They love me! They really love me!
Helen, "The Sound of Helen"
Helen is a supporting character in the series Kiff. She is a drama teacher at Table Town Middle School whose students include Kiff Chatterley and Barry Buns, who often find themselves crossing paths with her in their adventures.
Profile[]
Helen teaching.
Helen is a witch who works as a drama teacher at Table Town Middle School, where her students include Kiff Chatterley and Barry Buns, along with the rest of Miss Deer Teacher's class. Helen lives in her home in Table Town together with her ghostly great-great-great-grandmother, and she has one sister, Agnes. Helen's egomaniacal personality is almost always on full display, and often gets in the way of her ability to not only teach, but function as an upstanding member of society.
Helen is indicated to be at least 400 years old in "Personal Assistant". In "Big Barry on Campus", when she complains about her faculty ID displaying her age as 712 (which she then changes to a false age of 217), even her own boss, Principal Secretary, shows uncertainty about exactly how old Helen is.
Appearance[]
Helen is a tall and slender humanoid witch with light green skin and long, light blue hair. She has yellow eyes, pointed ears, a pointed nose, and a round torso. For clothing, Helen typically wears a black dress, a black witch hat, a brown belt with a gold buckle, and black boots.
Personality[]
Helen in a rage.
Brash and self-absorbed, Helen frequently antagonizes others with her rude and dismissive attitude. Her negative reputation around Table Town is such that she has been consistently rejected for the Table Town Humanitarian of the Year award (and banned from its award ceremony) due to having "never done a single kind thing for anyone", though Helen rejects this characterization as "political".[1] She once took a career test whose results recommended that she "should be kept away from society as a remote lighthouse keeper".[1]
Helen casting a spell.
Being a witch, Helen is capable of all sorts of magic and spells, which can variously prove to be a hindrance or a benefit to those around her. Helen's inflated sense of self sometimes leads her to manipulate others, including Kiff and Barry, for her own ends, and she is perfectly willing to resort to tactics such as theft, trickery, and blackmail to get her way. Nevertheless, Helen's acquaintances mostly put up with her and perceive her as more of a nuisance than a threat. Indeed, Helen's schemes rarely escalate to anything particularly serious, mostly due to her own apathy and laziness. She is also prone to baffling moments of gullibility, such as getting into a conflict with Beryl in "Weekly Grocery Shop" after inexplicably forgetting who Beryl and Kiff are.
Helen fantasizing about becoming famous.
As a teacher, Helen is prone to belittling her students and sleeping on the job. She has ambitions of one day quitting teaching and making it in the entertainment industry, a conquest that she pursues in her free time, with her own mother as her manager.[4] She manages to impress Roy Fox in an audition in "Pool Party", only to learn that he wants to feature her in a humiliating TV show called Table Town's Cringiest Wannabes. In "Principal Helen", Helen, in an attempt to score a role in the film Hot Principal, gets herself temporarily promoted to acting principal for method acting purposes. As an additional side hustle, she operates Be Dazzled!, a part-time bedazzling business.[5]
Helen is fond of musical theater and has written several musicals centered around herself, including CinderHelen and The Sound of Helen (posters for which are displayed around her classroom), and the one-woman show Here Comes Helen.[6] In "The Sound of Helen", she manages to blackmail Principal Secretary into funding a school production of The Sound of Helen, only to quit as director when her class criticizes her plotless, self-centered script.
Helen demonstrating her dancing abilities.
Helen is also a highly skilled dancer. She nearly won the position of third alternate on the TV show Dancing on the Tables, only to lose the spot to Tuft Pierre's Principal Swan due to an unexplained "incident", which Helen remains bitter about.[7] In "Principal Dance Socks", Helen gets her revenge by magically making Principal Secretary mirror her dancing during his dance-off against Principal Swan, leading him and Table Town Middle School to victory.
Relationships[]
Kiff Chatterley and Barry Buns[]
Helen teaming up with Kiff and Barry.
Helen is a recurring presence in Kiff and Barry's adventures, with her selfishness often putting herself at odds with the duo. Her various offenses have included accidentally getting Barry sent to high school;[8] stealing Barry's "confidence hat" to wear it for social media likes;[9] having Kiff and Barry's brainwashed classmates bedazzle items for her;[5] making Kiff her personal assistant by magically altering Kiff's career test recommendation;[1] and trapping her students in her laptop so she can take the day off to go shopping.[10]
Helen watching Kiff and her classmates stage My Fair Helen.
Nonetheless, Helen has also frequently assisted Kiff and Barry, typically by performing spells for them, and the two are willing to maintain a friendly relationship with Helen despite their frequent conflicts with her. In her debut appearance in "Pool Party", Helen, in exchange for a meeting with Roy Fox, casts a spell at Kiff's request to help Barry swim. However, she undoes the spell when Kiff, trying to prevent Helen from being humiliated on TV, sabotages Helen's shoot with Roy. When Helen later realizes Kiff's good intentions, she musters up enough humility to thank Kiff. The three later team up in "The Five Pigeons of the Acapellapocalypse" to save Table Town from the episode's titular antagonists. In "Two for One Hot Dogs", Helen performs a time reversal spell for Kiff and Barry in exchange for them agreeing to help make "Helen's up" catch on as a catchphrase.
In "The Sound of Helen", Helen's drive to achieve her musical theater dreams inspires Kiff to conceive the idea for the musical My Fair Helen. When Helen eventually watches her class present My Fair Helen, she is touched by the result and later tells Kiff that she has "never felt so close to an employee before".
Principal Secretary[]
Helen and Principal Secretary performing together.
Principal Secretary often finds himself on the receiving end of Helen's misdeeds. She hacks into his laptop to change the age on her school ID in "Big Barry on Campus", while in "The Sound of Helen", she blackmails him into funding The Sound of Helen in exchange for changing his flat tire, which she is later revealed to have caused in the first place. In "Principal Helen", she sends him off on a cruise vacation and fakes a video message from him so that she can be named acting principal while he is away.
Generally, however, the two are fairly cordial with each other. In "Principal Dance Socks", Helen helps Principal Secretary win his dance-off against Principal Swan by magically controlling his legs, though he remains oblivious to her assistance and angers her by failing to credit her for his victory. After another misunderstanding, Helen sabotages his performance on Dancing on the Tables, but they later unite to join Kiff in her musical number on the show. When Principal Secretary's habit of viewing old photos of his ex is publicly exposed in "Ghost Wolf's Art", Helen makes him feel less pathetic by revealing to him that she placed GPS trackers on all her exes. At his request, she performs a cheerleading number to motivate Table Town Middle School during their track meet against Tuft Pierre in "Kiff Is Good at Sports".
Agnes[]
Helen and Agnes arguing.
While Helen and Agnes love each other, they have a difficult relationship due to their completely opposing personalities. In "Farley", Helen takes Barry to get Kristophe's stuffed doll Farley dry cleaned at Agnes' store Wish Wash. When Barry learns that Helen and Agnes are feuding, he offers to counsel them, resulting in a tearful reconciliation between the sisters. By the end of the episode, however, they end up in another disagreement, this time over who loves the other more.
In "I Like to Move It!", Helen is unwilling to visit Agnes' house to claim a free piano because they are once again feuding, so she hires Kiff and Barry to pick up the piano in exchange for a magical wish-granting horseshoe. Later, Helen mentions that the horseshoe has never been used because she and Agnes could never agree on what to wish for.
Appearances[]
| Specials | ||||
| Opening sequence: | Non-speaking | |||
| 1. "The Haunting of Miss McGravy's House": | Appears | 2. TBA: | Absent | |
| Non-canon media | |||
| Broken Karaoke | |||
| 1. "Born to Be Strange": | Non-speaking | 2. "Squirrels Just Wanna Have Fun": | Appears |
| Chibi Tiny Tales | |||
| 1. "Super Slide": | Absent | 5. "Froyo Frenzy": | Absent |
| 2. "Toilet Flood Pool Party": | Absent | 6. "That's So Tandem": | Background |
| 3. "Shock and Claw": | Absent | 7. "Witches Night Out": | Appears |
| 4. "Bounce House": | Absent | ||
| Chibiverse | |||
| 1. "The Chibi Quiz Challenge": | Absent | 2. "The Roast of Dr. Doofenshmirtz": | Absent |
| How NOT to Draw | |||
| 1. "How NOT to Draw: Kiff": | Absent | ||
| Random Rings | |||
| 1. "Kiff Calls Kylie Cantrall": | Appears | ||
| Shorts Spectacular | |||
| 1. "Kiff's Animal Kingdom Shorts Spectacular": | Appears | ||
| Theme Song Takeover | |||
| 1. "Kiff Theme Song Takeover": | Appears | 2. "Kiff Takes Over the Disney Channel": | Appears |
| 3. "Dr. Doofenshmirtz Takes Over Kiff": | Appears | ||
| Miscellaneous | |||
| Pilot: | Appears | ||
Foreign voice actors[]
| Language | Voice |
|---|---|
 Brazilian Portuguese
|
Maíra Góes |
 Castilian Spanish
|
Amparo Bravo |
 Czech
|
Helena Hanson-Dytrtová |
| Danish | Katrine Falkenberg |
 Dutch
|
Ditte Jaspers |
 European Portuguese
|
Ana Cloe |
 French
|
Marie-Laure Dougnac |
 Finnish
|
Raili Raitala |
 Hebrew
|
Tami Barak (תמי ברק) |
 Hungarian
|
Szilvia Réti |
 Italian
|
Cinzia De Carolis |
 Japanese
|
Satomi Arai (新井里美) |
 Latin Spanish
|
Berenice Vega |
 Norwegian
|
Sarah MacDonald Berge |
 Polish
|
Klementyna Umer |
 Romanian
|
Olimpia Mălai |
 Swedish
|
Carla Abrahamsen |
 Taiwanese Mandarin
|
Yang Shih-ying (楊詩穎) |
 Turkish
|
Zeynep Önen |
Trivia[]
- Helen's spells typically involve her taking random objects and creating a corresponding rhyme:
- Her car's license plate reads "HEXIN".[4]
- She seemingly has a personal history with Centaur Claus. A framed picture of the two can be seen in Helen's living room, and when the two meet in "Halfway There Day", they are blatantly flirty with each other.
- She has a seeming interest in frogs; a picture of her holding a frog to her face can be seen in her home by the front door, and in "Personal Assistant" she is seen leaving a product review for a frog toy she had ordered.
- One of her lifelong dreams, in addition to winning the Table Town Humanitarian of the Year award, is "to eat a sculpture of my own face made of Salisbury steak."[1]
- She has her own distinctive theme music, which typically soundtracks at least one of her on-screen appearances in an episode.
Gallery[]
Click here to view the gallery for Helen.
References[]
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 "Personal Assistant".
- ↑ "Principal Helen".
- ↑ First mentioned in "Pool Party".
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 "The Five Pigeons of the Acapellapocalypse".
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 "Mall Leader".
- ↑ "Farley".
- ↑ "Principal Dance Socks".
- ↑ 8.0 8.1 "Big Barry on Campus".
- ↑ "Hat".
- ↑ "Kiff Escape!".
- ↑ "Pool Party".
- ↑ "Two for One Hot Dogs".
- ↑ "Weekly Grocery Shop".