Smurfs/Squeaky

Squeaky
Season 2, Episode 10A
Airdate	October 9, 1982
Story by	Creighton Barnes, John Bates, John Bonaccorsi, Doug Booth, Alan Burnett, Patsy Cameron, Claire Geber, William Hasley, Catherine Johnson, Richard Kadrey, Bob Langhans, Bob Nesler, Joseph Neustein, Frances Novier, Ted Pederson, J. Michael Reaves, Jeff Segal, David Villaire, Marc Scott Zicree
Directed by	George Gordon, Bob Hathock, Carl Urbano Rudy Zamora supervising director Ray Patterson
← 2x9D The Sorcery of Maltrochu	2x10B → The Kaplowey Scroll
Smurfs — Season Two

Squeaky is part of the tenth episode of the second season of Smurfs, and the thirty-fifth episode overall.

Here, Smurfette learns about life and death after a mouse she had adopted dies suddenly.

Voices:

Plot Overview

While picking flowers in the forest, Smurfette finds a young field mouse, who is struggling for its breath. Seeing the mouse is sick, but also very cute, Smurfette brings the mouse back to the village where it can be given a herbal broth and returned to good health. She quickly falls in love with the mouse and adopts it, calling him Squeaky.

Late one night, a fire starts in Papa Smurf's laboratory. Squeaky is awakened by the smoke and warns Smurfette. Smurfette, in turn, wakes up the other Smurfs and Papa Smurf is rescued. The fire is quickly extinguished with minimal damage, and they all owe it to Squeaky, who is very strained from the stress of the rescue.

The next morning, Smurfette finds Squeaky unresponsive in his basket, and Papa Smurf breaks the news that the little mouse has died. Smurfette takes the death very hard and although the other Smurfs do what they can to comfort her, she goes into deep mourning and decides to run away, especially after Papa Smurf told her that death is a part of life and that he, the other Smurfs and Smurfette too will one day die, and runs away to the Mountain Of Mists.

Papa Smurf eventually sees that Smurfette is not in her mushroom home and forms a search party, where they track her to the Mountain Of Mists. There, she is cold, miserable and alone, and eventually is hanging on for dear life as she nearly falls off a tall precipice. One of the Smurfs, Tracker, eventually helps rescue Smurfette just in time.

In the end, Smurfette finds closure in Squeaky's passing, but knows that she can take comfort in her memories of him. Jokey gives her one of his surprise boxes to cheer her up ... and it is one of those gifts that truly makes him a caring Smurf: It's a baby mouse, which Smurfette instantly falls in love with.

Arc Advancement

Characters

• Squeaky: A field mouse whom Smurfette is instantly smitten with when she finds him in the Smurf Forest. However, the mouse is not healthy and although he is temporarily restored to health, the stress of alerting Smurfette to a fire inside Papa Smurf's laboratory is too much for his heart, and later that same night he dies. Smurfette is heartbroken and refuses to accept the fact that Squeaky has died. After she runs away and is later rescued, Papa Smurf assures her that she will have a lot of good memories of Squeaky.

Trivia

Allusions and References

• Five stages of grief: Although not explicitly stated as such, Smurfette goes through several of the stages, including denial, anger and acceptance, as she tries to deal with the death of her pet mouse, Squeaky.
• Little House On the Prairie: The episode "The Lord Is My Shepherd," from the long-running NBC drama's first season, has several similar elements. On LHOtP, Laura's baby brother, Charles, dies of an illness; Laura is heartbroken and, refusing to accept the death, runs away to a tall mountain, where a large fire starts and she is ultimately rescued by her father, Charles (and a family friend, Mr. Edwards). Similarly, Smurfette runs away after her pet mouse dies, is heartbroken, runs away to a tall mountain and finds herself in deep trouble (here, when she nearly falls over the side of a cliff) and is ultimately rescued.