Kiff is a 2023 animated musical comedy series created by Lucy Heavens and Nic Smal and produced by Disney Television Animation and Titmouse. The series stars the voices of Kimiko Glenn and H. Michael Croner.
Glenn plays the titular character, a squirrel with a zest for life, whose good intentions often cause chaos in her community, a mountain town inhabited by magical creatures and ordinary animals alike. The series premiered on Disney Channel March 10, 2023.
No, it is not a spinoff vehicle for one Kif Kroker. You spell his name with one "f".
Previews: Teaser
, Theme Song, Trailer
Kiff includes the following examples:
- Acquired Situational Narcissism: Helen in "Pool Party". When she thinks her dancing will get her on TV, she becomes full of herself, to the point where she responds to Kiff trying to warn her that Roy Fox is just going to humiliate her by claiming that Kiff is jealous.
- A.I. Is a Crapshoot: In “If You Mow, You Mow,” Kiff builds a robot to help her mow the lawn. The robot questions its purpose, connects to the Internet to learn, gains self-awareness, and immediately decides to destroy the world; luckily the whole thing turns out to be an Imagine Spot.
- …And That Little Girl Was Me: Inverted in "Halfway There Day". Kiff recounts the story of Beverly in rather unflattering terms to a stranger, only to awkwardly learn that the woman she's talking to is Beverly.
- Apathetic Teacher: Helen, Kiff and Barry's drama teacher, doesn't even try to pretend she cares about her students.
- Artistic License – Law: In "Hungee Squirrel" Ma and Pa Saddles trick Kiff into signing a contract allowing them to use her likeness by disguising it as a maze puzzle. In reality, the contract would be legally invalid due to the signer being tricked, as well as a minor.
- Babysitting Episode: "Maybe-sitting" has Kiff trying to get into a babysitting society but needs babysitting experience, so she shadows Terri and Harry while they babysit Kirstophe. However, Terri and Harry just sit around reading magazines, so Kiff makes them believe that Kristophe went missing to teach them a lesson. Unfortunately, Kristophe goes missing for real (he's really playing in the closet), and things just escalate from there.
- Beach Episode: The appropriately-named “Beach Day” sees the Chatterleys and Barry visiting the beach. Martin asks to be buried in the sand, but he’s forgotten about when the others get caught up in their own problems; Kiff becomes convinced that a seagull stole her fries and becomes obsessed with capturing her, and Beryl encounters her old volleyball rival and gets dragged into a rematch. The three plots converge when Martin is forced to burrow free to escape the tide, disrupting the match when he accidentally burrows into the court, while Kiff and Barry’s attempts to catch the fry thief unravel the volleyball net (and destroy much of the beach).
- Big Brother Instinct: Barry and his older siblings are all this towards Kristophe. When Harry and Terri think he's gone missing in "Maybe Sitting", they tear apart the house looking for him. Neither Harry nor Terri show much of this towards Barry, though.
- Broken Record: The theme song:Kiff, Kiff, Kiff!Kiff, Kiff, Kiff, Kiff!
- Bumbling Dad: Kiff's father, Martin, isn't all that bright. In "Thirst to be the First", his wife writes "Kiff is tricking you" with magnetic letters on the fridge, to remind him of Kiff's desire to go to school rather than stay home and get well.
- Continuity Nod: In that same episode, she removes some of the letters so that it says "Kiff is king yo". That message remains on the fridge in the following episodes.
- In "Pool Party" Barry needs Helen to cast a spell on him so he can swim. In "Sun's Out Buns Out" he still can't swim and finally learns how.
- Couch Gag: Each episode opens with its title on a billboard and a mention of the episode's sponsor.
- "Could Have Avoided This!" Plot:
- In "You Can't Handle the Tooth" Kiff wastes her and Barry's day trying to get out of brushing her tooth instead of just doing it when her mom told her to.
- In "Beach Day" Kiff could have avoided having her fries stolen if she ate them during the drive to the beach. She also could have avoided causing chaos on the beach with her revenge plan by instead getting her parents to help get her fries back or buy more.
- Courtroom Episode: "Chatterley vs. Chatterley", where Martin is accused of eating the last slice of pizza, so a trial is set up, with Kiff as the defense lawyer and Barry as the prosecution lawyer. In reality, Kiff was the one who ate the last slice, and the trial was set up to get her to confess.
- Cringe Comedy: In "Friendship In The Time Of Cheese Caves" when Candle tries too hard to be fun while on a game show, leaving the audience cringing and herself humiliated.
- Curse Cut Short: Upon seeing Scarm in "Trevor's Rockin' Halloween Bash", Kiff says "What the actual.."
- Detention Episode: In "Life on the Inside", Kiff gets sent to detention for leaving her seat while Miss Deer was away (which she only did trying to keep the others back in their seats). While there, she formulates a plan to escape using the knowledge she got from being a good student. This inspires the other kids in detention to become better students.
- Devastating Remark: In "Foreverangees" Kiff and Barry are afflicted with a curse that causes friends to argue until they turn their backs to each other and turn to stone, and they exchange barbs throughout the episode, but one comment from Kiff hits Barry particularly hard.Kiff: I literally can't remember why we were ever friends!Barry: Were?
- Disappeared Dad: Barry's father is nowhere to be seen.
- The Door Slams You: Near the beginning of "Thirst To Be The First", Kiff absent-mindedly slams open a classroom door into the face of a passer-by.
- Deranged Animation: Shown in the teaser mainly through Kiff’s expressions, such as the ways her face shrinks and scrunches.
- Ear Notch: Kiff has a visible bite taken out of her left ear.
- Fictional Holiday: July 2 is celebrated as Halfway There Day, because it's the halfway point of the year. The citizens of Tabletown celebrate by taking things easy and doing everything halfway; this is tough for Kiff, who gives everything 100% and has trouble giving only 50%. It also counts as You Mean "Xmas", since the holiday's key figure is a centaur that looks and acts like Santa Claus.
- Flashback Effects: In "Be Still My Harp", Barry gets stuck in a harp, and every time someone tries to pull him out, the sound of the strings cause them to have a flashback and get stuck there. Kiff figures out that pulling Barry in the opposite direction reverses the effect and snaps them back to reality.
- Gilligan Cut: In "Ghost Wolf's Art", Kiff wants to know how to find Ghost Wolf, who herds lost kids to safety.Barry: "It's not like we can get lost on purpose."(Cut to him and Kiff out in the woods)Barry: (looking shocked and sounding unnerved) "...I regret my choice of words."
- Grocery Store Episode: "Weekly Grocery Shop", in which the Chatterleys go on their weekly shopping trip. Martin forgot his shopping list and can't think of what to buy, Beryl is busy collecting coupons and keeps having awkward encounters with Helen, and Kiff deals with an employee at the free sample station who won't give kids samples.
- Halfway Plot Switch: "Hungee Squirrel" is at first about Kiff dealing with unwanted fame after becoming a meme, but after Trevor becomes the new meme the story switches to being about Kiff trying to get out of a contract that Ma and Pa Saddles tricked her into signing. Though the original plot comes back into play in the end when Kiff gets some Hungee Squirrel fans to help her pull off her scheme.
- Halloween Episode: "Trevor's Rockin' Halloween Bash". Kiff and Barry go to a Halloween party, where Barry accidentally frees Scarm, a demonic creature who devours candy and turns people into Halloween decorations. It's up to Kiff and Barry to stop him before he takes over the world.
- Hilarious Outtakes: "Blooper Quest" has Kiff make a movie just for the bloopers, only for each and every take to come out perfect. She only succeeds while accepting an award for said movie.
- Horrifying Hero: Ghost Wolf, who frightens lost children as a way to heard them to safety, as Kiff and company find out in "Totally Table Town".
- Hypocritical Humor: In "You Can't Handle the Tooth" Kiff mutters under her breath that her mom is being stubborn in trying to make her brush her tooth when Kiff herself is being stubborn in refusing to brush her tooth.
- Instant Humiliation: Just Add YouTube!: The entire premise of "Hungee Squirrel" revolves around that.
- I Want You to Meet an Old Friend of Mine: In “Lost and Found”, Kiff and Barry are trying to track down the author of a journal. After a couple of false leads, Miss Deer Teacher points them towards her old classmate, Rob Sadly. The two are voiced by Deedee Magno Hall and Tom Scharpling, who respectively played Pearl and Greg on Steven Universe.
- Karma Houdini: In "Beach Day", the seagull kid gets away with stealing Kiff's fries.
- Legacy Seeker: In "Thirst to be the First", Kiff dreams of going down in history by being the first to get a drink from the school's new drinking fountain.
- Level Ate: The Cheese Caves, a series of caves made of various cheeses.
- Mathematician's Answer: In "Brunch DJ", Principal Secretary takes Kiff and Barry out of class.Barry: Are we in trouble?
Principal Secretary: No, you're in the hallway. - Meat-O-Vision: In "Snow More Ketchup", Barry goes insane from lack of ketchup and sees Kiff, Reggie and Candle as bottles of ketchup.
- Memetic Mutation: Happens to Kiff in-universe in the episode “Hungee Squirrel” when a photo of her opening her mouth ridiculously wide to eat a burger goes viral.
- Must Be Invited: Scarm from "Trevor's Rockin' Halloween Bash" has to be invited to wreak havoc on the world. Barry, who has no idea who he really is, gives him a party invitation, which Scarm then swallows. The way to defeat him is to go inside and retrieve the invitation before trapping him back in the book.
- No Celebrities Were Harmed: The sheep student in “Life on the Inside” is based on Christopher Walken.
- Odd Name Out: The Buns clan consists of Mary, Harry, Terri, Barry...and Kristophe.
- Our Demons Are Different: Scarm is a demon accidentally summoned by Barry on Halloween. He must be handed an invitation to fully manifest, and can be banished if the summoner takes back the invitation and opens the book used to summon him. His particular style of mayhem involves crashing Halloween parties, eating all the candy (and any unlucky people who happen to be dressed as candy) and turning people into decorations.
- Our Slogan Is Terrible: The Couch Gag billboard advertisements are full of these.
- "Brought to you by Dooley's Feather Barn. If it's stinky, it's a Dooley's."
- "Brought to you by Café Penguino. When you're here, you're at a restaurant."
- "Brought to you by Delfman's Dry Bread. Want Moisture? Go jump in a lake! We're bread!"
- "Brought to you by Foldman's Funky Beet Juice. It's supposed to taste like that."
- Overly Long Scream: In "Sun's Out, Buns Out", Barry screams a long time when he relives the first time he was in a pool and was almost grabbed by "The Terrible" (actually his sister Terry pranking him). He even pauses a couple of times to take a breath before resuming screaming.
- Paper-Thin Disguise: In "Kiff and Barry Go to Prom", Trevor tries to sneak into prom wearing nothing but a fake mustache and claiming to be the band drummer. It somehow works, and Trevor is even crowned prom king.
- Pool Episode:
- The aptly-named episode "Pool Party".
- Most of “Sun’s Out, Buns Out” is set at the Buns’ backyard pool, as the plot revolves around the kids trying to help Barry overcome his fear of swimming.
- The Prom Plot: "Kiff and Barry Go to Prom" has Kiff, Barry and Trevor sneak into senior prom to witness all the drama.
- Properly Paranoid: In "Beach Day", Kiff sees a seagull kid following her around and thinks she's after her fries. Sure enough, the seagull steals her fries the moment her back is turned.
- Red Oni, Blue Oni: Kiff and Barry respectively.
- Riddle for the Ages:
- How did Kiff get that notch in her ear? All that's known is she wasn't born with it, as several flashbacks have shown a younger Kiff without it.
- What is Kiff's real name? In "Nicknames" she finds out what it is, but it's never revealed to the viewers.
- What was The Great Rubber Boom of The Southern Continent? Many episodes make reference to the event but it isn't explained.
- Rule of Three: Invoked by Kiff in “Lost and Found”:Kiff: All good stories have three things, and here we are at the third thing!
- Sealed Evil in a Can: Scarm, the villain in "Trevor's Rockin' Halloween Bash", had been sealed in a book for thousands of years. Barry unwittingly frees him by reading an incantation in the book; once he realizes what he's done, he and Kiff have to retrap him in the book.
- School Play: "The Sound of Helen" has Helen stage a musical that she wrote, which is all about how great she is.
- Snowed-In: "Snow More Ketchup" is about Kiff, Barry and several Tabletownians trapped in Mr. Fox's mansion during a snowstorm. They have plenty of French fries but no ketchup, and Kiff leads a mission to find a secret stash of expensive ketchup that Mr. Fox keeps hidden.
- Springtime for Hitler: "Blooper Quest" has Kiff wanting to make bloopers after seeing them at the end of a movie. She goes to the trouble of making her own movie, but absolutely no one messes up their scenes. Even when she makes it more difficult, every take comes out flawless. Eventually the movie is a huge success and wins Kiff dozens of awards. While giving her acceptance speech, she considers herself a failure because all she wanted to do was make bloopers. And then she messes up her speech by saying "This is the worst day of my wife." The audience cracks up, and Kiff is finally happy, especially after she keeps messing up her speech.
- Thin-Line Animation: One of the the clearest examples from Disney Television since Gravity Falls. Kiff and the supporting cast are made up of simple shapes, complete with noodly limbs, with Kiff herself being the most expressive of the cast.
- The Thing That Would Not Leave: In “Fun Uncle Pat”, Martin’s brother Pat moves in after his landlord/girlfriend evicts him/breaks up with him. Martin is not looking forward to this since Pat has a tendency to make a nuisance of himself by constantly asking everyone if they need anything, and while Kiff is looking forward to spending time with him, she soon grows tired of him taking over her room, eating all her favorite snacks, and deleting her shows off the DVR to make room for his own. While her efforts to get his girlfriend to take him back fail, she eventually finds him a job as a cruise ship director, where his habit of pestering people to ask if they need anything is actually useful.
- Trend Aesop: In "Fresh Outta Gramdmas", the kids at Table Town School keep getting obsessed with collecting fads that they forget about as soon as they go to the next one. When Kiff and the others are working on their family trees, they become obsessed with having the most grandmas, which they soon turn into a collecting game where they "collect" grandmothers. When the last grandma finds out and gets combative, Kiff realizes that they have treated the grandmothers like disposable collectables.
- Troll Bridge: In "Everyday I'm Riddlin' Riddlin'", Kiff and Barry find a troll, named Trollie, under a bridge in the Outskorts, lonely because no one crosses his bridge so he can ask them a riddle. Kiff decides to move him to the busiest bridge in town so he can be happy. Unfortunately, Trollie's riddles aren't very good, and he keeps throwing people who don't solve them into a mud pit. In the end, the problem is solved when Trollie is tricked into building a second bridge that then gets used for normal commuting, while the original bridge is kept for the occasional person who wants to solve one of Trollie's riddles.
- Two Shorts: Like a majority of animated shows, an episode of Kiff consists of two 11-minute segments.
- Vile Villain, Saccharine Show: While most antagonists are either merely jerks rather than outright villains or don't go too far beyond the standard level of villainy expected for this type of Zany Cartoon, Scarm from the Halloween special while by no means lacking in comedic traits is played as a far more serious threat to both the characters and the entire world.
- Wall of Text: At the end of "Totally Table Town", Ghost Wolf's howl is translated as this for comedic effect. Also doubles as a Freeze-Frame Bonus, as it shows up for no more than two seconds.Ghost Wolf: "I wander a lonely path in this afterlife, and yet these children have taught me the power of civic pride. Perhaps one day I will leave my dark woods and try my paw at painting, perhaps meet someone. But for now, I must go, the cries of lost children echo in my wolf ears."
- In "Friendship in the Time of Cheese Caves", Candle is embarrassed of sending Trevor a "chunky text" that goes on and on. At the end, Kiff herself sends Candle a long text after discovering that Candle and Trevor made fun of her swim shorts.
- World of Funny Animals: Kiff’s world is one populated by anthropomorphic animals and birds, along with some humanoid mythical creatures such as centaurs, fauns and goblins.
- "YEAH!" Shot: The title sequence ends with one. And then Kiff unfreezes and tickles Barry.
