Can Boardwalk Empire reach Sopranic heights?

Based on the first two episodes, the HBO Terence Winter series "Boardwalk Empire" is worth watching for Steve Buscemi's Nucky Thompson alone - Buscemi, as he did in Reservoir Dogs and episodes of The Sopranos, makes every scene he's in better, makes many scenes great - and he's perfectly cast here as the kingpin of the East Cost prohibition mobsters. HBO itself set the bar for this kind of series extraordinarily high, and from the first two episodes it doesn't seem the Boardwalk can climb to Sopranic heights - what made The Sops so great was the focus on the family life and the interior life of Tony S., whereas in Boardwalk Nucky T. doesn't have much of an interior life - the various references to his late wife and his loneliness to not ring true and his relation with his brother, the corrupt country sheriff, have not yet developed at all - the sheriff might as well be any corrupt official, the writers have done nothing to develop the family dynamics. The weakest link, however, is that between Nucky and the young mobster aspirant, Jimmy, who's supposed to be a war vet and Princeton dropout, yet there's no clear or credible explanation as to why he would choose to stay involved with Nucky - this part obviously modeled on Christopher in The Sops but the relations are vague and the character is ill-conceived. That said, there are excellent scenes in the first two episodes, particularly the huge parties and crowd scenes in Atlantic City in the '20s - Scorcese directed the first episode, and it's clear once again that nobody today can direct these massive party scenes as effectively as he does.