I love
all of the Sarah Jane gang – each of the characters is so great in their own
right, and there are oodles of wonderful interactions between them, both
various pairs/trios and the group as a whole.
But for me, my favorite duo is the one-two punch of Clyde and Rani. Always fun and always rootable.
Although
the show is about a group of young teens (I think the kids are about 15 when
Rani joins the show in series 2,) romance has always been handled with a fairly
light touch. Clyde’s first instinct upon
meeting Rani is to good-naturedly flirt with her, and there’s an undercurrent
of their growing attraction to one another throughout the show, but the shippy
scenes between them are infrequent, mostly confined to small moments. Rani kissing Clyde on the cheek middle of a
big alien crisis, prompting him to observe that he should be heroic more often. Shots of hand-holding during scary scenes,
Luke teasing them (in Morse code, no less!) with the shipper name he made up
for them, “Clani.”
But
foremost, they’re always friends and alien hunters, and I like that, especially
on the latter front. It can annoy me on
genre shows when significant others want to hash out their relationship issues
while the literal fate of the world is at stake, or otherwise suggest that the
fate of the world is small potatoes compared to their boy-/girlfriend. With Clyde and Rani? Yeah, they like each other – albeit rather
understatedly – but they have bigger stuff to worry about it, and at the end of
the day, they’re always about doing what needs to be done. Stopping alien threats comes before
everything; dating can wait. (On a side
note, I also like that, while either is obviously worried whenever the other is
in danger, there’s not an appreciable difference to the tone of their fear when
it’s Luke or Sarah Jane, or later Sky, in trouble. They mean a great deal to one another, but
their more platonic friends are just as important.)
Really,
they’re just fun together. Rani’s
practicality balances out nicely with Clyde’s recklessness – she knows when to
pull him back from doing something stupid, just as he knows when to push her to
take a risk. Both bounce ideas off one
another well, and both are good at teasing each other. Clyde appreciates Rani’s smarts, and she gets
a kick out of his jokes. (Actually, looking
at them that way, they’re maybe a tiny
bit Ron and Hermione, but their relationship is always tighter, more chill, and
less contentious than with those two – I root for Clyde and Rani hardcore,
while I’m a little indifferent to Hermione/Ron.)
And, not
for nothing, I like that they’re two people of color, of different ethnicities,
who often share screentime together without the white cast members
present. The Sarah Jane Adventures doesn’t often address race specifically,
usually preferring to simply and unspokenly highlight diversity and make the
characters of color equal members of the gang.
Sarah Jane is the main protagonist, of course, but Clyde and Rani are both
important, distinct, and valued characters on the show, and letting them be on
their own onscreen is significant precisely in how casually the show presents
it. I don’t think there are too many
shows without mostly-PoC casts that would feature a story like “The Empty
Planet,” where Rani and Clyde are the only main cast members onscreen for the
majority of the time.
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