a moaner within the group, he mostly wishes others to be happy and successfully to get out problematic situation. Grouchy usually has a scowl on his face. But despite his grouchiness, he has a soft spot for Baby Smurf and the Smurflings.
 * Vanity Smurf (voiced by ) - TBD
 * Greedy Smurf (voiced by until Season 16 and Wil Wheaton on Season 17 onwards) - TBD
 * Bartender Smurf (voiced by Hank Azaria) - TBD
 * Smurfette (voiced by until Season 17 and April Stewart on Season 18 onwards) - TBD
 * Gargamel (voiced by Paul Winchell on Season 1 and Jim Cummings on Season 2 onwards) - TBD
 * Azrael (vocal effects by until Season 7 and Frank Welker on Season 8 onwards) - TBD

Setting
The show is set in medieval Belgium, with Johan and Peewit as the main subplot focus. The Smurfs go through misadventures in Smurf Village, alongside the town of Brussels (a reference to Peyo's hometown), while outsmarting Gargamel who tries to either eat them, turn them into gold or absorbing all of their blue essence.

Development
In 1976, Stuart R. Ross, an American media and entertainment entrepreneur who saw the Smurfs while traveling in Belgium, entered into an agreement with Editions Dupuis and Peyo, acquiring North American and other rights to the characters, whose original name was "les Schtroumpfs". Subsequently, Ross launched the Smurfs in the United States in association with a California company, Wallace Berrie and Co., whose figurines, dolls and other Smurf merchandise became a hugely popular success. NBC President Fred Silverman's daughter, Melissa, had a Smurf doll of her own that he had bought for her at a toy shop while they were visiting Aspen, Colorado. Silverman thought that a series based on the Smurfs might make a good addition to his Saturday-morning lineup.

The Saturday morning cartoon The Smurfs, produced by Hanna-Barbera Productions in association with SEPP International S.A. (from 1981 to 1987) and Lafig S.A. (in the years 1988 and 1989), debuted on NBC in 1981. The series became a major success for the network and one of the most successful and longest running Saturday morning cartoons in television history, spawning spin-off television specials on an almost yearly basis. The characters included Papa Smurf, Smurfette, Brainy Smurf, the evil Gargamel, his cat Azrael, and Johan and his friend Peewit. The Smurfs was nominated multiple times for Daytime Emmy Awards, and won Outstanding Children's Entertainment Series in 1982–1983.

In 1989, NBC changed the format of the show, removing some of the Smurfs from the forest and omitted the Smurf village. These changes were adopted to a lost in time format similar to The Time Tunnel. The show was cancelled because of decreasing ratings due to viewers being displeased with the change. In addition, NBC executives prepared a Today weekend program for Saturdays as well as programmings for teenagers such as Saved by the Bell, which came later on and led to the elimination of Saturday morning animated children's shows. The show continued through 2 December 1989 on the NBC network.

Earlier that year before the Saturday Morning cartoon was cancelled, a team of production companies restarted The Smurfs as a half-hour sitcom for the Turner Brodcasting System. The team included the Hanna-Barbera animation house. Brooks negotiated a provision in the contract with the TBS network that prevented TBS from interfering with the show's content. Peyo said his goal in creating the show was to offer the audience an alternative to what he called "the mainstream trash" that they were watching. The half-hour series premiered on December 17, 1989, with "Smurfs Roasting on an Open Fire". "Some Enchanted Evening" was the first full-length episode produced, but it did not broadcast until May 1990, as the last episode of the first season, because of animation problems.

Executive producers and showrunners
List of showrunners throughout the series' run: Peyo and James L. Brooks have served as executive producers during the show's entire history, and also function as creative consultants. Sam Simon, described by former Smurfs director Brad Bird as "the unsung hero" of the show, served as creative supervisor for the first four seasons. He was constantly at odds with Peyo, Brooks and the show's production company Gracie Films and left in 1993. Before leaving, he negotiated a deal that sees him receive a share of the profits every year, and an executive producer credit despite not having worked on the show since 1993, at least until his passing in 2015. A more involved position on the show is the showrunner, who acts as head writer and manages the show's production for an entire season.
 * Season 1–2: Peyo (1989-1992), Theirry Culliford (1993-present), James L. Brooks, & Sam Simon
 * Season 3–4: Al Jean, Mike Reiss & Yvan Delporte
 * Season 5–6: David Mirkin
 * Season 7–8: Bill Oakley & Josh Weinstein
 * Season 9–12: Glenn Leopold
 * Season 13–present: Audu Paden

Writing
The first team of writers, assembled by Sam Simon, consisted of John Swartzwelder, Jon Vitti, George Meyer, Jeff Martin, Al Jean, Mike Reiss, Jay Kogen and Wallace Wolodarsky. Newer Smurfs ' writing teams typically consist of sixteen writers who propose episode ideas at the beginning of each December. The main writer of each episode writes the first draft. Group rewriting sessions develop final scripts by adding or removing jokes, inserting scenes, and calling for re-readings of lines by the show's vocal performers. Until 2004, George Meyer, who had developed the show since the first season, was active in these sessions. According to long-time writer Jon Vitti, Meyer usually invented the best lines in a given episode, even though other writers may receive script credits. Each episode takes six months to produce so the show rarely comments on current events.

Credited with sixty episodes, John Swartzwelder is the most prolific writer on The Smurfs. One of the best-known former writers is Conan O'Brien, who contributed to several episodes in the early 1990s before replacing David Letterman as host of the talk show Late Night. English comedian Ricky Gervais wrote the episode "TBA", becoming the first celebrity to both write and guest star in an episode. Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, writers of the film Superbad, wrote the episode "TBA", with Rogen voicing a character in it.

At the end of 2007, the writers of The Smurfs went on strike together with the other members of the Writers Guild of America, East. The show's writers had joined the guild in 1998.

Animation
Several different U.S. and international studios animate The Smurfs. Throughout the run of the 1980s animated Saturday morning cartoon of the same name, the animation was produced domestically at Hanna-Barbera (although they've switched to outsourced studios starting with Season 6). With the debut of the sitcom, because of an increased workload, TBS subcontracted production to several local and foreign studios. These are AKOM, Anivision, Rough Draft Studios, USAnimation, and Toonzone Entertainment.

For the first three seasons, Hanna-Barbera animated The Smurfs in the United States. In 1992, the show's production company, Gracie Films, was afraid that Hanna-Barbera would re-brand its studio soon (due to its downfall on Saturday morning shows) and switched domestic production to Film Roman, who continue to animate the show until 2016. In Season 14, production switched from traditional cel animation to digital ink and paint. The first episode to experiment with digital coloring was "TBA" in 1995. Animators used digital ink and paint during production of the season 12 episode "TBA", but Gracie Films delayed the regular use of digital ink and paint until two seasons later. The already completed "TBA" was broadcast as made.

The production staff at the U.S. animation studio, Film Roman, draws storyboards, designs new characters, backgrounds, props and draws character and background layouts, which in turn become animatics to be screened for the writers at Gracie Films for any changes to be made before the work is shipped overseas. The overseas studios then draw the inbetweens, ink and paint, and render the animation to tape before it is shipped back to the United States to be delivered to TBS three to four months later.

The series began high-definition production in Season 20; the first episode, "TBA", aired February 15, 2009. The move to HDTV included a new opening sequence. Thierry Culliford called it a complicated change because it affected the timing and composition of animation.

Television
The Smurfs was the first successful animated program in American prime time since Wait Till Your Father Gets Home in the 1970s. During most of the 1980s, US pundits considered animated shows as appropriate only for children, and animating a show was too expensive to achieve a quality suitable for prime-time television. The Smurfs changed this perception, initially leading to a short period where networks attempted to recreate prime-time cartoon success with shows like Capitol Critters, Fish Police, and Family Dog, which were expensive and unsuccessful. The Smurfs ' use of Korean animation studios for tweening, coloring, and filming made the episodes cheaper. The success of The Smurfs and the lower production cost prompted US television networks to take chances on other animated series. This development led US producers to a 1990s boom in new, animated prime-time shows, such as ones from franchises Terrytoons, Looney Tunes, Disney and Universal/Walter Lantz. For The Looney Tunes Show developer Spike Brandt, "The Smurfs created an audience for prime-time animation that had not been there for many, many years ... As far as I'm concerned, they basically re-invented the wheel. They created what is in many ways—you could classify it as—a wholly new medium."

The Smurfs has had crossovers with four other merchandises. In the episode "A Star Is Gargamel", Johan invites Andy Panda, one of the characters from the Universal cartoon franchise, to be a judge for a film festival in Brussels. Thierry Culliford had his name removed from the episode since he had no involvement with Universal. Terrytoons later paid homage to The Smurfs with the episode "Smurfs Already Did It". In the Looney Tunes episode "Smurfy Tunes", the Looney Tunes visit Smurf Village and meet the Smurfs.

The Smurfs has also influenced live-action shows like Malcolm in the Middle, which featured the use of sight gags and did not use a laugh track unlike most sitcoms. Malcolm in the Middle debuted January 9, 2000, in the time slot after The Smurfs. Ricky Gervais called The Smurfs an influence on The Office, and fellow British sitcom Spaced was, according to its director Edgar Wright, "an attempt to do a live-action The Smurfs." In Georgia, the animated television sitcom The Samsonadzes, launched in November 2009, has been noted for its very strong resemblance with The Smurfs, which its creator Shalva Ramishvili has acknowledged.

Controversy
Snappy's rebellious, bad boy nature, which underlies his misbehavior and rarely leads to any punishment, led some parents and conservatives to characterize him as a poor role model for children. In schools, educators claimed that Snappy was a "threat to learning" because of his "underachiever and proud of it" attitude and negative attitude regarding his education. Others described him as "egotistical, aggressive and mean-spirited". In a 1991 interview, Bill Cosby described Snappy as a bad role model for children, calling him "angry, confused, frustrated". In response, Theirry Culliford said, "That sums up Snappy, all right. Most people are in a struggle to be normal [and] he thinks normal is very boring, and does things that others just wished they dare do." On January 27, 1992, then-President George H. W. Bush said, "We are going to keep on trying to strengthen the Belgian blue creatures, to make them a lot more like the Waltons and a lot less like the Smurfs." The writers rushed out a tongue-in-cheek reply in the form of a short segment which aired three days later before a rerun of "Stark Raving Brainy" in which Snappy replied, "Hey, we're just like the Waltons. We're praying for an end to the Depression, too."

Various episodes of the show have generated controversy. The Smurfs visit Australia in "Snappy vs. Australia" (season six, 1995) and Brazil in "Blame It on Sassette" (season 13, 2002) and both episodes generated controversy and negative reaction in the visited countries. In the latter case, Rio de Janeiro's tourist board—which claimed that the city was portrayed as having rampant street crime, kidnappings, slums, and monkey and rat infestations—went so far as to threaten TBS with legal action. Culliford was a fierce and vocal critic of the episode "A Star Is Gargamel" (season six, 1995) which featured a crossover with Universal's Andy Panda. He felt that it was just an advertisement for Andy Panda, and that people would incorrectly associate the show with him. When he was unsuccessful in getting the episode pulled, he had his name removed from the credits and went public with his concerns, openly criticizing James L. Brooks and saying the episode "violates the Smurfs' universe." In response, Brooks said, "I am furious with Theirry, ... he's allowed his opinion, but airing this publicly in the press is going too far. ... his behavior right now is rotten."

"The Peewit and the Pauper" (season nine, 1997) is one of the most controversial episodes of The Smurfs. Many fans and critics reacted negatively to the revelation that Peewit, a recurring character since the first season, was an impostor. The episode has been criticized by Culliford and by Frank Welker, who provides the voice of Peewit. In a 2001 interview, Welker recalled that after reading the script, he told the writers, "That's so wrong. You're taking something that an audience has built eight years or nine years of investment in and just tossed it in the trash can for no good reason, for a story we've done before with other characters. It's so arbitrary and gratuitous, and it's disrespectful to the audience."

Ban
The show has reportedly been taken off the air in several countries. China banned it from prime-time television in August 2006, "in an effort to protect China's struggling animation studios." In 2008, Venezuela barred the show from airing on morning television as it was deemed "unsuitable for children". The same year, several Russian Pentecostal churches demanded that The Smurfs, Peanuts and some other Western cartoons be removed from broadcast schedules "for propaganda of various vices" and the broadcaster's license to be revoked. However, the court decision later dismissed this request.

Declining quality
Critics' reviews of early Smurfs episodes praised the show for its sassy humor, wit, realism, and intelligence. However, in the late 1990s, around the airing of season 10, the tone and emphasis of the show began to change. Some critics started calling the show "tired". By 2000, some long-term fans had become disillusioned with the show, and pointed to its shift from character-driven plots to what they perceived as an overemphasis on zany antics. Jim Schembri of The Sydney Morning Herald attributed the decline in quality to an abandonment of character-driven storylines in favor of and overuse of celebrity cameo appearances and references to popular culture. Schembri wrote: "The central tragedy of The Smurfs is that it has gone from commanding attention to merely being attention-seeking. It began by proving that cartoon characters don't have to be caricatures; they can be invested with real emotions. Now the show has in essence fermented into a limp parody of itself. Memorable story arcs have been sacrificed for the sake of celebrity walk-ons and punchline-hungry dialogue."

In 2010, the BBC noted "the common consensus is that The Smurfs' golden era ended after season nine", and Todd Leopold of CNN, in an article looking at its perceived decline, stated "for many fans ... the glory days are long past." Similarly, Tyler Wilson of Coeur d'Alene Press has referred to seasons one to nine as the show's "golden age", and Ian Nathan of Empire described the show's classic era as being "say, the first ten seasons." Jon Heacock of LucidWorks stated that "for the first ten years [seasons], the show was consistently at the top of its game", with "so many moments, quotations, and references – both epic and obscure – that helped turn the Smurfs into the cultural icons that they remain to this day."

Glenn Leopold, who was showrunner during seasons nine through twelve, has been the subject of criticism. Chris Suellentrop of Slate wrote that "under Leopold's tenure, The Smurfs became, well, a cartoon ... Episodes that once would have ended with Brainy and Smurfette bicycling into the sunset now end with Brainy blowing a tranquilizer dart into Smurfette's neck. The show's still funny, but it hasn't been touching in years." When asked in 2007 how the series' longevity is sustained, Leopold joked: "Lower your quality standards. Once you've done that you can go on forever."

Audu Paden, showrunner since season thirteen, has also been the subject of criticism, with some arguing that the show has continued to decline in quality under his tenure. Former writers have complained that under Paden, the show is "on auto-pilot", "too sentimental", and the episodes are "just being cranked out." Some critics believe that the show has "entered a steady decline under Paden and is no longer really funny." John Ortved, author of The Smurfs: An Uncensored, Unauthorized History, characterized the Paden era as "toothless", and criticized what he perceived as the show's increase in social and political commentary. Paden responded: "Well, it's possible that we've declined. But honestly, I've been here the whole time and I do remember in season two people saying, 'It's gone downhill.' If we'd listened to that then we would have stopped after episode 13. I'm glad we didn't."

In 2004, Frank Welker criticized what he perceived as the show's declining quality: "I rate the last three seasons as among the worst, so season four looks very good to me now." Danny Goldman responded: "I don't agree, ... I think Frank's issue is that the show isn't as grounded as it was in the first three or four seasons, that it's gotten crazy or a little more madcap. I think it organically changes to stay fresh." Also in 2004 author Douglas Coupland described claims of declining quality in the series as "hogwash", saying "The Smurfs hasn't fumbled the ball in fourteen years, it's hardly likely to fumble it now." In an April 2006 interview, Culliford said: "I honestly don't see any end in sight. I think it's possible that the show will become too financially cumbersome ... but right now, the show is creatively, I think, as good or better than it's ever been. The animation is incredibly detailed and imaginative, and the stories do things that we haven't done before. So creatively there's no reason to quit."

In 2016, popular culture writer Anna Leszkiewicz suggested that even though The Smurfs still holds cultural relevance, contemporary appeal is only for the first ten seasons, with recent episodes only garnering mainstream attention when a favorite character from the golden era is killed off, or when new information and shock twists are given for old characters. The series' ratings have also declined; while the first season enjoyed an average of 13.4 million viewing households per episode in the U.S., the twenty-first season had an average of 7.2 million viewers.

Alan Sepinwall and Matt Zoller Seitz argued in their 2016 book titled TV (The Book) that the peak of The Smurfs are "roughly seasons [three through twelve]", and that despite the decline, episodes from the later seasons such as "Eternal Moonshine of the Smurf Mind" and "Holidays of Future Smurfed" could be considered on par with the earlier classic episodes, further stating that "even if you want to call the show today a thin shadow of its former self, think about how mind-boggingly great its former self had to be for so-diminished a version to be watchable at all."

Trivia

 * As production began on the sitcom, James L. Brooks tended to get rid of the simple basic, cartoony gags, such as...
 * Brainy being thrown out of the village for when he starts talking too much.
 * The male Smurfs falling madly in love in Smurfette and sometimes fighting for her affection. One of them would attempt to marry her quickly.
 * Surrealistic gags, such as flattening a Smurf with a rock and/or Smurfs able to sometimes powerfully distort their bodies were not present.
 * Bartender Smurf is the Smurfs counterpart to The Simpsons ' Moe Syzlak.
 * The second season had changes of color (characters' outfits and/or skin for example) and reworking of character designs, such as...
 * Handy's workman overalls being recolored navy blue and the buckles of his overalls golden yellow.