Memory of a Killer Season 1 Episode 4 Teases a Big Twist as Angelo Gets Closer to The Ferryman

Critic’s Rating: 4.2 / 5.0

4.2

Things just got a lot more interesting.

The Ferryman subplot has quickly become the most fascinating part of Memory of a Killer, which is saying something, given that the series’ main plot centers on a contract killer who’s losing his memory.

The Ferryman mystery is the bridge that will eventually bring all the characters together, though that will likely come somewhat later down the line, as they’d do well to drag this one out as long as possible before it gets silly.

Angelo is rightfully laser-focused on finding the Ferryman because of the direct threat he poses to him and his family. It’s not exactly something he can afford to put on the back burner, and he’s taking every lead he can find to get closer to this mysterious figure trying to hurt him.

One thing I appreciate about this series is that, while some things are predictable, others still surprise me, even when they shouldn’t.

I watch too much television, admittedly, and nine out of ten times when someone is threatened on television, even with a gun to their head, their lives are spared, or they reveal the information being asked of them, and they live to see another day.

That does not happen in this series because Angelo’s a killer at his core. He may have a conscience, and he surely isn’t killing people for fun, but he’s also not someone to issue an empty threat.

If he says you have until the count of three to do something, you should never call his bluff because it’ll be the last thing you ever do.

One of the more interesting aspects of the early days of this series is learning about Angelo and discovering who he is, and you have to do a lot of inferring and making assumptions because he’s far from an open book.

He loves his daughter more than anything, but he’s also lying to her. He’s balancing these two worlds, something he’s presumably done for a long time, but as everything starts to merge, we get to see how Angelo handles high-pressure situations and thinks on his feet.

This is all, of course, complicated by his memory issues, which make Angelo’s story really damn compelling.  

When Angelo got a tip about the Ferryman and backed out of a planned hit, I thought there would be a negative ripple effect, but it didn’t really happen because Dutch wasn’t even around to ream him out.

Finding out who’s after his family should be the priority. He’s actually made a ton of progress figuring out who the person is, and it makes me wonder if the Ferryman might be toying with him a bit.

Because a mastermind criminal like that suddenly having his whole operation blown up in a matter of days feels a little too good to be true.

Angelo getting the drop on that abandoned power plant was the biggest break he’d ever had, even more than finding the original hitman. But killing Leo was not a part of the plan.

In a perfect world, he would have tried to break Leo the way he wasn’t able to break the other guy at Belinda’s Bakery and get the information he really needed. But Angelo, collecting phones like Pokémon cards, ended up saving him from a potential catastrophe.

So, here’s the thing about Nicky: I thought she was just a love interest who would get both versions of Angelo and make him start thinking about his double life and what he truly wants now that he’s older and wiser, and potentially sick.

But no! I was naïve, and the general boringness around their coupling made me lose sight of what was right in front of me: murder and duplicity!

We already knew that Nicky was wrapped up in the New York crime scene based on how she and Angelo met, along with her ex-boyfriend apparently being in the mob, but even then, considering how fast she hightailed it out of Angelo’s apartment when she saw that gun in the fridge, she seemed like someone who was maybe cool with being around the bad guys but didn’t want to get wrapped up in their drama.

Now, we don’t know who this Leo man is since Angelo killed him, and his deathbed confession was lukewarm because it’s pretty damn obvious that the Ferryman has a personal vendetta against Angelo, considering he tried to kill his pregnant daughter right in front of him.

But now we know that Leo is connected to Nicky to the point where she was blowing up his phone all day, while he was gathering guns and had a file folder of pictures of Angelo’s family in his possession.

Now, maybe this will all be explained away in the next hour, and we’ll discover that everything is a big coincidence and Leo is Nicky’s older brother and her sort-of boyfriend murdered him earlier that day.

It’s more likely that Nicky’s lying to Angelo about something, even if it’s not as big as having direct knowledge about the Ferryman and why he’s after Angelo. Perhaps she was approached after it was discovered that she and Angelo were hooking up, and she was threatened to cooperate by getting some inside details about him via their hookups.

I’m struggling to see her being any kind of mastermind in this, namely because it’s too early in the season for a reveal like this to be more than a red herring at the most.

But it sets up another intriguing dilemma for Angelo, especially since he has begun to confide in Nicky, giving her half-truths and a version of himself so raw it passes for somewhat transparent.

It’s kind of sad when you think about that, because he likely hasn’t opened up to anyone outside of his brother in quite some time. But with his life in such disarray right now, it probably wasn’t wise to bring someone into it unvetted.

Speaking of Angelo’s brother, I love the small moments we’ve gotten to see between them, because they’re our most unfiltered look at Angelo. It’s him speaking from his heart and speaking from a genuine place, and it’s nice to get those looks at the man behind the many masks.

And the fact that he’s at least taking some small steps to look into his health shows a lot of promise, because he’s realizing that ignoring the issue isn’t making it go away.

Considering all the various stressors in his life, Angelo’s remarkably even-keeled. You’d think every free moment would be spent with Maria or watching out for her, but he seems content to let the police do that.

Though he and Jeff tag-teaming her to convince her to move may have been one of his biggest missteps to date.

Maria’s clearly and obviously struggling in the aftermath of what happened, and it doesn’t seem like anyone actually believes she’s coping okay, but no one seems to know what to do about it either.

Dave enables her, while Angelo and Jeff seem content to tiptoe around the obvious and instead ambush her with plans to leave her home.

I’m not saying Angelo and Jeff were wrong for wanting to get the family out of town, but it didn’t feel right to drop it on her the way they did, because no one likes to feel like they have no agency over their own life.

She’s a pregnant woman who was almost killed, and it didn’t really feel like a conversation about what comes next, but instead two men telling her what should happen next, as if she shouldn’t get to take part in the conversation.

I could be overthinking it, but it felt a bit much, and I could understand why Maria fought back against it, even though the idea of not running away from things doesn’t hit the same when you’d be running away from someone out to kill you.

Ideally, Jeff and Maria would have deep, honest conversations about their feelings. As a Jeff hater, I can admit he tried to do that when he first spoke to Maria, but they don’t seem to be on the same page at all right now.

Maria’s also hiding a lot from both her dad and her husband, including her foray into amateur detective work.

Sorry, but Detective Dave needs to get it together. In what universe should he be telling Maria about the active investigation into the man they think tried to kill her? It was bad enough that he took her to a crime scene, but he just keeps digging this hole because he’s obviously head over heels in love with her.

And are the cops in Hudson Springs terrible at their jobs, because why was Maria the one to find the killer’s boot along the river?

The idea that Maria may inadvertently get her father jammed up for murdering the man who tried to kill her would be funny if it weren’t so ironically devastating.

With each passing hour, everything is starting to merge, and it’s a matter of when, not if, that someone puts two and two together about Angelo and the fact that every single person in his life thinks he is.

Killer Notes

• Using “Take Me Out” as the soundtrack to Angelo killing the Ferryman’s henchmen was genius. The kills in each episode, as morbid as it sounds, are some of the best things about the series.

• It’s a small thing, but I love how Angelo’s hair looks a little less put-together when he’s in copier salesman and dad mode, shopping for fresh fruit, as opposed to when he’s killing people.

• I’m breaking my silence: I like Joe. I think he’s trying so hard to impress Angelo, and it makes him come across a little desperate at times, but hearing a bit about his backstory makes it much more understandable why he’s the way he is. Now watch it’s eventually revealed he’s the Ferryman! I kid, hopefully.

• Grant fully breaking down the murder scene as staged is why she’s going to find out soon that Angelo is a contract killer, and he’s going to have a big decision to make.

This was a good hour, and way less confusing than Memory of a Killer Season 1 Episode 3, so that’s a plus.

How did you guys feel about this one?

How do you think Nicky is connected to the Ferryman?

Who will find out one of Angelo’s various lies first?

Drop all your thoughts down below so we can discuss!

You can watch Memory of a Killer on Mondays at 9/8c on Fox.