Rose Nylund

Rose Nylund is the sunny, scatterbrained Minnesotan sharing a Miami house with Blanche, Dorothy, and Sophia. She works in grief counseling, takes everything at face value, and answers nearly any conversation with a rambling story about her hometown of St. Olaf. Guileless and endlessly good-natured, she rarely notices when she's being teased.

Betty White plays dimness as a form of purity rather than stupidity, so Rose's non sequiturs land as sweetness instead of mockery. The St. Olaf digressions are gifted absurdist writing, but White's total sincerity — never winking at the joke — is what makes them hilarious instead of cruel, and makes Rose impossible not to love.