This Week's "Kiff" is Full of Magic as We Meet a New Resident and Figure Out Helen's Spells

This week, we are provided with a very magical visit to Table Town, first with one of the magical residents of the town before Helen casts a spell…that we can’t quite figure out.

Wiz-Ed

Kiff and Barry are taking the tram to school when they encounter another of Table Town’s magical creatures, Ed. He uses spells to do just about everything, prompting Kiff and Barry to say out loud that they wish they had a magical teacher at their school to teach them spells.

Ed seems to realize that schools should have a magical teacher, but the kids explain that the only magical creature teaching at their school is Helen, and she teaches drama. After a few more minutes and spells, Kiff hires him on the spot to be a teacher and teach the kids all kinds of magic. However, Kiff isn’t in charge of the school, so they bring Ed to Principal Secretary who has a few questions before he too signs off on the new hire, giving him his own classroom full of students.

Once he begins teaching, the kids are enthralled with his information and Helen even appears in the classroom, quite jealous that kids now seem to favor Ed over her as a magical teacher.

While learning to levitate sponges in class, Trevor has the bright idea to have Ed teach them how to cast a spell to move the sponges in a circular motion.

But why? Well, at home, he can use this to help him with his chores. As he explains to the other students (without Ed knowing), he used the magic he has learned to help him out with his domestic duties and earned a little extra allowance. The kids all jump on the bandwagon and have the same results.

Back at class, the kids are suggesting new things to learn, like say moving something the size of a vacuum cleaner around say, the whole house.

Cut to a montage and we see the kids learning more magic, raking all their money, and Ed earning favor with the rest of the staff over Helen before we end up at class the next day where the kids begin to count all their cash.

Thinking they are slick, the kids’ attitude completely changes when Ed says that it’s now time to collect his fee. What fee and why? He is going to take all the money they earned using his spells since they are his intellectual property. He uses his magic to levitate all the cash and place it into his pockets before making a getaway. Clearly Ed is some kind of magical con artist, as Helen claims to have previously explained - but she didn’t.  However, after a bit of groveling, she agrees to help the kids’ money back from Ed.

As Ed is about to make his getaway on the tram, Helen arrives with all the kids in tow and challenges him to a wizard’s duel. Ed, now covered in gold swag after exchanging all the kids’ money, accepts the duel. Helen casts a major spell, but Ed deflects it with one of his new gold chains and unfortunately, it seems that that was the only move that Helen had, so she gives up.

The kids know a bit of magic themselves now, and unite together to bring an army of sponges from all over Table Town to their location, trapping Ed in a pile of cleaning supplies. Helen returns to help now that Ed is defenseless, and casts a spell sending him far out of town, after rounding up all the gold swag of course.

Barry asks if they should take it all to a pawn shop, but Helen will always Helen and says that she promised to get the allowances back, but she was never going to give the cash back to the kids. It was a lesson that she is and always will be the best.

Except at driving, because she immediately drove off a nearby dock and into the water. She’s okay, but she lost all the gold swag to the dolphins. Surely there’s a lesson there, too.

Mystery Spell

I have said before that Kiff is an “Adult Swim" show in disguise…but every now and then I am reminded that it is, in fact, geared toward a target demo on Disney Channel. Mystery Spell is just that reminder as it opens with the kids in Helen’s classroom, with the kids entertained by Barry doing hand fart noises.

This goes on for a bit, but Helen eventually has enough. She has a lesson about mirrors to get through and is done with Barry’s shenanigans, warning him not to do it again. Barry knows that he can usually get away with such antics so he challenges her once again with another hand fart, causing Helen to erupt and cast a spell - spell #134 to be precise.

As the spell launches at Barry, Kiff pushes him out of the way, attempting to save him. Turns out both are saved…for the moment, as the spell bounces around the room, thanks in large part to all the mirrors populating the space. Eventually, the pair of them are hit together and are both subject to the spell.

Now that the spell has been cast, what has happened? Apparently nothing. But this spell obviously has to do something, right?

They have no idea, and Kiff even crafts a list just to cross things out, describing what the spell might have done. This goes on for most of the day, experimenting with what the spell could have been. Even worse, they wonder if the spell will make everything taste like Eggplant Parm, so they spend a large portion of the day (and episode) trying different foods and eventually actually tasting eggplant parm, which is quite disgusting it seems.

Finally, the kids retreat back to Helen trying to figure out what she did to them, and she is sick of their questions, adding that their interrogation is reminiscent of her sister, Agnes, who is always asking what spells do what and making lists.

Wait, so that means if someone knew what Spell #134 is, it would be Agnes! Kiff and Barry set out to find her at her local drycleaning shop and discover that Agnes does have a directory…and it’s a part of her drycleaning carousel. So, she punches in various numbers trying to retrieve it, as the spells are on the drycleaning tags - oh, and they’re not in order.

They all look through various options, and eventually find the tag for spell #134, which has a number of things on it, all crossed off. Just like their original list.

This causes the kids to think that everything is crossed out because the spell never worked in the first place, especially since Helen couldn’t remember it when they asked. Alas, as the kids conclude the spell never worked, we see them happily walking down the street, but it seems that their tails have been swapped.

Does anybody else want to go back and watch again to see if they’ve been like this the whole time?

This episode of Kiff is now available on Disney Channel and the DisneyNOW website. Some season two episodes are expected to arrive on Disney+ this summer, where you can already find all of Season One.