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labingiI found S1 of Foundation to be like watching two different shows: one boring Mary-Sue fest and one gripping exploration of speculative fiction (with Gaal and Hari sandwiched in between). Season 2 evened this out. The Mary-Sue stuff is mercifully gone, and the Cleonic clone family drama is less interesting. What’s left is a pretty well written story that I’m glad to watch but neither grabs my heart nor tests my imagination. Spoilers below the cut
Salvor and Company
Salvor is infinitely better this season. While still retaining the same basic character traits as before (woman of action, patroller, brave, etc.), she has ceased to be a Mary-Sue superwoman and become a character interacting with other characters. Her daughter-mother dynamic with Gaal, a woman who, despite being her genetic mother, is a bit younger and initially a stranger to her, is interesting and good extrapolative SF. Moreover, seeing Gaal and Salvor together—the two young, active female heroes of the story—highlights the differences between them well: Gaal the genius, Salvor the soldier; Gaal the believer in psychohistory, Salvor more distanced and skeptical; Gaal more intense, Salvor more observant. It’s an immense improvement.
The Cleons
The reason I never warmed to the Foundation books is that they are, by design, oriented around sweeping historical events, not characters, and I’m a character-oriented reader. In season 1, however, I got to feed my character-and-relationship-oriented mind on the Cleonic clone, both concept and individual characters. Cleon XIII, in particular, was fascinating to me, and I had to go through a little grieving process at the end of S1 in realizing that the show was 99% certain to do that thing I hate and kill the character off just as his development as a human being was really building to some fantastic epic/tragic storytelling. Yep.
This season, the whole clone group is less developed. That makes sense in that we don’t need another explanation of how the three clones are related. But as a consequence, we barely see their relationships. Dusk and Dawn have some nice moments of griping/scheming about Day’s going off the rails, and it’s well acted and feels like real family; there’s just not much of it.
Meanwhile Day XVII is no Day XIII, by design, of course. We’re 130+ years further on and Empire has fallen further into decay. Symptomatic of that, Day, too, is less impressive: he’s comparatively more shallow, more petty, less sagacious. Mind you, he’s still a somewhat interesting mix of competent and easily manipulated, arrogant and uncertain. It’s just not as intriguing as last season. As for Sareth, the Dominion leader who gets betrothed to Day, she’s fine. The actor is excellent, and the intractability of her situation is palpable. It’s just that “political marriage has political intrigue” is not as inventive as S1’s exploration of the relations among the clones and Demerzel.
Speaking of Demerzel, she is also less interesting than last season. Last season she got a lot of interesting shades. This season she’s obviously menacing and manipulative, which, again, is a plausible depiction of the fall of Empire. She may well be the founder of the current regime, and (at least for now), she does seem to truly support Empire’s continuation, so it makes sense that, as it falls, she would become more blatant; it’s just not as fun to watch. It’s nicely symbolized, though, by the new armor motif in her costume.
The New in S2
* The Mentalics are plausible in their motivations and behavior and convincingly menacing.
* Hari’s classically fridged life partner, Yanna, is a waste of a good, well-cast actor. Though some individual lines for them are well written, their overall story I consider to be lazy writing. It’s paint-by-the-numbers romance-for-the-sake-of-fridging. And the writers have little excuse for this given that Hari, in the books, had quite an interesting relationship with Dors, which I would 100% rather see.
* Winning in the romance category are Bel Riose and his husband, Glawen. This, however, is a comparatively low bar as Foundation, in my opinion, does not excel at romance (see above, for example). They start out paint-by-the-numbers too: Husband is being used as a pawn by Empire and because he is Husband, we’re supposed to care. However, once they get past that and start having conversations about stuff besides their forced separation, they do have a plausible relationship with some nice shades of tension and disagreement, stemming organically from how being in prison changed Riose’s attitudes and ethics.
It’s Too White
I’m not especially gung-ho on the issue of racial representation, but this cast is way too white. Season 1 was too white as well, but season 2 has taken it to the next level. While there are a lot of actors of color, there’s a weird white top heaviness (actors either white or passable): Hari, the Cleons, Demerzel, Riose, Hober Mallow, Glawen, and Constant’s dad. In the background, white folks are everywhere, notably an entire military force of predominantly white supermodel-looking women. This is all the weirder given that the Foundation books (way ahead of their time for the 1950s) specify point blank that people from Helicon, like Hari, are quite atypical in their white racial appearance. So, yes, Hari is canonically white, but the overrepresentation of white actors overall sits quite oddly on this work of all works.
Serialization Fatigue
One thing I think hurts this season is a pacing problem of many recent streaming shows: not having clearly contained plots at the episode level. The effect is something like scene-scene-scene-episode over, with little sense of rising tension or resolution. This is tempering my enjoyment. Episodes often lack emotion punch because they lack enough build and structure.
In Sum
Overall, I’m enjoying this season and glad to say my son is too. (He’s increasingly hard to please with TV.) I look forward to it every week, and am looking forward to seeing where S3 goes, assuming the strike is settled and S3 happens. Solidarity!
Salvor and Company
Salvor is infinitely better this season. While still retaining the same basic character traits as before (woman of action, patroller, brave, etc.), she has ceased to be a Mary-Sue superwoman and become a character interacting with other characters. Her daughter-mother dynamic with Gaal, a woman who, despite being her genetic mother, is a bit younger and initially a stranger to her, is interesting and good extrapolative SF. Moreover, seeing Gaal and Salvor together—the two young, active female heroes of the story—highlights the differences between them well: Gaal the genius, Salvor the soldier; Gaal the believer in psychohistory, Salvor more distanced and skeptical; Gaal more intense, Salvor more observant. It’s an immense improvement.
The Cleons
The reason I never warmed to the Foundation books is that they are, by design, oriented around sweeping historical events, not characters, and I’m a character-oriented reader. In season 1, however, I got to feed my character-and-relationship-oriented mind on the Cleonic clone, both concept and individual characters. Cleon XIII, in particular, was fascinating to me, and I had to go through a little grieving process at the end of S1 in realizing that the show was 99% certain to do that thing I hate and kill the character off just as his development as a human being was really building to some fantastic epic/tragic storytelling. Yep.
This season, the whole clone group is less developed. That makes sense in that we don’t need another explanation of how the three clones are related. But as a consequence, we barely see their relationships. Dusk and Dawn have some nice moments of griping/scheming about Day’s going off the rails, and it’s well acted and feels like real family; there’s just not much of it.
Meanwhile Day XVII is no Day XIII, by design, of course. We’re 130+ years further on and Empire has fallen further into decay. Symptomatic of that, Day, too, is less impressive: he’s comparatively more shallow, more petty, less sagacious. Mind you, he’s still a somewhat interesting mix of competent and easily manipulated, arrogant and uncertain. It’s just not as intriguing as last season. As for Sareth, the Dominion leader who gets betrothed to Day, she’s fine. The actor is excellent, and the intractability of her situation is palpable. It’s just that “political marriage has political intrigue” is not as inventive as S1’s exploration of the relations among the clones and Demerzel.
Speaking of Demerzel, she is also less interesting than last season. Last season she got a lot of interesting shades. This season she’s obviously menacing and manipulative, which, again, is a plausible depiction of the fall of Empire. She may well be the founder of the current regime, and (at least for now), she does seem to truly support Empire’s continuation, so it makes sense that, as it falls, she would become more blatant; it’s just not as fun to watch. It’s nicely symbolized, though, by the new armor motif in her costume.
The New in S2
* The Mentalics are plausible in their motivations and behavior and convincingly menacing.
* Hari’s classically fridged life partner, Yanna, is a waste of a good, well-cast actor. Though some individual lines for them are well written, their overall story I consider to be lazy writing. It’s paint-by-the-numbers romance-for-the-sake-of-fridging. And the writers have little excuse for this given that Hari, in the books, had quite an interesting relationship with Dors, which I would 100% rather see.
* Winning in the romance category are Bel Riose and his husband, Glawen. This, however, is a comparatively low bar as Foundation, in my opinion, does not excel at romance (see above, for example). They start out paint-by-the-numbers too: Husband is being used as a pawn by Empire and because he is Husband, we’re supposed to care. However, once they get past that and start having conversations about stuff besides their forced separation, they do have a plausible relationship with some nice shades of tension and disagreement, stemming organically from how being in prison changed Riose’s attitudes and ethics.
It’s Too White
I’m not especially gung-ho on the issue of racial representation, but this cast is way too white. Season 1 was too white as well, but season 2 has taken it to the next level. While there are a lot of actors of color, there’s a weird white top heaviness (actors either white or passable): Hari, the Cleons, Demerzel, Riose, Hober Mallow, Glawen, and Constant’s dad. In the background, white folks are everywhere, notably an entire military force of predominantly white supermodel-looking women. This is all the weirder given that the Foundation books (way ahead of their time for the 1950s) specify point blank that people from Helicon, like Hari, are quite atypical in their white racial appearance. So, yes, Hari is canonically white, but the overrepresentation of white actors overall sits quite oddly on this work of all works.
Serialization Fatigue
One thing I think hurts this season is a pacing problem of many recent streaming shows: not having clearly contained plots at the episode level. The effect is something like scene-scene-scene-episode over, with little sense of rising tension or resolution. This is tempering my enjoyment. Episodes often lack emotion punch because they lack enough build and structure.
In Sum
Overall, I’m enjoying this season and glad to say my son is too. (He’s increasingly hard to please with TV.) I look forward to it every week, and am looking forward to seeing where S3 goes, assuming the strike is settled and S3 happens. Solidarity!
