"They could be anywhere among the scattered remains of their giant fallen spacecraft, let's fan out to start search- ... Oh, wait, scratch that he's right there, crawling in front of us"
I'm finding this series very disjointed.
Lee Pace is carrying the show now
The show is just fine
I like the show but I’m not a fan of Leah Harvey’s acting.
The episode is a little over 50 minutes in length and feels like it has three hours of dialogue...
Ok the main character needs to come back right now. This is starting to feel like they didn't give us enough information before so they made her go away so they had a reason to spend the last five episodes going unnecessarily into detail about everyone else.
Really hoping that the next episode isn't another side quest into another character's life and we can get Gaal back. They've made the Hari murder a mystery and haven't done much to explain or further the plot after getting me hooked on that plotline and now I'm starting to lose interest in the series altogether.
Glad I figured out a subtitles file'd let me understand the aliens - hehe
(yeah, I thought I wasn't s'posed to know what they were saying - doh!)
The terminus sequences still are interminably boring... other than the verification of my theory that Seldon's death was planned through Salvor's visions.
Day's challenged when he attends a funeral.
So Dawn and Dusk are on a collision course - and again, the scenes with Empire are the most interesting. Honestly, I'm not even sure why there even is a Dusk - the everyday agenda's taken over by Day, who in a previous episode, criticized Dusk for his decisions as Day. Dusk serves as some kind of substitute when Day isn't available - and as a maybe teacher for Dawn. But honestly, I'm not sure why Dawn needs to learn hunting in a controlled environment. The overall setup of the Empire with those brothels and prostitutes whose memories get erased... urgh... I'd really love to know about how that system was established originally. And if you're showing those concubines, it would be interesting if they somehow have an elevated standing or their families get enormous amounts of money etc. Again, I really like the setup with the trinity, Demerzel's an interesting character, but we're 6 episodes in, and the most time's spent on the most uninteresting of plotthreads, i.e. Terminus. (And I realize that the show's called Foundation but please, then it should also be shown as the highlight of the show, not just as a conglomeration of boring characters, non-sensical phrases and action-sequences.)
"Resorting to making your ('strong female') main character a badass action hero is the last refuge of the incompetent screenwriter"
— famed headshot-master Fortnight winner Salvor Hardin
(Salvor Hardin never used a weapon in the books, because he was a master diplomat. It's obscene irony what they've done to the character, regardless of gender.)
Ueeeuugh! This show continues to be a roller-coaster of stupidity, followed by moments of enjoyable television, followed again by stupidity.
The line Pace got in the beginning about 'maintaining his impurities' was satisfyingly menacing, despite the terrible casting of the other Southern Baptist swindler"actor". Big sexy beast Lee Pace owning it like an emperor. I guess we're only getting Lou or Lee per episode, now? That's gonna be a hard(er) sell, if so, considering what they've now done to Demerzel. And if you know what Demerzel's secret is, having read the novels, it's beyond disgusting to see how she behaves in this episode. Every single time. Does a character from a book get a complete personality inversion, or their end-of-story secret gets frontloaded into the first episodes? Well, get set—it's gonna be ad-hoc, unintentional character assassination by incompetent writers to come. See: Salvor, Demerzel.
What worked:
Dawn's storyline worked much better than it had any right to. The scene on the ledge was properly vertiginous, and had me on the edge of my seat, with bated breath. The wig was distracting, but it didn't ruin the scene(s).
I'm taken aback that Salvor's seizure-dream actually had me invested. Of course, it immediately thereafter becomes a laughably stupid action scene. Literally, as I was laughing in places—including named character deaths—that you definitely weren't supposed to. Absolute clown show. Leah Harvey gets in some actual acting, almost to the point of giving the impression of a personality, but it's brief.
It must be acknowledged, that whatever actually transpires in the settings, the production design and filming is technically excellent, in that it all looks convincing, unlike, say, the Disney """Star Wars""" shows, with their really obvious 3-metre sets and fake lighting terminating in the screens they use. The temple shot was a little hinky, but otherwise they really all made competent decisions on what and how to shoot things to make everything convincing.
The rest:
The editing for the rest continues to be randomly incompetent. They set up the concubine scenes like it was going to have some nice eye candy GoT style voyeurism, but then cut the scene short to the point of seeming like a last minute edit—just lop it off, trailing dialogue and all. It's a pity, not just because it's a tease (and if you're going to make us put up with the stupid bullshit in the rest of the episode, then at least follow through with the female skin since you didn't shy away with Lee), the shower scene actually had some gorgeous set design for all of the six seconds they coyly showed it before cutting
Oh, and the temple scene. The less said about it the better, but getting a clearly inexperienced and mediocre actor to play the "charismatic" antagonist, in a show set dozens of millenia on the future, but having that actor give the same performance that millions of American can get by taking 5 turns from their house to the local Baptist church is hardly transporting sci-fi, and a far cry from being immersive. Could we please actually hire good actors in our billion dollar television series? Is it that hard?
And what's the deal with the accents? Sometimes they're kiwis, sometimes they sound British. Did the showrunenrs just give the actors mixed signals about their performances?
Another rather intense episode, this time with the plot of the Empire brothers but nothing more about Gaal. The parts with the Empire have some "Game of Thrones" feel with the large scale politics and intrigues centering on the choice of the new leader of the Luminism religion, as the woman opposed to cloned people seems to win a lot of support from other priestesses. It is a bit surprising that the robot handmaiden of the Empire is also a believer in this religion, which resembles some ancient pagan cults. The plot of the youngest brother also gives some "GoT" vibes as the oldest brother invites Dawn to a hunt and then to some kind of luxury brothel. Dawn discovers that he is different than the previous copies of Cleon as he can hunt better and is also colur-blind so it follows he cannot be their identical clone. He also seems more sensitive towards ordinary people than it is usual for an Empire, it looks like his relationship with the gardener girl develops.
Salvor's plot is rather tragic, as she loses her dad in the episode. First things look good as she is sprung from prison by the kids and then reunites with dad and Hugo, and they set off to destroy the corvettes, however the plan sort of misfires when Salvor has one of her visions during this action, i the vision she is watching Hari instructing Raych to kill him and escape in the pod (so the pod Gaal ended up in was really for him and he sacrificed himself to save her, letting her escape in his pod). I quite liked the scene in which Salvor's dad tells her how he met her mother and that he actually joined the Foundation for her, which makes his death later in the episode more sad. He manages to set off the explosion that destroys the corvettes but is killed in the process, whereas Salvor blames herself for his death. When they reach Hugo's ship, they are overrun by the Anacreans, but Hugo manages to transfer the ship controls to Salvor to save her life, so that the ship cannot leave without her, and she does the same for him, saying she needs him as she knows nothing about piloting a ship.
Somebody shooting this definitely has an armpit fetish
Lmao Brother Day's "your ass bet not" face he makes st Demerzel had me in hysterics. That man is the show.
After watching Invasion this episode felt like an epic masterpiece of a television show.
Shout by Agent24VIP 6BlockedParent2021-10-22T20:01:20Z
Another really good episode. I especially liked the scenes with Brother Day. Lee Pace is brilliant in this role.