Long after the sitcom Schitt's Creek ended in 2020, it would not have been abnormal to catch me talking like a certain one of its characters in casual conversation. The show, about a wealthy family effectively exiled to life in a motel after the government seizes their assets, is teeming with weirdos. There are the townies, of course. How normal can you really expect someone to be after growing up in a place named "Schitt's Creek"? And there are the Roses, that fallen family, who—with the exception of the dad, as every comedy needs a straight man—are the absolute kookiest of them all. Especially Moira.
Moira Rose, the soap opera actress, unlikely matriarch, and purveyor of ludicrous garments, wigs, and turns of phrase, is gone. And by that I mean Catherine O'Hara, the actor who brought her to life, died last week. The two were inseparable to me. You often catch glimpses of the familiar when watching characters onscreen: a mannerism that evokes a loved one, an archetype that reminds you of that dreadful ex, a quality that (un)comfortably makes you feel you are looking in a mirror. Moira, though, was singularly absurd—so unapologetically herself and free from ordinary social expectations in a way I had never seen before and knew I would never see again. There was no one like Moira Rose, and so there was no one like Catherine O'Hara.
