This week’s episode of Kiff just proves how badly we need that official soundtrack from the show, thanks to some awkward tension between Candle and Trevor.
Friendship in the time of Cheese Caves
Kiff and all her classmates are holding a car wash to raise money so they can go to the landmark Cheese Caves. Everyone is getting along swimmingly, except for the sales time, made up of Trevor and Candle who have no chemistry or connection. After a bit of inspiration, it seems that the two have connected somehow and are getting along.
Cut to the next week, where we see the class head to the Cheese Caves, which features a roller coaster with a lift hill that is steeper than its first drop, I guess that can happen. It’s not common. Anyway, suddenly Candle and Trevor once again want nothing to do with each other. What did Trevor do?
Well, Miss Deer Teacher assigns partner groups and Candle is with Kiff and Barry is with Trevor. While Kiff is with her it comes out very quickly that Candle did something pretty serious to push Trevor away.
Candle does nothing to share what has happened, but Kiff is doing her best to try and repair their broken friendship, and encourages her to participate in a spot-on send up of The Price is Right, “The Cost of Cheese.” This way, Candle can prove to Trevor that she knows how to have fun and hanging out with her will be fun and entertaining. The plan seems to be working until Candle has a bit of a breakdown on stage screaming her name and the word “fun” loudly in Trevor’s direction.
After that plan backfires they head to pick more cheese in a cave where Candle frustratedly causes a cave-in, and relents while she and Kiff are trapped. In one of the series’s best musical numbers, we learn that Candle sent Trevor a “Chunky Text,” a paragraphs-long exposition about how great their friendship could be in a single message.
That’s it?! Kiff runs to Trevor to say everybody does that, and in doing so, gets to see the message that was sent. Another brilliant musical moment sees a very obvious parody of Sarah McLachlan’s “Arms of an Angel” while Kiff reads the text. Yeah it’s bad, but she reads the texts that came before it where she finds out that two originally connected by making fun of her very loud shorts that she was wearing at the car wash.
In turn, Kiff decides to send Candle a chunky text herself, explaining how fashionable the shorts are. It's at this moment that Trevor understands that everybody does it and goes to forgive Candle, and it seems that even on the bus ride home, Kiff is still writing her chunky text.
Soup Opera
Kiff is in class when the bell rings and Miss Deer Teacher forgets to assign homework, after all, she has a date tonight. Back at home, Kiff is bored and watching a logo bounce around a screen (haven’t we all?) until her Dad comes in and pops on his favorite soap opera, Smoldering Cove. There, the main character who happens to look a lot like and have the same initials as Miss Deer Teacher, and she has a date tonight too! In the show, the date goes seemingly poorly when soup is spilled until the deer character spills soup on herself to make up for it and make the date better.
The next day at school, Kiff hear’s Miss Deer Teacher telling Secretary Prince about her date and it is identical to the one she witnessed on Smoldering Cove. Except for the reciprocal soup, so Kiff suggests she goes back to her date, Dante, and spills soup on herself in front of him. Sure enough, it works, and we are then treated to a week’s worth of dates that parallel what Kiff sees on Smoldering Cove with her dad.
Finally, on Friday, Miss Deer Teacher has another date, but Dante has asked her to go to a secluded cabin for a nice surprise, but she has to bring all her personal records too. Suspicious already, Kiff watches tonight’s episode to find out that the deer character in the show was kidnapped and held hostage until the date could steal her identity. But it ends on a cliffhanger, and Kiff doesn’t know what to do. Kiff recruits her Dad to go save Miss Deer Teacher from what is about to happen.
Once there, Kiff and her Dad break down—um, er, carefully disassemble the door— and then find out that Dante’s big surprise was to do her taxes for her. Her sleeping in the chair wasn’t due to any kind of soap opera shenanigans, but because she was watching someone do taxes. The thrill.
Miss Deer Teacher openly admits that Dante isn’t the one, but she has learned that she needs to love herself first, and goes on a solo date to Cafe Penguino (no sign of DJ 1130 this time though), and Barry is there coaching someone on their own dating life with his own Smoldering Cove notebook.
This episode of Kiff is now available on Disney Channel and the DisneyNOW app. You can also catch up with earlier episodes on Disney+.