Personally I kinda liked the first season. It's better if you forget the original Asimov story and just watch it as its own thing because it diverges from it quite a bit.
Unfortunately I didn't enjoy the 1st season, just like other commenters here. A preliminary reason could be that the story is very different from the book, which is one of my most favourite sci-fi books ever. But even simply seeing this series as something different from the book, if found it too cheap: the characters are half-stereotypes, the events are what you'd expect, usual blood and sex to attract viewers...
Should go without saying, just my personal opinion and tastes. I'm happy that others enjoyed the series and I hope it'll made them curious to read the books.
The only parts of the show I enjoyed was the segments about the Emperor(s), which was a completely new invention of the show. It felt like somehow the writing A-team had snuck off to make some kind of weird original scifi thing, while the B-team was writing the “main” Foundation centered plot.
Putting aside any love for the books, I found the Foundation sections to be bad on their own terms. I stopped watching when the gang did a Call Of Duty mission into a ghost ship.
I love the books. I've read the original trilogy three times, as well as heard the BBC radio dramatization (from the 1970s). My anticipation for this series was sky-high.
Halfway through Season One I stopped watching, baffled in an uninterested way about how they dropped everything that had the original Foundation spirit, I recognized the names of most characters and some planets, but everything in between was crammed with Goyer's self-important posturing, insistence on mystery boxes and artificial cliffhangers.
The books will live on, they are immortal. The series, not so much, it will age quickly and badly.
Thank God we also have Villeneuve and Dune right now.
I also loved the books and I think this might be the difference. It’s only very loosely based on the books. Those who seem to enjoy the show often haven’t read the books at all, or don’t have much of a connection with them.
I just wish Hollywood would stop butchering such amazing IP. They should create new IP if they have such disdain for the original content.