Entertainment

I definitely see what you are saying, however the Mentalics have existed in Asimovs universe since before the Empire or the Foundation. They are being represented with some new powers, but the mental influence is a very important ability that ties the whole story together in the end.

I think their only major misstep was revealing demerzel as both a robot (s1), and as the orchestrator (s2) too early. They haven't however shown just how far their influence has gone in guiding history just yet, nor how that ties into the creation and application of psychohistory.

They are smooshing the timeline around and boiling all of the books down into one slightly weird slurry, but apart from the obvious changes to make the long timeline more TV friendly (genetic dynasty and characters like Gaal acting to connect different eras across time jumps with familiar faces) everything that is happening is taken from some part of the asimoverse but often exaggerated a little bit for spectacle.

I think S1 ended up as a 6/10 for me and S2 as a 7/10