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Rose either created Sophia from Dorothy's memories, or created Dorothy as well.
When Rose takes charge in the spin-off, she is more confident and sharp. Sophia is less so and is going senile. Rose used Sophia (and possibly Dorothy) to vent her snide remarks and still seem nice. When she got more confident and closer to her friends, she started to let up on these visages.
- Not buying it. It's clear that OTHER people see Sophia as well without Rose present (e.g. Alvin, the African-American man who has Alzheimer's, or the con artist who scammed Blanche and Sophia out of a lot of money).
Or rather, a first.
Michael, despite apparently being the firstborn of a 38 year marriage started by a pregnancy, is only 30ish. Dorothy must have been pregnant eight years before she had him.
Dorothy had a stillborn child when she was young and scared and inexperienced, on the way to the hospital. Overly traumatized, 8 years later, she became pregnant again with Michael and automatically folded the two births together for her mind to heal.
Stan didn't cheat on her solely because he was attracted to younger women; there was her mental condition and the 8 years and the dead child she had forgotten. Dorothy is always angry with Stan because she subconsciously blamed him for the loss of their firstborn without realizing it. Sophia, Salvador, The Zbornaks and Stan all kept the secret from her, knowing that she had been catatonic for the 8 years in between.
This explains why Mama Zbornak disliked yet respected her.
Sophia has probably told Blanche and Rose the truth, possibly while Dorothy was affected by Chronic Fatigue Syndrome — her previous mental problems may have contributed to whatever was happening to Dorothy.
There's a reference to the child Dorothy and Stan conceived out-of-wedlock still being alive. (Sophia remarks that Stan and Dorothy had an "accident" in the car they took to the prom, and that this "accident" still calls her grandma.) Maybe the child that prompted their shotgun wedding is alive, but Dorothy and Stan both refuse to acknowledge him/her. Maybe the trauma of the pregnancy was so great that Dorothy's response was to ignore the child's very existence.
- Dorothy and Stan had another child, Kate. While it's not clear that Kate is the eldest child, it's safe to assume that she is. Furthermore, Stan's mother explicitly stated that the only reason she acts like she doesn't like Dorothy is that she doesn't want Stan hanging around her trailer home.
- They seemed awfully excited about the prospect of her being pregnant when she should have been well into menopause.
- Hardly. Blanche only hit menopause in the second season and she was in her fifties, at least a decade older than Dorothy's daughter, still plenty of time to have a kid.
- The family is Italian and Catholic, from the mid-twentieth-century and only one generation removed from the Old Country. They gave up hope when her youth came and went.
- Hardly. Blanche only hit menopause in the second season and she was in her fifties, at least a decade older than Dorothy's daughter, still plenty of time to have a kid.
- Rose being pretty smart is canon, Rose is just suffering serious culture shock, Values Dissonance, and being Literal-Minded.
- It's also implied her learning may have been sabotaged by a Nazi plot. so while she has the facilities to learn quickly and a natural talent for it, it has been undermined.
- Or maybe, possibly, it's a Life Embellished story Rose is telling a new circle of friends she met when she moved to Ohio.
In one episode, the actor who plays Salvador plays a jester at the restaurant Dorothy goes to on a date. This isn't a coincidence. Salvador is actually possessing the jester. The audience can see him for who he really is, but Dorothy just sees the waiter whose body is being occupied.
- There are a few problems with this: 1) it's stated outright several times by visiting relatives and other St. Olafians that Rose has always behaved like this. 2) Not having a television actually makes sense for the era the show was made in, it would have still been seen as a frivolous luxury not a borderline necessity that it is in modern times. 3) Rose often seems surprised at the poor manner in which she's treat which heavily suggests that she's not used to being treated badly.
- Since when does being bad at balancing a checkbook make someone abusive? Charlie didn't leave Rose much when he died because he was bad with money and quick to give gifts and loans to struggling friends, but Rose lost his pension because the pension fund of Charlie's company sank when the company itself went under. And Charlie didn't keep a TV in the house because he thought it "wouldn't catch on", meaning it had less to do with restricting Rose's access to information (not that she'd actually get much out of having it, much like the rest of St. Olaf) and more to do with being bad at predicting the success of new technology.. which is what you might expect from a man with no business or investment sense.