Relationship Spotlight: Sarah Manning & Felix Dawkins (Orphan Black)

…And just for a change of pace, how about an Orphan Black Relationship Spotlight?  But seriously, this is the last relationship that I really want to talk about from that show, for the time being anyway.  I’ve mentioned both Sarah and Felix before, with Helena and Alison respectively, but their connection with one another warrants a closer look, too.

Unlike the other relationships I’ve highlighted from this show, Sarah and Felix predate the clone revelation.  Both were fostered from a young age by Mrs. S. and taken from their home country, the U.K., to be raised in relative privacy in the show’s non-specified Canadian locale.  When we initially see Sarah with Felix, freaked out from her first out-of-context clone experience, it’s clear how inextricably tied they are.

In some ways, the relationship first established by the show is one in which neither is all that good for the other.  Sarah is forever pulling Felix into her not-aboveboard schemes (not that Felix is an altar boy or anything, but him dragging her into something isn’t their usual dynamic.)  Despite his protests and lectures, he generally goes along with it; however, he’s far from spineless, and particularly in early episodes, he vents his feelings with pissy, passive-aggressive shows of force that are inconvenient for Sarah and drive her up the wall.  She’s of course the one who initiates him into Clone Club, enlisting him to be her lookout, her backup, and her safe-house, and even though Felix soon grows as invested in the whole thing as she is, he’s often the one telling her to stop and think, to not be reckless.  And what’s the typical result?  They both get reckless.

As such, I can see the point that their relationship might be enabling or self-destructive, especially from Sarah to Felix – she rarely considers what he wants or needs, and she regularly expects him to drop everything on her behalf.  (Yes, I know Sarah’s the protagonist, and as a woman who’s recently discovered she’s a clone with an enormous list of enemies, she has a lot more going on right now, but would it kill her to check in with Felix now and then?)  Yet, part of this dynamic is the fact that each will forgive the other pretty much anything.  They take each other for granted (like Sarah making Felix go on the run with her and her daughter and then insisting on calling all the shots and refusing to listen to any of his advice) and screw up each other’s plans (like Felix throwing a fake funeral for Sarah, who’s faked her death, using the money from the drugs Sarah wanted him to sell for her,) but neither takes what the other does personally for long.  They seem to get that they’re both stubborn people with a talent for screwing things up, that something stupid done in anger or desperation shouldn’t be a deal-breaker, and that each needs the other in their corner too much to hold grudges. 

That’s why Felix is the first person Sarah turns to when things go wrong.  It’s why she can’t leave him out of a major operation.  It’s why Felix initially accedes to helping out the other clones so much (as time goes on, he develops fairly strong sibling bonds with all of them, each with its own dynamic, but at first, it’s all for Sarah.)  And it’s even why he can get so mad at Sarah, because he knows she’s in over her head with dangerous people, and he can’t bear the thought of anything happening to her.  Both have had a tough time of it, and to a great extent, they both tend to hang onto the other for support because that’s what they’ve always done.  I’m guessing they always will.