Let’s go the mall with Kiff, but then let’s get to the real meat of this episode of the Disney Channel series as we get to meet Ghost Wolf once again.
Mall Leader
Kiff and Barry are bored, but that’s not uncommon. They finally have something to do when Barry’s phone alerts him that there is a promo going on – If he brings 10 people to the mall, he gets a free pretzel. Though he got the message, he shows Kiff who takes charge and recruits 9 of her friends (after Barry of course) to go the mall. Too bad nobody else wants to go.
Thanks to Barry’s new book about leadership though, Kiff now has a few tricks up her sleeve to get the group to follow her. Namely, those tricks are Honesty, Respect, and Delegation. Almost instantly, Kiff has a gang of wide-eyed followers ready to go to the mall.
Once they arrive, they immediately head to the pretzel stand where Kiff gets the last promo pretzel of the day. Mission Accomplished.
Now what? Kiff has a cult-ish band of followers ready to whatever she asks thanks to that book, and she can’t get rid of them to enjoy her pretzel in peace. Conveniently, Helen happens to be at the mall, running a bedazzling activity cart. Helen suggests to Kiff that her followers need something stimulating and engaging, and in turn, Kiff turns all of her followers (save for Barry) into Helen’s where they all start bedazzling what turns out to be Helen’s personal belongings. Distraught, and picturing the future documentary where they all consider Kiff a terrible leader, she tries to figure out a way to break them from Helen’s leadership grasp. Turns out, there’s a fourth step in that book (which they gave to Helen) and they must now figure out what it is. It’s the only way to save their friends.
Though many attempts fail, Barry comes through once again. After all, they’re at a mall and there’s a bookstore where he gets another copy. That fourth step – Selflessness. When Kiff and Helen come face to face, Kiff shows off her selflessness and hands over her pretzel to Helen, who only wants it because it too is so salty that it looks bedazzled.
The selfless act breaks everyone from Helen and turns them back to Kiff, where she ultimately commands them to stop following her and be their own people, not taking instruction from a leader ever again. Leaving Barry (and the audience) to ask why they didn’t just do that in the first place.
Ghost Wolf’s Art
If you liked the episode “Totally Table Town” then you’re in for a treat. This episode is sort of a sequel to that episode or, at the very least, one giant callback to it. Devotees may recall that in the aforementioned episode, Kiff and her friends made a video dedicated to their hometown and got lost while doing so. It was thanks to the Ghost Wolf, who herds children to safety when lost, that they made it home safely.
In today’s episode, Kiff and Barry are ready to head back to Mount Table and figure out more of the mystery of Ghost Wolf, so they must first get themselves lost up in the mountain again. They’re plan to get lost on purpose isn’t going smoothly at first, and we are treated to some of the more mysterious aspects of the mountain. Finally, the pair stop and lean against a rock, which rotates into a secret den.
What fortune! That seems to be where the Ghost Wolf lives and as we learned from the previous episode that even though the Ghost Wolf is a snarling canine phantasm, he really does have a heart of gold. However, unlike last time, we only hear the snarls and growls for a few moments before we learn that the Ghost Wolf does know the common tongue, so we actually get to hear Ghost Wolf speak.
The first thing that caught the eyes of Barry and Kiff though is Ghost Wolf’s beautiful painting, showcasing their adventure when they got lost. Kiff thinks it’s so good, that she thinks everyone should see the art created by Ghost Wolf and wants to put on an exhibition. He doesn’t do that though, so Kiff instead twists her idea and wants ten commissioned pieces for her private collection – which she has the full intent of sharing with the public, let’s be clear.
Under the guise of the personal collection, in exchange for ten rare ferns for the Ghost Wolf to look after as payment, Kiff heads back to town to find Ghost Wolf some gallery space while Barry helps Ghost Wolf get his 10 paintings finished. Too bad Ghost Wolf has painter’s block. So, Barry asks why Ghost Wolf painted him and his friends while they were lost, what about that was so inspiring? Well, Ghost Wolf likes to observe the natural behaviors of the population, so Barry suggests they do just that. Flying together through Table Town thanks to a bit of Ghost Wolf’s magic, we are treated to a musical montage of Barry and Ghost Wolf seeing all the familiar residents we have come to know and love, but as they are both invisible while they are doing this, they are catching them at their most vulnerable moments. We see Kiff’s Dad dancing privately in the basement, Secretary Prince eating a meal….and then the plates he served it on, and we also see Roy Fox applying fake bushy eyebrows.
The ten paintings have been completed and Kiff has secured gallery space by pretending to be a prestigious art collector and not just some random kid off the street.
With the promise of the rare ferns, Ghost Wolf shows up to the gallery showing only to be terribly frightened that his art is now on display for all the world to see. Not only is it because he wasn’t expecting the public to see his art, but as he stated at the beginning of the episode, he paints the truth. And people don’t like the truth. The townspeople grow furious that everyone is seeing these beautiful artist renderings of themselves while in embarrassing situations.
However, after a moment, Ghost Wolf, Kiff, and Barry all are listening to the crowd reaction and finding that the subjects are being consoled by others who sympathize with their plight. Even Principal Secretary, who was seen in the painting stalking his ex on social media, feels less pathetic when Helen says she put GPS trackers on her ex.
The crowd seems to have turned, and Kiff jumps up, revealing herself as just some kid off of the street, and starts the bidding. We then see the Ghost Wolf taking care of a whole room full of ferns, before he asks Barry to come back to be his apprentice this summer. More Ghost Wolf and his art? Yes, Please!
This episode of Kiff is now available on Disney Channel, and the DisneyNOW app. You can catch up with earlier episodes, now streaming on Disney+.