Well, to be fair, she's in a more stable place at the start of the series than at the start of T2. She's not locked up in a maximum-security mental hospital potentially being molested by guards, she's raising her son and he believes her re: the whole end of the world thing (as opposed to in T2 where he's in foster care, she has no contact with him, and even if that were allowed, he thinks she's a nutjob). And she's in a long-term relationship with a boring-but-nice guy who treats her and her child well. Granted, she's also lying like a rug to said guy (and under the circs, lying is by far the wisest course unless she wants to end up back in a padded cell), but all in all she's starting from a much more stable baseline than she was in T2. So I can buy it. Besides, you can have a character sustain that kind of DEFCON level (to steal from Jenn's description) over the course of a 2.5 hour movie, but for an episodic TV show, I think it'd be a bit much.

I adored Linda Hamilton as well, but I'm finding that I'm seeing Headey's Sarah and her Sarah as sort of parallel. Like they're both the "real" Sarah, even though they're played by different actresses. Weird.