One gets the sense that "Pius XIII" is a character he's putting on, a personality he puts on along with the wardrobe.

That was my impression, too. It was also my impression that the sketchy looking character was intimately connected to the cartels that Dussolier mentioned, since he looked momentarily annoyed when the topic came up.

I loved his expression after it actually did jump — you couldn't see the hip-level fist pump, but you just had to know it was there.

"I was abused," though, doesn't explain why Gutierrez would panic when he thought his secret was known to the Pope, I would think. More likely, Lenny is simply arbitrarily excluding Gutierrez from his purge on the basis of personal friendship and affection, but doesn't mind putting a bit of the fear of God in the man…

Where did that thing come from?!

I noticed that, too, and wondered. Maybe it was just his Boston/NY-ish accent coming through a little heavier on account of speaking so loudly. Or maybe it was intended as a kind of unintended affectation to come off as a kind of thuggish bruiser.

The hunger for a Church organized along these lines goes deeper than you might think. I'd go so far as to say that this show is the most culturally prescient thing I've seen in years, maybe ever: indeed, it could only be written by an atheist, because Catholics are, on average (and bishops especially), too oblivious…

"The paintings are the same, the pacing is the same, and Lenny still winks at the camera, except that it’s a lot creepier."

Yeah, I thought it a little strange, too, that he exhorts people to seek after and obey and be mindful of God, while simultaneously resenting His exhortation to baptize and to let the little children come unto Him. Clearly, Lenny himself hasn't fully internalized the seeking-after-God bit, and his homily was a kind of…

"Any chance they are leading us to Lenny being some kind of supe?"

Yeah, positively hysterically absurd. My wife and I both burst out laughing. That's one of the charming things about this show: it has this weird, ethereal, slithery essence that's impossible to pin down. Things like this seem out of place, but they also kind of… don't.

I had the same thought: his tearfulness about "protecting the boy," the abundance of stuffed animals, his nervousness about leaving the Vatican, all suggest a certain emotional stunting. Like others, I thought the hallucination (apparition?) was of the BVM, but the depiction was uncharacteristic enough that I have…

I agree, Pettola is no Padre Pio. Pio was, among other things, obedient: his censure was probably unjust, but he obeyed it nevertheless. He certainly never would have threatened schism!

I have a theory. The Church seems to suffer major schisms every 500 years or so: Islam around the middle of the first millennium, the Great Schism around the start of the second, the Reformation around the middle of the second. Christ tells us that he is the vine, we are the branches, and it is intrinsic to the nature…

"dressed in a stylish green robe we haven’t seen before"

> mini Oreo

Based on a few trends in the show so far and some of Gutierrez's own words, one may suspect the "deeper issue" involves a certain, ahem, orientation on his part.

Come on man, it's The Current Year(TM).

That's classic neurological problems, I hear. Think brain tumor.

Yeah, the strangled chuckle, followed by the pronounced and world-weary sigh of resignation, followed by the vaguely plaintive whine in his voice when he said, "My snack?", was the best thing I've seen on TV so far this year.