Favorite Characters: Felix Dawkins (Orphan Black)

By now, my appreciation for Felix is no secret.  He’s already been featured in two Relationship Spotlights, and honestly, I could probably fill enough material for separate posts on his relationships with all the major characters in the show.  He has an interesting dynamic with each of the sestras – even his single scene with Krystal is so rich – great familial relationships with Kira and Mrs. S., and fun interactions with pretty much every tertiary character he encounters.  How does someone get to be such infinitely pairable?  By being a fantastic character in his own right.  (Just basic premise spoilers.)

So, where to start with Felix?  Any snarky supporting character is usually bound to pop, and his sassy one-liners and gif-worthy reaction shots are definitely a large part of his appeal.  That humor is especially important in a show like this, where the problems are so crazy and sci-fi.  We need a Felix to observe, comment on, and sometimes whine about his coerced inclusion in all the insanity springing up around Sarah.  His frantic protests about the impossibility of hiding behind minimalist furniture, or his sulky pout about going on the run, ground the larger-than-life drama and remind us of the outrageous things that would probably be going through our heads if we were anywhere near Felix’s situation.

Felix is much more than comic relief, though.  I mentioned it in his relationship posts with both Sarah and Alison, but his loyalty might be unmatched by any other character in the show.  He may gripe or throw shade, and he’ll certainly voice any concerns he has, but if he’s in your corner, he’ll basically do anything for you.  From the illegal to the inconvenient to the suburbia-entrenched, he comes through for Sarah and the clones time and time again.  Whether he’s risking his life or just begrudgingly canceling his weekend plans for them, Felix can be depended on absolutely, and for someone without experience in much of what he’s tasked to do, he has an impressive success rate.  And more than just his physical contributions, Felix is so emotionally invested in everyone he cares about.  The attitude and sarcasm sometimes hide it, but he’s actually a very loving character who keeps finding additional stores of affection for his ever-increasing Clone Club family.

When it comes to Felix, Orphan Black is sometimes charged with stereotyping gay men.  I understand where those frustrations come from – Felix can be bitchy and shallow, some would call his healthy sexual appetite promiscuity, and his manner could be termed sissy, swishy, or various other depressing terms.  However, for me, I like pretty much all sides of Felix.  Many would call his mannerisms and style feminine, and you know what?  He rocks it.  I love his flair for dramatic entrances and his ostentatious wardrobe, I love his snark and his flirting, and I love that he’s feminine and heroic.  If he was only what you see in promos, gifs, and clip montages, I might find his characterization lazy, but there’s so much to Felix, and that’s not what you usually see from his archetype.  After all, gay men with feminine-coded interests and demeanors do in fact exist; what makes such portrayals stereotypical and problematic is boiling these traits down to a one-note joke, reducing the characters to sassy, sparkly, glorified fashion accessories.  Rather than blame the offense on how the character acts, dresses, or speaks, why not show that these qualities aren’t mutually exclusive with empathy, courage, or intelligence?  Why not show a flamboyant man pushing his fears to the side to help his friends and family, or holding his own amidst a big, crazy sci-fi mystery?  To me, that’s a much better, more effective response.

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.

Relationship Spotlight: Felix Dawkins & Alison Hendrix (Orphan Black)

I love that Felix takes so well to the idea that his foster sister is actually a clone.  He develops a separate familial dynamic with each of Sarah’s more prominent “sisters,” and, surprisingly, none is stronger than his bond with uptight soccer mom Alison.  This is a relationship that snuck up on me, but I’ve come to realize that any episode with Alison-Felix interaction is just that little bit better.

The proceedings get off to an inauspicious start when Felix, serving as Sarah’s back-up during an early clone encounter, is almost shot by Alison after she catches him outside her house.  She’s high-strung and justifiably paranoid, and he’s completely freaked out by his first actual clone sighting; so far, his only knowledge of Sarah’s apparent doubles has been secondhand, but now, he sees the indisputable evidence standing in front of him with a handgun. 

Even without threats of bodily harm, Alison is the clone that, on the surface, seems the most unlike Felix.  There’s his history and habit of mutual law-breaking with Sarah, and I defy anyone to dislike the brilliant, wonderfully vibrant Cosima, but Alison’s life couldn’t be further from his.  She’s a prissy suburban housewife who needs everything “just so,” and he’s a hard-partying artist who’s the biggest believer in his own fabulousness.  One of my favorite laughs from season 1 comes when Sarah pulls Felix in to babysit Alison’s kids, freeing Alison up for Clone Club-related goings-on, and Felix immediately wants to dress both of the tots in drag; Alison’s reaction is one for the ages.  All in all, not exactly a surrogate sibling match made in heaven.

Somewhere along the line, though, Alison and Felix grow incredibly close.  As things unravel, she gets much worse at pretending nothing’s wrong, and while her ensuing meltdown damages her relationships with her husband and friends, as well as her standing in the community, I think Felix sort of admires the mess that she really is.  He likes seeing the perfect, anal-retentive veneer fall away and finding the frantic, impulsive woman underneath, and she in turn realizes that Felix is enormously loyal to those who’ve won his affections.  I’m not gonna lie, their shared fondness for booze and pills is a real ice-breaker, but it quickly goes a lot further than that. 

Soon, strangely, almost paradoxically, they become one of the most unexpected pairs on the show.  Alison’s world is imploding, and she leans increasingly on Felix for help (he jumps in as bartender when a neighborhood potluck descends on her house while she’s tied up with particularly-insane clone business,) company (they share anti-anxiety meds after she locks herself in the bathroom at her intervention,) and comfort (she tells him massive secrets without fear of judgment.)  They still have their culture-clash (really, more like class-clash) moments – when Alison stays at Felix’s place, he’s fantastically horrified to discover she’s scoured it from top to bottom – but generally, he’s 100% in her corner, and she rates him miles above all her two-faced suburban friends.  There’s a moment in season 2 when Sarah is in colossal, life-and-death trouble, and Felix is obviously there for her, but despite all the craziness going down, he still worries about Alison’s well-being.  With Sarah, it involves conspiracies and assassins, but with Alison, it’s community theatre, and he still feels bad about leaving her without his support.  It’s so inconsequential, but it’s important to her, and Felix knows that and wants to be there for her.  That’s love, people.