Kim Kelly

Kim Kelly is the sharpest-tongued of the freaks, quick with an insult and quicker to size up a threat. She's Daniel's girlfriend, fiercely territorial about him, and her first instinct toward Lindsay Weir is open hostility. Underneath the sneering bravado is a girl clearly used to fighting for everything she has.

The writing hands Busy Philipps a character who could easily stay a one-note bully, then keeps peeling back layers until the cruelty reads as armor. Philipps plays the venom completely straight, no winking, which is what makes the softer cracks land so hard when they finally show. She turns a stock mean-girl role into someone genuinely unpredictable.