The Lost City of Yore (The Smurfs, 1981)

The Lost City of Yore is a Season 2 episode of The Smurfs. It originally aired October 16, 1982 on NBC, with the writers of the episode remaining uncredited.

Summary
Brainy, Clumsy and Nosey were captured by two witches to find the lost city of Yore, with Gargamel and Azrael tagging along.

Why it Sucks

 * 1) The writing of this episode is a complete mess. The story elements of a Smurf being too curious for his own good and a forbidden city with a dangerous scepter isn't executed well, especially with Gargamel and Azrael pursuing the Smurfs in this episode.
 * 2) * Speaking of Gargamel and Azrael, they are shoehorned into the plot for no reason other than to capture and/or get rid of the Smurfs.
 * 3) The plot of finding the lost city doesn't start until 4 minutes into the episode. For story editing reasons, it would've been better if the episode started with the witches in a lake with sticks instead of Smurfette writing in her diary.
 * 4) Not only is Nosey constantly curious, all the other Smurfs constantly blame him for everything that goes wrong. He reads in Smurfette's diary, destroyed Greedy's cooking and ruined Papa Smurf's super secret experiment. The other Smurfs were acting like humans to him, without any sympathy whatsoever, even though the Smurfs are supposed to be kindhearted and forgiving, especially with each other.
 * 5) * Ironically, the episodes prior had the other Smurfs snoop their noses into other's businesses, showing how hypocritical they are at times.
 * 6) A few of the dialogue is also repetitive. Like Nosey Smurf asking, "What's wrong with being curious?" and saying "I didn't mean to." two times each in the same episode. Why can't he do something besides being shamed by his fellow Smurfs?
 * 7) This episode has the preachiness of morals to the extreme. The lesson about curiosity is everywhere in this episode, even when most of the Smurfs appear on screen with Nosey.
 * 8) * It was also The Smurfs at their most Anvillicious and the writers were trying too hard to convey a moral into an episode of a kid's cartoon.
 * 9) * The worst of it is the writers tried too hard to make Nosey Smurf sympathetic, thus coming off as over-the-top and melodramatic whenever the Smurfs gang up on him instead of being actually sympathetic.
 * 10) There's a scene where when Brainy and Clumsy attempts to stop Nosey from entering Papa Smurf's lab. Prior to the latter working on a secret experience no other Smurf must discover, it had a laughable scene where Clumsy seemingly sounds and acts like he's trying to sound strict and confrontational (showing he's not very good at direct confrontation).
 * 11) *This scene is kind of contradictoral. Since throughout the series, when was Clumsy ever hostile when it comes to situations like that? This also adds to the fact he was one of the Smurfs who pushed around Nosey for his behavior.
 * 12) The backgrounds look different compared to the stuff from Hanna-Barbera in-house. This results in some odd coloring errors on the Smurf houses, such as the inside of Papa Smurf's lab.
 * 13) Nosey Smurf and the witches both have one-note personalities in this episode.
 * 14) * Nosey Smurf himself is an obsessive busybody who does nothing than snoop his nose into other's businesses. Even when he promises to make it up to Papa Smurf, he goes back to his only character trait. He also acts melodramatic when the other Smurfs blame him for his nosiness.
 * 15) ** Even worse, the voice of Nosey Smurf sounds too similar to Frank Nelson's other roles at Hanna-Barbera. They were trying to make him sound like a comical character with a goofy voice, but it's really off-putting for a young adult Smurf to sound like that.
 * 16) Some of the scenes are drawn and/or animated poorly, like the Smurfs having separate eyes, stiff and rigid movements, etc.
 * 17) The witches at the end of the episode shoot Gargamel and Azrael with bubbles instead of electricity, which is pretty boring. Bubbles are pretty harmless and they don't harm people and/or animals in the slightest.
 * 18) Like most episodes of Season 2, the writers were left uncredited.
 * 19) Even though Papa Smurf is still likeable, he should have explained better about curiosity by comparing the other Smurfs' behaviors from previous episodes to Nosey's. Simply saying "Curiousity is a good thing" is NOT enough.
 * 20) * On top of that, he never called out on his little Smurfs for how they went too far with shaming Nosey for his snoopish behavior and how they were being too "unsmurfy" towards him. Like in The Smurf Who Couldn't Say No, Papa Smurf was more distant towards one of his little Smurfs than acting like a sympathetic father figure.
 * 21) It was even more nonsensical and over-the-top than your usual Smurfs episode (let alone being insensitive and cruel to the main focus of one character).
 * 22) * The Smurfs keep ganging up on Nosey for his snoopish behavior (even moreso than they did to themselves for their own faults). Even they wouldn't go too far on calling each other out for their mistakes. One of them would apologize, the others forgive and everything returns to normal.
 * 23) While the backstory of the wizard was interesting, his fate in turning to dust seems unusually dark for a children's show back in the day. Normally, wizards would turn into any kind of animal and/or shrink to a small size as a result of their ideas going haywire.
 * 24) The parts where Nosey gets blamed for everything in the second half is totally unjustified. He still gets no respect from others and continues to get shamed constantly like nothing happened. Although intended to be a running gag, it ended up running into the ground, especially at the ending of the episode.
 * 25) Bad Ending: Smurfette blames Nosey for getting his curiosity into this mess, despite the fact that they're safe. Brainy gives out a lesson by saying, "Curiosity killed the cat". Papa corrects him by saying that curiosity is a good thing, which leads to the intellectual explaining a lecture on curiosity. The others throw Brainy out of sight, making him curious of why they would do that. Which is not a good way to end the episode.
 * 26) * Not to mention, hearing and seeing Smurfette be too rash and aggressive with Nosey and harshly scream and nag at him for everything he's done, it sounds very grating, irritating and annoying.
 * 27) * The least they could have done was forgive Nosey and accept him for who he is (even if he can get carried away with his nosiness).

Redeeming Qualities

 * 1) The voice acting is still good.
 * 2) Thankfully, this plot was never brought up again.
 * 3) At least the animation is mostly new, hardly having any recycled material.
 * 4) Papa Smurf is still likeable for most of the episode.
 * 5) * Gargamel and Azrael are fairly likeable villains, despite being shoehorned into the plot.
 * 6) The backstory about the wizard of Yore's dangerous scepter reducing him to dust was pretty interesting.
 * 7) Although Nosey is a one dimensional busybody, at least he means well. Unlike Squidward's negative portrayal in SpongeBob's "Little Yellow Book".
 * 8) * He was at least useful in gathering more Purple Pandyroots for Papa Smurf's potion.
 * 9) The Smurfs ganging up on Nosey for his snoopish behavior was at least justified in the beginning of the episode. The latter half of the story, not so much.

Trivia

 * One of the earliest episodes to have a "random events" plot. The same thing happened to the last Christmas special, "'Tis the Season to Be Smurfy".
 * This episode is easily considered one of the worst episodes of The Smurfs by fans, in terms of writing and characterization. As mentioned above, neither of the Smurfs forgave Nosey for his snoopish behavior and Papa Smurf didn't explain the differences between nosiness being bad and curiosity being good.