\u201cWe train young men to drop fire on people, but their commanders won\u2019t allow them to write FUCK on their airplanes, because it\u2019s obscene!\u201d<\/p>\n
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Kurtz knew that the most vile imaginings of the most uptight general or admiral in the armed forces could not imagine a more unspeakable violation of the human body associated with the word FUCK than the actual, physical, cataclysmically violent violation of the human body associated with napalm. There\u2019s no question what\u2019s more obscene, no question where our ire should be aimed, no question what we should be trying to stop at all costs. Instead, we\u2019re banning cusswords while we rain death upon all of Indochina. Translated into modern terms, it\u2019s expelling student protestors of genocide in Gaza rather than lifting a finger to do anything to stop that genocide.<\/p>\n
Brother Dusk commits genocide in this episode of Foundation<\/a>, three times over. Appearing as a Wizard of Oz\u2013sized hologram before the galactic council as they prepare to hand the Mule not only Trantor but him, too, the last Cleon standing decides to make a counteroffer. With sadistic mirth in his voice and that unmistakable Dusk twinkle in his eyes, he uses the Novacula, his black-hole bomb, to wipe out the homeworld of the Council, the sacred planet of the Luminists, and the entire cluster of worlds called Cloud Dominion. He does it in seconds, with the push of a button. A blast, a brief detonation, and then poof \u2014 billions of lives reduced to floating ash as instantly as a dandelion blown apart by a child. And it\u2019s all done with about that level of consideration.<\/p>\n Foundation is no stranger to planet-destroying weaponry. But it\u2019s the anticlimactic nature of these planetary blasts that turns your stomach. There\u2019s no suitably huge explosion of flame, like the mushroom cloud after a nuclear detonation, or planets and Death Stars bursting apart in Star Wars. It\u2019s like I said: a blast, a rumble, a conflagration that lasts about two seconds, and then nothing. If the body is sacred, then the sacred was just profaned in the most grievous way imaginable, billions upon billions of times over. They weren\u2019t even afforded the dubious dignity of going out in a way that suited the immensity of the loss. Their funeral pyre was denied them.<\/p>\n \u201cDon\u2019t fuck with Empire,\u201d Dusk says before signing off.<\/p>\n It\u2019s one of the most shocking, disgusting, horrifying acts in the history of this show, and that\u2019s saying something.\u00a0<\/p>\n It\u2019s especially bad because Dusk really, truly does not give even hafl a shit. Within the hour he\u2019s asking Ambassador Quent, who believed him to be as kind and just and wise as his nickname \u201cThe Conciliator\u201d would indicate, to join him for his last dinner before \u201cascending\u201d the next day. After watching Empire commit a war atrocity, she\u2019s somehow not in the mood for lamb\u2019s brain. She\u2019s not in the mood to see this repulsive criminal ever again. So, on his last night alive \u2014 Demerzel\u2019s programming does not permit her to deviate on this \u2014 he eats, or fails to eat, alone.<\/p>\n Even as I recoiled from the screen and wrote JESUS CHRIST, HOLY CHRIST, GOD IN HEAVENin my notes, though, I wondered something. The three factions undermining his control of Trantor are a problem, sure, but none of this would be happening if it weren\u2019t for the real enemy, the Mule. Why not fire your weapon at New Terminus and take out both him and the remnants of Foundation forever? In speaking with his captives Brother Dawn and Bayta Mallow, the Mule has a hypothesis: If Empire could have destroyed him just now, he would have. There\u2019s a limit to the weapon\u2019s range, which suggests that as long as he stays out of it, or on a planet Dusk would hesitate to destroy, he\u2019s safe.<\/p>\n But even now there\u2019s a crack squad of\u2026well, there\u2019s a squad of would-be heroes on their way to defeat the psychic warlord. There\u2019s Gaal Dornick, of course, his fated nemesis, and her telepathic boyfriend Captain Han Pritcher. There\u2019s Toran Mallow and his new friend Magnifico, whom Toran insists they keep alive even after Gaal discovers he\u2019s still loyal to the Mule. There\u2019s Zera (Victoria Wyant) and Leyda (Mark Ebulue), Second Foundation soldiers who I assume are just there to keep quiet and provide cannon fodder. There\u2019s Dr. Ebling Mis, Hari\u2019s now somewhat jaded superfan after the genius\u2019 digital avatar failed to protect the Foundation.<\/p>\n Along the way they try and fail to deprogram Foundation\u2019s warden (Fallon Greer), who become free enough from the Mule\u2019s grasp to reveal that his form of control hurts before sinking back into the lethal abyss of his control. \u201cI\u2019ve never felt such love,\u201d she says, disappearing into the psychic murk with a corpse\u2019s grin on her face.<\/p>\n And there\u2019s Hari himself \u2014 only he\u2019s not Hari, and he knows it. This copy of the psychohistorian resents that another was somehow given a body and allowed to live and learn new things again, and he wants the same deal for himself if he\u2019s to help Gaal\u2019s assassination squad get to the Mule using the Vault\u2019s powers. Gaal, not for the first time this season, lies to someone she cares about and acts as though the other Hari were still alive and making this arrangement is possible.\u00a0<\/p>\n Maybe it is, though? Using her own copy of the Prime Radiant, Lady Demerzel \u2014 who went along with Dusk\u2019s genocide but is no longer certain where her path will, or should, lead her in the uncertain near future \u2014 enters its kaleidoscopic matrix. There she communes with the entity called Kalle (Rowena King). Though she looks, sounds, and in some ways acts like Hari Seldon\u2019s slain wife of the same name, she\u2019s something else entirely, perhaps the embodiment of the Prime Radiant herself. It\u2019s this Kalle, or something like her, that granted Hari his body in Season 2; earlier in the season, she helped that living Hari ascend to some higher plane of consciousness, or something.\u00a0<\/p>\n Could Kalle conceivably grant the other Hari a body? Could she introduce him to his other self, who I presume is floating around in the ether somewhere? Does she have the same kind of communally oriented machine-mind Demerzel has, as their tender digital embrace appears to indicate? Does that make her a robot, now or at some point in the past? Is she some other form of intelligence entirely? By leaving the decision of whether to use Trantor\u2019s library to hide or entrap Second Foundation up to Demerzel, does that make her angel or devil? These are big mystery-box android-show questions, and Foundation may be the only series I trust to answer them interestingly.<\/p>\n Why? Because even amid the horror of mass death, the desperation of the struggle against fascism, and the perplexity of artificial intelligence, Foundation makes room for Brother Day to kill that evil goldbricking religious cult leader Sunmaster with his own scepter.<\/p>\n \u201cProfane man,\u201d Sunmaster spits at Empire with his dying breath. \u201cHalf man.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cDead man,\u201d Day quips like he\u2019s Schwarzenegger, tossing the guy over the side to his death.<\/p>\n Yes, Day gets in Running Man\u2013style joke after killing a bad guy, after first escaping from a cesspool filled with slimy parasites like the garbage chute in Star Wars, in the same episode that conveys the visceral revulsion provoked by mass murder and ecocide as well as anything this side of Andor, using sci-fi imagery all its own. What a show. What a show.<\/p>\n Sean T. Collins (@theseantcollins<\/a>) writes about TV for\u00a0Rolling Stone,\u00a0Vulture,\u00a0The New York Times, and\u00a0anyplace that will have him<\/a>, really. He and his family live on Long Island.<\/p>\n \t\t<\/p>\n
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