The stereotypical “valley girl” is a pretty dumb one, right? All they talk about is shopping and boys and nails. They’re airheads who pepper the word “like” into their speech as if it’s a punctuation mark. They only associate with other valley girls and surround themselves with jocks who will kiss their toes for a chance to take them to the Sock Hop or whatever.

And then there’s Kimberly Hart, a character that – while initially feeding into these preconceived notions of a pretty, upper-middle class teenage Californian – became more than the sum of her parts.

NAME: Kimberly Ann “Kim” Hart
RANGER DESIGNATION: Mighty Morphin Pink Ranger/Pink Ninja Ranger, Mighty Morphin Power Rangers
BASE OF OPERATION: Angel Grove
FIRST APPEARANCE: “Day of the Dumpster” – Mighty Morphin Power Rangers
LAST APPEARANCE: Turbo: A Power Rangers Movie
PERSONAL WEAPONS/GEAR: Pterodactyl Power Coin; Crane Ninja Coin; Power Bow; Pink Shark Cycle
ZORDS: Pterodactyl Dinozord; Firebird Thunderzord, Ninja Cranezord; White Shogunzord (w/ Tommy Oliver)
PORTRAYED BY: Amy Jo Johnson

PROFILE

Chosen as one of Zordon’s original “teenagers with attitude” to defend Earth from the evil space witch Rita Repulsa, Kimberly was given the Pterodactyl Power Coin to become the Pink Mighty Morphin Power Ranger. Like her four teammates, Kim initially denied the call to action, until her hand was forced by a group of Putty Patrollers outside Zordon’s Command Center.

From the start, Kim came off as very high-maintenance and ditzy. She even called attention to this after her first battle, when she said she can’t be a Ranger because her hair got messed up inside the helmet. Following this complaint with a well-timed, sassy “NOT!” – something that only made sense in 1993 – revealed to the audience that she may have been more self-aware than one would assume. Or it was just a weird fad in the 90s. It’s hard to tell in retrospect.

The point is, Kim is honestly a lot less selfish than she comes off. She’s cheerful and bubbly, and is constantly looking out for others. She also happens to be an accomplished gymnast and can shred an acoustic guitar so hard that John Mayer would poop himself. Her fighting style both morphed and unmorphed involved a lot of cartwheels and graceful aerial moves. And… whatever this is.

Kim developed a close bond with her fellow Ranger, Trini. The two would often be seen tackling humanitarian projects together. Any time Trini had a petition to sign or an initiative to get behind, Kim would be right there with her. Later on, she formed a tight friendship with the new Yellow Ranger Aisha.

Then the new guy showed up. Tommy Oliver. At first, he took a liking to Kim and they hit it off well. But Tommy quickly started acting weird. He blew her off, got angry at her for no reason, and so on. As it turns out, Tommy was under Rita Repulsa’s control, serving as her Evil Green Ranger. Eventually, the Rangers were able to overpower her spell through the magic of karate and friendship, and Tommy joined the team as the purified Green Ranger. Throughout her tenure, Kim continued her romance with Tommy, even sharing with him one of the few on-screen kisses in the show’s history. Why ever other Power Ranger seems to be a total prude remains a mystery to everybody.

Tommy and Kimberly both decide to run for School President. This caught the eye of Rita who, of course, puts them under a spell that makes them go at each other’s throats. Only through the power of smelling roses (yeah I know) are they able to overcome the spell and thwart the villains. Kimberly ends up winning the election by a landslide after Tommy basically concedes. Bulk gets one vote from himself.

Rito Revolto lived up to his name when he revolted against Zedd and Rita by sending a love potion monster to Angel Grove High. It infected Kimberly, who fell in love with Skull (much to the disgust and confusion of Tommy) and asked him to the school dance. Finster eventually provided her with an antidote and she questioned how she could have ever been attracted to Skull. Later at the dance, she noticed that Skull was rather bummed out that he got stood up the way that he did. Kim offered him a dance anyway and he eagerly accepted her friendship. Not bad, considering she literally flipped him on his ass in the first episode.

Kimberly faced her entire life being uprooted when her mom got engaged to a French painter. She confronted Zordon about the possibility of having to give up being a Ranger as a result, but he assured her that the choice was entirely hers to make. Luckily, Aisha and her family took Kim in so that she could finish high school in Angel Grove, because that’s apparently a thing your friends can do. Although, further complications were just around the corner.

When Aisha began volunteering at an animal shelter, she and Kim discovered a stray cat in the park and adopted it. Unbeknownst to them, the cat was actually… well, Kat, a new girl in town from Australia under one of Rita’s spells. Katherine managed to steal Kim’s Power Coin, weaken her, help Zedd kidnap her, and take control of the White Ninja Falconzord. Worst of all, she became infatuated with Tommy, and grew jealous when she noticed his relationship with Kimberly was a little bit more touchy-feely.

Though Tommy was successful in rescuing Kim from the clutches of Lord Zedd, she was still without her Power Coin, and had to channel power from the others in order to continue being a Ranger. Even then, her strength was severely limited.

While practicing her gymnastics, Kim was approached by a world-famous coach named Gunthar Schmidt. He took her under his wing, and Zordon supported her in the decision to put more focus on the sport. Rita decided she doesn’t like Kim doing gymnastics and plotted to keep her busy as a Ranger, which seems just plain mean-spirited and counterproductive to the whole getting rid of the Power Rangers thing. Just let the girl focus on her gymnastics. Yeesh.

Exhausted from fighting monsters all day, Kim stumbled on the balance beam and injured herself. Katherine got her to the hospital after fighting off Rita’s spell and having a change of heart. A guilt-riddled Katherine confessed her wrongdoings to Kim and explained the spell situation. Kim was completely understanding, having been through a similar experience with Tommy.

Discouraged by the experience, Kim decided to quit gymnastics. Her mind changed, though, when she saw Katherine overcome her fear of water that stemmed from a diving injury. Kim eventually tried out for the pan-global gymnastics competition (I think that’s what it was for anyway) and was offered full-time tutelage under Coach Schmidt. Initially hesitant, the others encouraged her to follow her dreams. She chose Katherine as her replacement as the Pink Ranger. She’s nice and wears pink and stepped on a monster’s toe, so I guess she was as qualified as anybody else.

Some time after leaving for Florida for training, Kim sent Tommy a “Dear John” letter, effectively ending their relationship. She was seeing somebody else. Personally, I think the guy at least deserved a phone call. This is generally seen as a dick move.

Years later, while on a scuba trip with her old teammate Jason, he and Kim were kidnapped by Divatox, a galactic pirate and newfound enemy of the Power Rangers. She was intent on sacrificing them to her fiancé, the flame monster Maligore, unless the Rangers handed over a hairy little wizard guy named Lerigot. They attempted to escape Divatox’s ship (along with a brainwashed Bulk and Skull, for some reason) and succeed, except for Jason, who got sealed in the bilge.

Kim washed up on the shore of the island of Muiranthias and was captured by some of the locals. These guys – the Malachians – tied Kim up and took her to Maligore’s temple, where she was reunited with Jason. Inside the temple, Divatox had them tied to a rope hanging above a volcano when the new Turbo Rangers showed up. But the Rangers were too preoccupied to save them. They were dropped into the fire, emerging as spawns of evil with fiery red eyes and devious smiles. Kimberly kicked Adam, Tanya, and Kat’s butts and delivered one of the best lines in cinematic history.

After a while, Lerigot freed Kim from the spell. In an act of self-defense, Tommy had kicked Jason into the pit and was now holding on for his friend’s life, so Kim rushed to his side to rescue him. Together, the former Rangers helped to fight off Divatox’s Piranhatrons and save the tiny wizard hamsters from the erupting volcano.

SUGGESTED VIEWING

When it comes to suggestions, the Mighty Morphin’ bunch are going to be unique since they get so many individual focus episodes. Even more so the ones like Kimberly who had longer tenures. “Beauty and the Beast” is basically required viewing, if only for Kim’s shockingly accurate impression of Rita Repulsa. “A Brush With Destiny” is most likely one of my favorite episodes of MMPR. The complications of divorce and remarriage were quite the taboo back in the day, so seeing it addressed on a kid’s show – and from Kimberly’s perspective, no less – is interesting. Her farewell in “A Different Shade of Pink Part I-III” is easily the most tastefully-done “passing the torch” arc in the show’s history. Also, Turbo: A Power Rangers Movie if you wanna see her be evil. It’s fantastic, but I don’t believe it’s on any streaming services at the moment.

An honorable mention goes to The Potion Notion. While it may not be focused on Kim, her kindness toward Skull in this episode really spotlights her personality.

RANKING

There’s an earnestness and sincerity to Kimberly that you don’t see in many Rangers. I think this has a lot to do with Amy Jo’s performance. She elevates the material she’s given to levels that it probably doesn’t even deserve, especially in some of her later episodes. You can tell that the character of Kim evolved to adapt to AJJ, rather than the other way around. She easily could have been a one-note valley girl like she was allegedly intended to be, but her compassion and dedication to her friends puts her above and beyond the Saved by the Bell archetype.

Since Kim’s the first entry on the list, she will be both the greatest and worst Ranger of all time until somebody else shows up. She also provides me with a pretty good benchmark – she’s certainly a great character, but she’s probably not my favorite Ranger.