You know, when it comes to this week’s episode of Foundation, I think Tim Robinson put it best: What the fuck?! What the fuuuuuuuuck?!?!

I’ve been OOO but I cannot let the weekend pass without drawing your attention to one of the most insane things I’ve seen on TV in a long time: this week’s episode of Foundation, which I reviewed for Decider.

Foundation is funny, exciting, lyrical, dazzling to the eye, epic in scope, and horny at heart, in service of the refreshingly non-pollyannaish goal of limiting humanity’s next dark age to a mere millennium. Even its hero’s journey involves getting off a few stops early and walking. That’s just one more thing to admire about the year’s best comeback.

I reviewed this week’s episode of Foundation for Decider. More big-budget streaming-network SFF adaptations should feature plotlines in which the supreme leader is in serious diplomatic trouble because immortal robot lover never taught him that the cowgirl position exists.

I didn’t even realize Lee Pace wasn’t in this week’s episode of Foundation until after it was over. How’s that for a high compliment? 

I reviewed today’s episode of Foundation for Decider.

I’m about to say the most “I’m a professional television critic” thing I’ve ever said, so please bear with me: This week’s episode of Foundation was a hell of a good time, and I have my reservations about that.

I reviewed this week’s episode of Foundation for Decider.

If I were to construct a Prime Radiant based on all my knowledge of all the shows I’ve ever reviewed, I’d gaze into its holographic projection of the future and tell you that if things continue along their current path, there are warning signs for what might happen. It happened to Billions, for example. It happened to The Leftovers. Closest to home of all, it happened to the earlier Lee Pace starring vehicle Halt and Catch Fire. What happened, you ask? (“What happened, O Prophet?” is also acceptable.) What happened was that shaky shows with glimmers of promise in their first seasons became dynamite in their second. If I’m not mistaken, if there’s no intervening Crisis, Foundation is on that golden path. 

I reviewed the new episode of Foundation for Decider.

“Rip-roarin’” isn’t an adjective I’d use to describe Foundation, science-fiction godhead Isaac Asimov’s heady tome (is there any other kind of tome?) about a rogue mathematician’s plan to save humanity from itself. I do not mentally associate the novel with the phrase “psychedelic freak-out.” Nowhere in its pages do I recall a chapter entitled “The Emperor Fucks a Robot, Then Has a Fight Scene in the Nude.”

And yet, my friends. And yet!

Bombastic, lascivious, arch, gorgeous — “In Seldon’s Shadow,” the long-awaited return of David S. Goyer’s epic-scale adaptation of Asimov’s magnum opus, is all of the above. Written by Goyer and his fellow genre luminary Jane Espenson and directed with verve and grace by Alex Graves, it indicates that this show learned every possible lesson from its inconsistent but entertaining first season. It leans hard into its strengths, shores up its weaknesses, and provides enough beauty — both science-fictional and human-physical — to leave me as optimistic about this show as I’ve ever been. 

And I’m not gonna bury the lede here: Lee Pace has a naked fight scene in it.

I reviewed the terrific season premiere of Foundation for Decider.

What does it all mean for the future of this show, thought? That, I’m less certain about. It’s already been renewed for a second season, so you don’t need to worry about that. However, there still is a certain lopsided quality to it all, with the Cleon material standing head and shoulders above the Gaal/Salvor/Hari stuff. The burst of action that punctuated the first season’s last few episodes mitigated this somewhat, but now that Gaal and Salvor are simply adrift together on the surface of a drowned world, it seems like things may get tilted in favor of the Cleons yet again. The missteps involving Hari’s big speech and the secret of Salvor’s parentage certainly don’t help.

But I think there’s much to be enjoyed and admired in Foundation overall. The commitment to far-out ideas about the flow of history (punctuated though it might be by individual actions), the emphasis on grand science-fiction vistas, the performances of Lee Pace and Terrence Mann and Cassian Bilton as the Cleons—there’s room to grow a very good show around these component parts, even as the Lou Llobell/Leah Harvey/Jared Harris segments remain hit or miss. A decent chance—isn’t that all Foundation is asking for, in the end?

I reviewed the season finale of Foundation This show wound up being much better than it had any right to be, sometimes despite itself.

Is it just me, or is Foundation getting better and better with each episode? Maybe it’s simply a case of familiarity breeding admiration rather than contempt, as more time spent with each of its storylines equals more chances to appreciate the unique things that each is doing. Maybe those storylines are legit improving week to week, particularly as the flatter elements, like the chosen-one heroes Gaal (absent this week) and Salvor, draw closer to their plotlines’ denouements and excitement builds as a result. Maybe it’s a matter of the overall Foundation aesthetic—the grand space vistas, the depiction of far-future civilizations, the cool-looking spaceships and costumes and tech and whatnot—winning us over as we get used to it. Whatever the case, the penultimate episode of the show’s first season, portentously titled “The First Crisis,” is entertaining viewing from start to finish.

I reviewed last week’s episode of Foundation for Decider.

You have to hand it to Emperor Cleon. Most all-powerful galactic overlords would have a hard time suppressing a heretical sect of their star-spanning realm’s most powerful religion, led by a priestess who’s basically called him a soulless abomination. Most would also struggle to prove her wrong by completing a religious pilgrimage that kills 50% of its pilgrims through heat, thirst, and exposure. And most would probably keep their shirts on while doing so.

I reviewed this week’s episode of Foundation for Decider.

Well now, that was certainly an episode, wasn’t it!

Despite a generic-sounding title, “Mysteries and Martyrs,” that initially had me dreading a bunch of equally generic sci-fi goings-on, Foundation Episode 7 turned out to be an absurdly jam-packed installment. With fully four engaging storylines, striking outer-space visuals, and startling deaths and resurrections, I don’t know if it’s the best episode of Foundation yet per se, but it’s certainly the most fun to watch.

I reviewed last week’s episode of Foundation for Decider.

Lee Pace shirtless. That’s it. That’s the review.

I kid, of course. If that were the review, I’d be out of a job real quick. But I do think opening with an Emperor Cleon shower scene tells us something important about Foundation: It understands that the Emperors are the most vibrant and appealing aspect of the story so far. Their sex appeal may not be the whole reason why, but it’s a part of it. Why not emphasize it?

I reviewed the sixth episode of Foundation for Decider.

We’re five episodes deep into Foundation, and from Salvor Hardin to Gaal Dornick, our heroes face what could be an insurmountable task. No, it’s not the attack by Anacrean forces that Salvor tries and fails to fend off. Nor is it Gaal’s need to figure out where the ship on which she has been stranded is going when the ship itself won’t tell her. The big challenge is this: Can the rest of the Foundation cast hold things down without the presence of Lee Pace’s beautiful, beautiful Emperor Cleon? I’d say that after this ep (“Upon Awakening”), the answer is a qualified yes. (Lee Pace hive, feel free to roast me when you link to this review.)

I reviewed the fifth episode of Foundation for Decider.

By all appearances, Dawn is the odd man out in the current Cleon triumvirate; Day and Dusk seem to speak and move in unison during an audience with an ambassador from one of the galaxy’s big religions, Luminism, with Dawn always a beat behind. However, this external synchronicity is belied by a schism behind the scenes, one to match the schism growing within Luminism. While the Emperors have a chosen candidate in mind to succeed the religion’s deceased leader, another candidate has emerged, one who’s embraced a heretical doctrine: as clones, the Cleons have no soul, and are therefore less than human, not more. This, Day believes, is a direct challenge to their right to rule, one potentially embraced by three trillion citizens of the Empire if the rogue candidate takes over. (Day is pulled away from a deliciously erotic encounter with a sex worker he’s training to touch him gently enough to get past his personal shield aura to deal with this crisis; maybe that’s why he’s so grumpy.)

In a fierce argument, Day overrides the usual protocol and insists on traveling to the religion’s decision-making conclave himself, rather than letting Dusk take the trip as is custom. (No Emperor has ever left Trantor during his “Brother Day” years.) Day has a long memory, it seems, and he blames his predecessor Dusk for the fall of the starbridge, the callous bombing of the warring barbarian kingdoms Anacreon and Thespis, and the exile of Seldon, whose mathematical models predicted both the religious schism and an ongoing insurrection on Trantor, another problem the Emperors are having a hard time managing. No more rash decisions like these, Day says—it’s time for him to take charge of the Luminism issue, not Dusk. (“Certainly now the Empire will no longer be rent by impulsive action,” the robotic assistant Demerzel deadpans when Day strongarms Dusk out of the diplomatic mission. Ya burnt, Brother Day!) Should we be troubled that Day has grown so furious about the Empire’s mathematicians’ inability to debunk Seldon’s work that he shouts one into a fatal heart attack? Yeah, probably.

I reviewed this week’s episode of Foundation, freshly renewed for a second season, for Decider.

Salvor Hardin’s segment, by contrast, asks a bit too much of the audience. Salvor herself is something of a cipher, like a generic Star Wars Universe protagonist: barren world, space-age weapon, hidden powers, secret destiny, the whole schmear. And so many mysteries surround her storyline that they blend together into a sort of storytelling soup. We’re nearly two decades removed from the events of the first two episodes, we’re told: okay, great. Why did Raych murder his adoptive father Hari Seldon? What happened to the Foundation after Seldon’s death? How did they weather the storm that surely followed after the death of their founder and leader? What happened to Raych, for that matter? Why did he load our narrator and focal character, Gaal Dornick, into some kind of liquid-filled escape pod? Where is Gaal now? 

Obviously, the show’s decision to withhold these answers was a deliberate one, and I respect that. And we do get some info on what happened after the Foundation’s slowship made planetfall on Terminus (kicking up an impressively earthy giant billow of dirt and stones when it did so): They cannibalized the ship for spare parts in order to build their settlement, they established various procedures for safeguarding their perimeter, contacting the Empire, trading with other worlds, and so forth. 

But so much is left unanswered that when we start adding new mysteries on top of the old ones—the Vault’s expanding null field, the mysterious figure Salvor twice follows into the wreckage of the slowship—we’re basically building on sand. There’s not firm enough, and I hope you’ll pardon my use of the term, foundation on which to build either the character or her world. But then again, we’re talking about a story that plays out over multiple thousands of years, not just a couple of decades. If the show plays its cards right, I’m sure Salvor and her adventures can age up into something interesting.

I reviewed the third episode of Foundation for Decider.

Well. That was unexpected!

I reviewed episode two of Foundation for Decider.

“It will all work out, Raych.”

“Everything is dying.”

“That doesn’t mean it won’t all work out.”

That, in a nutshell, is Foundation, the new science fiction series from creators David S. Goyer (the journeyman genre storyteller of Dark Knight Trilogy fame) and Josh Friedman. Adapted—in some cases very loosely—from the landmark series of novels by sci-fi godhead Isaac Asimov, Foundation is a story about people anticipating the greatest calamity ever to befall humankind, and choosing to look at it as a glass-half-full situation.

I’m covering Foundation for Decider this season, starting with my review of the series premiere.