Reporter's Inside Stories: An Interview With Grouchy

Reporter: Of all the Smurfs that I find interesting to interview for the Smurfs and humans who want to smurf everything there is to smurf about the Smurfs, Grouchy is perhaps the most elusive Smurf to smurf an interview with. I can undersmurf that he hates smurfing his personal business with other Smurfs even in such a public forum as our daily newspaper, and he's basically not the easiest Smurf for the rest of us to talk to in person. However, Empath has been able to smurf up a friendship with Grouchy that has lasted ever since he first smurfed foot in our village about 82 smurfs ago, so mostly for the benefit of our human readers, I asked Empath to smurf with Grouchy so we can smurf our interview with him without him smurfing too embarrassed to do so. Right now, we're smurfing in Tapper's Tavern where Empath and Grouchy are both smurfing a mug of sarsaparilla ale together in private.

(Grouchy looks suspiciously at Reporter as he sits down with him and Empath at the table in the tavern.)

Empath: Don't worry, Grouchy. This smurf will be right here and won't leave unless you want this smurf to leave. You can also stop this interview at any time and Reporter will respect that.

Grouchy: Thanks, Empath. I don't think I can smurf this without you smurfing here with me.

Reporter: Okay, now, let's start with something simple, as to why you smurf to be the most disagreeable Smurf in the village. You never seem to smurf anything to anyone except Empath besides simply what you hate, which is almost anything and everything.

Grouchy: I don't hate everything, Reporter. It just feels like whatever some Smurfs like is what I will hate, even if it's something I don't really hate or may not hate. I don't always smurf that because I'm angry with you Smurfs...well, except for the few Smurfs in the village that I'm always angry at for some reason or another. I just don't like smurfing my feelings with every Smurf in the village because I feel they're too nosy and always looking to smurf something with me, even if that's not what they really want. I like to smurf my feelings to myself, but now and then I will always express myself in something that I hate.

Reporter: Do you ever wonder why few Smurfs ever want to smurf around with you because of how you smurf around them?

Grouchy: I know they're always smurfing the worst of me because that's all I'll ever be around them...just some Smurf who wants to disagree with them and not smurf whatever they want with me. I could be like Pushover, who at one time was never able to smurf for himself if he wanted to say no, but that would just never be me. I'm not afraid to disagree with any Smurf, even if they don't like it, and if they want to smurf a big problem with it, I don't let any of that bother me at all. I could tell them where they can go smurf it if they want to get too pushy with me, but mostly they just know where I'm going to smurf and that's final.

Reporter: So mostly you just smurf that way to keep other Smurfs from bothering you.

Grouchy: Not that it always works, but yes, that's how I smurf. My brother Hefty is always so bossy around me, trying to smurf his weight around and get me to smurf things that he wouldn't smurf himself, and my other brother Handy always tries to smurf up for me, but Hefty thinks that being the older brother means that Handy and I don't get a smurf in the matter. So Handy just stops smurfing up for me, and I have to smurf my own battles with Hefty, which I end up losing because nothing seems to satisfy Hefty more than smurfing me cater to his every whim, no matter how embarrassing it seems. It's even worse that my own Papa Smurf cared more about Hefty and Handy than he did about me, because all I ever was to him was a son that never smurfed up to anything he was expecting of me. And with Sassette as the younger sister, things in my family smurfed really ugly and I didn't want to smurf a single thing with her, just smurfed along with everyone thinking that she could never be a real Smurf because she was a girl.

Reporter: That was a terrible thing we all smurfed with Sassette, which was how she ended up smurfing away from home and being trapped in a crystal for 100 years until she was released, and when she was released, we all forgot that who she really was until that witch Avengelica started smurfing around with her mind. But what did you think about when you lost your parents to that disease that left all of us as orphans for Empath's Papa Smurf to raise as his own?

Grouchy: I thought Empath's Papa Smurf was going to be just like my own...only caring about the Smurfs that he finds the most useful and leaving the rest of us to smurf for ourselves. I didn't like it when he picked Hefty to be his assistant leader, even if Papa Smurf knew very little about leading a village entirely by himself at the time. Hefty still treated me the same way as he did before my own Papa Smurf passed away, and nothing really changed for me. I really felt at the time that I just wanted to smurf all by myself.

Reporter: And then Empath smurfed to the village for the first time, and both you and him started to become friends, from what I heard.

Grouchy: Not at first. I thought he was going to turn out to be like all the other Smurfs in the village, so I just smurfed back and watched Empath smurfing about how things in the Smurf Village smurf. I could smurf that he didn't like knowing that he was a Smurf, which was pretty strange for any Smurf. But over time he got used to the idea that this is who and what he is, so he might as well smurf the best of it and know everything there is to know about being a Smurf. He kept smurfing after me, and I was trying to smurf my distance from him because I had no idea what he wanted from me. And then he caught me smurfing the birds out in the forest, and I didn't like that he was smurfing into my private business, even though he apologized for doing so. But then Hefty and some other Smurfs were smurfing me around again, with Hefty wanting me to smurf the outhouses with my tongue, and then Empath shows up and tells Hefty to smurf off or he will tell Papa Smurf what's smurfing on, and Hefty and the other Smurfs back away. I didn't know whether to thank Empath for smurfing up for me or to hate him.

Reporter: But you did open up to Empath and decided to become his friend.

Grouchy: I thought if any Smurf was going to be my friend, it was going to be him. Surprisingly, I also found out that Tapper wanted to be my friend as well, and I was always wondering why with him until I finally tried out his sarsaparilla ale, and then he and Empath became the only Smurfs in the village that I could ever feel comfortable smurfing around because they know how to smurf things private and never really wanted anything from me. When Hefty decided that he was going to try bullying Empath and was beating the smurf out of him when he couldn't get Empath to cower before him, I finally stood up against Hefty and protected Empath from his abuse, letting him know that I was going to tell Papa Smurf on him for what he did to Empath. Hefty really didn't like that moment, but I was glad that my jerk of a big brother finally smurfed the message.

Reporter: It's surprising how much has changed from that moment, even if Hefty as a different Smurf nowadays still doesn't like remembering it.

Grouchy: I don't really see much of Hefty that has changed, Reporter. He still acts like he's the big Smurf around the village, but then he has Duncan McSmurf to deal with because Duncan doesn't take smurf from any Smurf. He knows when Hefty smurfs too big for his britches and isn't afraid to smurf him out on it. Hefty doesn't like Duncan all that much and just keeps calling him Gutsy for his attitude. He's one of the few Smurfs that I like around here. He isn't afraid to smurf things how it is.

Reporter: But even with Tapper and Duncan around, you still had difficulty trying to smurf out of your shell when it comes to expressing yourself.

Grouchy: It's just the way that I am. Baby Smurf, when he first smurfed to the village a few years before Empath smurfed home for good, didn't mind that I was Grouchy and still loved me. I never felt that loved by any Smurf before, and I felt that if there was any Smurf I would fully smurf my love for, it was Baby Smurf. Of course, the last thing I would want Baby Smurf to be is Grouchy Junior, because this village already has enough trouble dealing with one Grouchy Smurf. However, when that stork came to smurf Baby Smurf back to his parents on Smurfling Island, I really didn't want to give up Baby Smurf and so I smurfed off into the forest with him, hoping that the stork would smurf off and the parents would forget about their child and not bother us. But soon I had to return to the village and surrender Baby Smurf, which was what I hated to do. I felt that my heart was being smurfed out when the stork smurfed off with Baby Smurf and that would be the last I would ever smurf of the little tyke. Fortunately, Smurfette wrote a letter to the parents, telling them how unfair and unsmurfy it was to have a child that would never grow up in a world where nobody ever ages, to deny the child a chance to grow up, and the parents realized Smurfette was right and smurfed Baby Smurf back to us so that we would love him as our own child.

Reporter: That part was pretty amazing, Grouchy. So what's going on with you and Empath now?

Grouchy: Not much, because Empath is so busy as the assistant counselor dealing with every Smurf's problems besides my own, not to mention having to oversmurf everything whenever Papa Smurf is busy in his laboratory or off smurfing Homnibus or something. I do try to meet up with Empath at Tapper's Tavern every now and then to smurf up on things and to smurf a glass of sarsaparilla ale. But he's got other things in his life to deal with, one of them being Smurfette, who I see really loves him, and that just makes me jealous...no offense, Empath.

Empath: None taken, Grouchy.

Reporter: Yeah, it does seem that every Smurf has smurfed notice that Empath and Smurfette have become an item for the past two years now.

Grouchy: The thing is, I do love Smurfette, but I'm just too uncomfortable when it smurfs to letting her know how much I feel and care for her. I try not to act so cold around her whenever we smurf together, but it's always "I hate this" and "I hate that". It's like I could never smurf past saying that, and I never want Smurfette to feel so offended smurfing around me when I smurf what's on my mind.

Reporter: If anything, I get the impression that Smurfette does care about you, as she does for every Smurf.

Grouchy: I know she does, Reporter. I just get this feeling about her, but I hate that I can't let her know about it.

Reporter: Do you think you'd ever find anyone else, like, say, another village that has female Smurfs, that would care for you specifically, that you would want to settle down with, smurf a future?

Grouchy: I wouldn't know what to hate...either not finding somebody like Smurfette who would care for me, or finding a Smurfette who is just like me and would hate me more than they would love me. I'm afraid of what I will find if we happen to smurf across another group of Smurfs that are all females. But I do try to practice how to talk to a female whenever I'm in the Imaginarium, so I wouldn't be at a loss for words for what to smurf. I just hope that the last words that would ever smurf from my mouth to a female Smurf that I would want to marry someday is "I hate you".

Reporter: That would really put a smurf in your relationship, Grouchy. Is there anything else you would want to talk about?

Grouchy: Yeah, about that story I smurfed from Narrator the other day. It surprised me to find out how talkative this Grouchy Smurf is that he met in the story, that he was a constant complainer about everything. I never knew that I would smurf anything like that, because I'm one of those Smurfs that hardly say anything around here. The most anyone will get out of me is "I hate". Anyway, in that story, I get smurfed through a portal that opened up in a waterfall near the Smurf Village, and me, Clumsy, Brainy, Smurfette, Papa Smurf, and this Gutsy character wind up in this place called New York City. I mean, smurfing from the descriptions, this human village was huge, with castle towers smurfing to the sky, and all these horseless carriages smurfing around on the streets -- it makes me wonder if I'll ever smurf something like that. Smurfing back to the story, Clumsy gets lost and we have to smurf after him, and we find him in the mushroom of this Patrick and Grace Winslow, who didn't know what the smurf we are because nobody in their world knew what a Smurf is.

Reporter: I've heard that story being mentioned by a few Smurfs now.

Grouchy: Well, we were smurfing for a stargazer because Papa Smurf wanted to smurf the alignment of the stars so that we could smurf home, which at first we thought Patrick smurfed one in his office at work because Brainy thought he was a fortune teller. So when we smurfed to his office, Papa Smurf thought it would be a smurfy idea to start singing the Smurf song, and me in the story was thinking, "Oh, Smurf, please, not the Smurf song! Not the Smurf song!" As it turned out, we didn't find a stargazer until we smurfed this place called FAO Schwarz, and that was where I -- or rather, me in the story -- smurfed in love with this lady in green who wouldn't smurf anything. At this point, I was rolling my eyes, wondering who smurfed up with this idea in the story. But then Gargamel smurfs up with this Smurf sucker-upper thing and smurfs up me, Brainy, and Grouchy with it, and he would have smurfed up Smurfette and Papa Smurf, but he ended up smurfing up Azrael, and it got smurfed up until Patrick made the thing smurf from suck to blow, which released me and my fellow Smurfs, so we escaped.

Reporter: I could only imagine what happened to Gargamel at that point, Grouchy.

Grouchy: Gargamel gets smurfed by the guards and gets smurfed to this dungeon somewhere in New York City where they smurf all the bad humans. But then he escapes and smurfs back to his hideout in Central Park where he smurfs more of this Smurf essence so he could smurf after us. Meanwhile, we were still smurfing with Patrick and his wife Grace, and we were smurfing this game called Guitar Hero -- I didn't know whether that was music or a game. Patrick finally smurfs up with the ad that he needed for the company he smurfs for and is ready to smurf it to his boss, but then Clumsy ends up smurfing it with a different image -- the blue moon -- and that smurfs up on all the billboards the following morning, and that really made Patrick so angry that he was smurfing up a storm in Smurf. Yeah, sometimes what Clumsy does would make me want to smurf like that as well.

Reporter: Or what Jokey does, which at the time when we had the Kaplowey Scroll you made disappear by accident.

Grouchy: Jokey just doesn't know when to quit when it comes to smurfing under my skin. So anyway, smurfing back to my story, we smurfed this bookstore, where he smurfed the magic book that contained the spell for smurfing the blue moon so we could open up the portal and smurf home, and then Gargamel smurfs up again and captures Papa Smurf and smurfs him back to his hideout where he's about to get his Smurf essence completed smurfed. We smurf back to Patrick's mushroom to tell him and Grace what happened to Papa Smurf, and Clumsy decides that we're going to save him. I didn't think Clumsy would have the smurfs to smurf such a daring rescue, but I wasn't going to leave Papa Smurf behind and neither was anyone else, so we smurfed together to this Belvedere Castle and Brainy smurfs open the portal and brings all the Smurfs left behind through it where they all gather together and attack Gargamel while Smurfette rescues Papa Smurf. And then Gutsy smurfs this dragon wand out of Gargamel's hands only to drop it, and Clumsy smurfs a daring leap to catch the wand before Gargamel smurfed it, and we thought that was going to smurf the end of us, but to our surprise Clumsy catches the wand and uses it to smurf Gargamel far beyond the park, and we all got to smurf our goodbyes to Patrick and Grace before we smurfed home.

Reporter: The way you smurf the story, Grouchy, it's like you've been there all along.

Grouchy: I know it really wasn't me in the story, Reporter. It's just what I heard from Narrator, because he has the tendency to smurf up in other people's stories. I could only wonder what I would be like if I were able to smurf that.

Reporter: And with that, I think this should wrap up this installment of Inside Stories. Thanks for letting me smurf an interview with you, Grouchy.

Grouchy: I hate long interviews.