The Sarah Connor Charm School

The Sarah Connor Charm School certainly didn't start out as an anti-Terminator:The Sarah Connor Chronicles but to some it appears to be. This is mostly because various things kept it from getting launched in the way it should have over a decade ago. Then in 2006 word came out that there was a good chance that a TV series called The Sarah Connor Chronicles was going to be made.

As some of us had dreamt of this since T2 some held some hope. However, it was hard to ignore the fact that except perhaps for some of the actresses on Lost and Gina Torres as she appeared in the movie Serenity the female muscle that had been apparent on TV and in movies during the '90s, likely largely inspired by Linda Hamilton's Sarah Connor physique, had given way to skin and bones again. When word came out that Lena Headey was going to play Sarah, those of us who had seen her in various movies were horrified. Among the skinny actress trend, she stands out as painfully thin.

This was a total betrayal. Here they were offering our dream, a show supposed (by the title) to be focused on our hera, our role model and they destroy it by casting a very thin, unhealthy looking actress (a few graduates and students DO like Headey, but not for this role, others of us do not feel she has any talent either) in the role of a physical feminist icon!

So, we watched and waited for two things. One, was there going to be any signs or word that Headey was doing the sort of training Hamilton did for the role and two, was it even going to be picked up. The answers were obviously not! and yes, FOX has it scheduled to start in January.

Obviously, real, long-time, adult female fans of T2 are not the target audience. Casting of Thomas Dekker, which is also a bad bit of casting for most of us, as John Connor, writing both roles as whiny, pathetic, unprepared, survivalistically stupid....they are going for a much younger audience. Mostly viewers who probably never saw the movies. And probably predominantly young women. Who they are giving a role model who will inspire eating disorders rather than fitness and strength! ....and this is nearly criminal...young women need strong role models not ones who give the message that women should be emaciated!

Sarah Connor Charm School rejects the message that to be beautiful one must be starved!

The Real Sarah Connor's back...from T2 Headey's back...from That TV Show unaired, leaked pilot
Comparing Hamilton and Headey's back (what? do you think it's all about the arms? if so you know nothing about fitness!) Which do you think inspired a graduate to chin her way to this?
A graduate's back...all thanks to the real T2 Sarah
And what do you think the other inspires?

**Casting Summer Glau as a Terminator is the ONE good bit of casting. She does not have Hamilton's physique, but she is athletic and she can act. Of course, she loses points as a physical feminist role model in this series by being a robot. Sadly, from what we've seen both in trailers and the leaked pilot, she is wasted on this production.

Other Problems We Have with the Series

Behavior and Attitude

Upon some of us seeing the leaked pilot and others just from reading various reviews, websites or viewing trailers, we realized there was a lot more wrong with the series than just the lack of muscle. As mentioned above, they turned both John and Sarah into pathetic whiners, which isn't shocking given this trend in youth marketed TV shows. John boohoos to his mommy that he's not a leader...and it's obvious that he ISN'T, which would be impossible given that he was when he was 10. Both obvious long for a pathetically boring "normal life."

Another attitude problem that has ourtaged most of us who have seen the leaked pilot is that they show Sarah screaming and shoving John around, abusing him. While she might go off on others, even in her most fucked up state in T2 she'd never would have abused John in this way...everything is about him, as far as she's concerned. He IS the future. She might have kept him at arms length, might have shut herself off from real love for a time, but she didn't strike or shove or scream at him. It was disgusting! Having any primary character abuse a child is bad, but this is our hera here!

Timeline

They also fucked the timeline, not in the "someone went back and changed it way" but in what would have been set from the first movie...they claim that this starts in 1999, John is 15 and the events in T2 are said to have taken place two years before. Uh, okay...John was born in 1985, he was about 10 in T2 (even if the actor was a bit older) which means that it should have taken place in 1995. If it took place in 1997, it would have been a tad late because Judgment Day was August 29, 1997....I think Dyson would have been a LOT further along and things would already have been in place if T2 took place then. This is just stupid...just as stupid as the stuff with Johns age in T3, which we're not even going to bother mentioning again as the ONE thing they do right in this series is ignore T3.

Survivalism

Hamilton's Sarah Connor was not just a role model of physical feminism, but also of survivalism. Not all of the SCCS graduates are truly living as survivalists, but some of us are. Some of us were before and were excited to see a character we could identify with. She was prepared, she was smart and she was driven. She was prepared for what was to come AND she was willing to risk her life to prevent it if she could.

In the series, it's obvious that the writers do not have the slightest clue as to how someone like that would have acted following the events of T2. They have her stay in the US when she clearly has contacts south of the border. They have her work as a waitress, which not only was a job she held before and that would be known to the Feds, but also tends to put you out in the public. They have her use her and John's first name and the last name of a KNOWN ASSOCIATE as her "alias"...and all they can do is have the Terminator scold her for using it twice? Sarah Connor would NEVER have done that ONCE! They have John in school. They have her shacked up with some ugly, boring non-survivalist. Sarah Connor would have done NONE of these things. No intelligent survivalist wanted as a terrorist would have done any of these things!

So, we will continue to bitch about and mock this atrocity for as long as the show lasts, which we dearly hope for the sake of women's health and sanity is not long. And for as long as it lasts in SciFi channel runs. We, however, hope to again start concentrating on the graduates and students with our art project. Shoots are finally slated for summer 2008, some earlier, perhaps. Shoots already done might finally get approved (some of our models have been reluctant to send in their photos).

Meanwhile, we'll also continue to live the Sarah Connor Charm School way. Continuing to stay fit, continuing to practice fighting, continuing to shoot, continuing to prepare.

Disclaimer: This is a fansite, It is is in no way affiliated with the powers that be that created, produced and own the rights to the Terminator franchise. We do use images of Linda Hamilton as Sarah Connor, said photos are from the movie Terminator 2 and are copyright © 1991 Carolco. Photo from Terminator:The Sarah Connor Chronicles copyright © 2007 Warner Bros. and FOX. And a sincere thanks to our anonymous screen cap grabber for the back photos of Hamilton and Headey.