Anyone else getting addicted to HBO’s Boardwalk Empire? My original fear was that it would become too static, sort of like a TV version of a Kurt Andersen novel, but it has a slightly random and even dangerous feeling now that I kind of like (surprise).

Last night’s episode brought the Catholic themes to the surface, so to speak, starting with Nucky’s voluptuous mistress Lucy scratching his chest after sex. By the end of the show the repressed prohibition agent played by Michael Shannon (who was scary as the outsized schizophrenic son in the film of Revolutionary Road) is doing his own flesh-mortifaction, paying penance for his obsession with Margaret Schroeder (Kelly Macdonald), who may or not be Nucky’s true love.

Some of the dissension over the show has to do with Steve Buscemi’s bonafides as a leading man. Having seen him mostly play creeps in Coen Bros movies a lot of people seem to be having a hard time imagining him as a macher in 1920’s Atlantic City. Slightly rubber-lipped and bug-eyed, Buscemi can play psychos and losers with equal aplomb. But add a few million to his bank account, and the police and politicians at his beck and call, and it’s funny how irresistible he suddenly is to the women.

The mother/whore stuff familiar to anyone raised Catholic was on full display last night, too (along with quite a bit of frontal nudity, male and female) but we all know someone is going to pay for their  pleasure. The question with any good gangster story is who will pay last? And does hell really last an eternity?