Look, one thing the book absolutists aren't being honest about is that a reason it's hard to bring the Foundation series to screen is that the books a) weren't books, but stories ranging from short to novella length, and b) they range over hundreds of years, weave through constant character refreshes, and hop around locations. Even Foundation And Empire, with the Mule at its heart, does this. Plus c) Asimov stretched the timeline even more with sequels and prequels and d) complicated things with even more cast refreshes by tying in his Empire and Robots series - Demerzel is a bolt on to Foundation, and didn't occur in the original.
Because of the anthological nature of the source, a lot of work is being done to craft a narrative. To stay at all true to the original works they're going to have to do time jumps - frankly, so far this is nothing. Plus even Asimov failed to actually follow his timeline to the Second Empire, while the authorized "3Bs" additions went the prequel route. So it's likely that this series will, if it goes all the way to the Second Empire, cover 15,000 years of galactic history, and how it very nearly goes horribly wrong over and over.
Yes, this episode is slow, we're missing some information, and it's a bit baffling - but trust me: it's setting things up. Plus the Cleons are an important marker - aside from providing a thread of continuity by being sort of unchanging as cast refreshes occur with the time jumps, we are seeing the decline of the Empire through their gradual degradation - the clones aren't living as long, it seems, and fade fast, plus they are losing connection with their world, hence Brother Dawn 35 years on erasing the living mural that the Dusks seemed to have an affinity for. Empire is in decline; the center cannot hold.