Top 10 Best Moira Rose Quotes on Schitt's Creek

When we first meet the Roses, they’re not the most sympathetic characters, and rarely have a nice word to say about one another. This is never clearer than when Alexis reveals that her boyfriend will be flying in to pick her up. Moira’s response is classic, made even funnier by the fact this is the first thing Twyla ever hears her – or any of the Roses for that matter - say. Though this may not be the best way to convince her daughter that abandoning them is a bad idea, it shows that even from the beginning, Moira didn’t want the family to split up.

One of the most entertaining parts of the whole show are Moira’s bizarre vocal inflections, and it’s always a treat to see precisely how Catherine O’Hara is going to deliver her lines. But one common pronunciation we love to hear again and again is the word “baby” – or, “bébé”, as Moira would say. The word is almost unrecognizable, and only gets funnier the more you hear it. Luckily for the audience, season 4 gave us a pregnancy plotline, and later episodes have Johnny and Moira babysitting Roland Jr. But “bébé” was still invoked sparingly enough to keep it hilarious each time it popped up.

Tragedy strikes at the motel when an elderly guest is found dead in his room. While David’s trying to work out where he stands with Patrick, and whether he can stay over to avoid the corpse, Moira arrives at the Rose Apothecary to discuss the incident. Only, this happens after Moira talks her way out of helping Johnny deal with the fallout because her schedule is apparently too full. It’s clear from the way she can’t actually tell David what her “meetings” are, that there most likely aren’t any meetings at all, but you can’t blame her for wanting to get out of there.

Moira is hired to be the spokesperson for a local brand of fruit wine, which she initially assumes should be a breeze. However, nerves get the better of her, and to try to combat the fact she believes that she can’t act anymore, she starts sampling a little too much of the product. But while she can’t stop drinking it, she makes no secret of the fact it’s disgusting. If that isn’t enough, the commercial she finally ends up filming – while drunk – is one of the show’s best moments. The fruit wine episode is so iconic that Annie Murphy was even roped in to do her best Moira impression and recreate the scene.

In an effort to prove she can do things on her own, and win the Schitt’s Creek Arts and Culture Grant, Alexis suggests a small singles night at the café. Moira is dismissive but ends up bringing Alexis’s idea to council herself – only, it’s now been upgraded to an entire singles week. Alexis is understandably annoyed that Moira basically stole her idea, and Moira condemns her for “pettifogging.” The word is straight out of the 18th century and means focusing on “petty or trivial details.” But if Moira had been paying more attention to those petty details, she probably wouldn’t have accidentally pitched a singles week instead of a one-off event.

It isn’t the first time a celebrity has been falsely identified as being dead, but Moira’s pre-emptive demise becomes the talk of the town. The motel is besieged by sympathy cards and bouquets of flowers – including, much to Moira’s ire, a bunch of pink carnations. Despite social media saying otherwise, the Roses quickly learn that Moira is, in fact, still alive. But this is still Moira, and she can’t let the news of her resurrection fly under the radar. So, she loudly proclaims that she’s returned from beyond the grave while the Jazzagals grieve. And then she tries to get them to eulogize her.

Time and time again, we’ve seen that Moira isn’t the best at keeping secrets, which is what makes this line so hilariously hypocritical. While trying to get to the bottom of Alexis’s love life, when she discovers Alexis is still pining for Ted, Moira presses Twyla for information. When it becomes clear that Twyla knows more about Alexis than Moira, Moira tries to take the moral high ground and says she’s not happy gossiping about her daughter behind her back. It’s hard to believe that Moira has ever “hung up” on gossip in her life.

Throughout the season 2 premiere, it’s not clear whether Moira actually cares about finding her missing son or whether she’s more interested in finding a family heirloom – a bag he’s taken with him. She certainly calms down when she gets the bag back, however, and seems to forget that she ought to be disciplining David for running off with Roland’s truck. When she finally gets her chance to tell him what she thinks, our expectations continue to be subverted: she makes it clear she approves of his impulsive melodrama. He’s definitely his mother’s son, that’s for sure.

In an effort to regain some of their lost wealth, Johnny spends most of season one trying to sell the town again. When he and Moira are just about to make a million-dollar deal with a potential buyer, Andy suddenly has a medical emergency at the dinner table and slips into a coma. It’s later on, when Johnny and Moira are taking stock of the fact they’re not leaving Schitt’s Creek any time soon, that Moira laments the fact she wasn’t the one to end the evening comatose. It’s this kind of dramatic – if morbid – reaction that makes Moira so beloved.

Before we unveil our top pick, here are a few Honorable Mentions:

When Moira Says She’s Used to Handling People With Fragile Egos
“The Affair”

When David and Alexis Won’t Stop Bickering
“The Drip”

When Alexis Wants to Know Why They Never Came to Rescue Her
“Finding David”

When Moira Lands Her Old Role on the “Sunrise Bay” Reboot
“Start Spreading the News”

When Moira Can’t Find Her Old “Tasteful Nudes” Online
“Moira’s Nudes”

One of the problems with occupying connected motel rooms with his entire family is that David struggles to maintain his privacy. This is never clearer than when Jake drops by for some afternoon delight and introduces himself to Moira after emerging from the shower. Moira offers David some typically weird advice when he gets embarrassed by her presence - though, she never makes it clear what a “disgruntled pelican” actually is. Do pelicans frequently get disgruntled in the wild? Regardless of what it means, however, it’s become one of the show’s most enduring phrases.