Summary
Memory of a Killer gets more pleasingly tense and complicated in “Unhappy Ending”, with Angelo’s plate spinning becoming increasingly untenable.
Things are really starting to heat up in Memory of a Killer now. If Episode 3 was all about teasing out Angelo’s worsening Alzheimer’s issues, making vague hints about who the Ferryman might be and who might be double-crossing whom, Episode 4, “Unhappy Ending”, is about fleshing those lingering suspicions out into full-blown theories. And it really works. There’s more tension across the board as all the plates Angelo is spinning start to wobble, there’s a bit more depth to Maria’s arc, and the manifestation of Angelo’s condition is given more than a single cursory moment.
This episode is also a nice reminder that Angelo is a pretty cold-blooded hitman. It isn’t like previous episodes have necessarily shied away from this fact, but “Unhappy Ending” opens with him smoothly executing someone who refuses to give up any meaningful information about the elusive Ferryman, and this is far from the only unceremonious shooting of the episode.
This is worth mentioning, since it raises the issue of what we’re supposed to feel about Angelo. I mean, he’s a bad guy, right? Being the protagonist isn’t the same thing as being the hero, and I’m finding myself much more invested in Maria than I am in him, which is perhaps the point. Although this is quickly turning out to be one of those shows where nobody can really be trusted, since Nicky, who you’ll recall I predicted was probably up to no good, turns out to be connected to everything more than we realised as well.
A lot of the tension here comes from Angelo trying to juggle his latest assignment from Dutch – tracking an extremely ruthless female arms dealer – and his pursuit of the Ferryman. After killing the tight-lipped Leo in the opening, Angelo is carrying his burner around, and when it pings with a message, he quickly abandons his current job with a hasty excuse to Joe. Angelo gatecrashes a warehouse meeting full of illegal arms, but following a few more hasty executions, he gets more than he bargains for – the Ferryman has been surveilling him, and has pictures of his entire family, whom he clearly hasn’t been keeping as secret as he thought.
And then there’s Nicky. Her relationship with Angelo continues to develop in Memory of a Killer Episode 4, but just when it seems like they’re getting somewhere – Angelo tells her some of the truth about his life, notably his dead wife – they’re thrown for another loop. After pushing Joe to break into Leo’s burner behind Dutch’s back, Angelo finally gets access to the phone, calls the first number in its history, and Nicky answers. Uh-oh. So, this means she’s directly connected to the Ferryman?
This is actually the cliffhanger ending of “Unhappy Ending”, but there’s more to go over in the meantime. For instance: Maria. There’s quite a lot going on with her. Firstly, she’s continuing to hover around Dave and stick her nose into his cases, which is especially problematic since he’s investigating murders her father is committing. Her detective work is inadvertently leading the police closer and closer to Angelo, even providing very personal info that links him directly to the dump site.
She’s also struggling with Jeff. She’s clearly more into Dave, and it’s becoming quite obvious that she’s not convinced that Jeff – and even her father, whom she still believes sells photocopiers for a living – can protect her in any meaningful sense, and she’s probably right, since Jeff’s proposed solution to their ills is to simply run away. Angelo is in agreement with this, presumably because Maria doesn’t realise how much danger she’s in and it would get her out of the way, but she’s adamant that she’ll be staying put and dealing with any trouble that comes her way. Fair enough.
But Angelo has other short-term concerns. For instance, he builds the crib for Maria and Jeff’s baby, then completely forgets he did so, even going so far as apologizing for not finishing it. Finally, Angelo begins to acknowledge what’s happening to him, inquiring with one of his brother’s nurses about some therapy that can help to slow the decline of Alzheimer’s. He pretends it’s in relation to his brother, who’s much too far gone for the treatment to be relevant, but we all know he’s considering that he might need that treatment himself.
You can feel the house of cards beginning to come down. Angelo gets through the arms dealer job by the skin of his teeth, but Agent Grant is on his case, and immediately intuits that the Ferryman’s men he butchered in the warehouse had their bodies staged. The net is closing, and the Ferryman remains elusive, although I’m fairly convinced that the Ferryman is Dutch. It’s the only revelation that would carry any meaningful emotional weight, and it’d crystallise some of the brewing issues between Angelo and his supposed best friend if it were revealed that Dutch put a hit out on Angelo’s daughter.
We need more Grant, I feel – is she the Ferryman? That’d be cool – just to increase the cat-and-mouse tension, and more scenes with Dutch so that if he does turn out to be the villain, that reveal stings more. But otherwise, Memory of a Killer is coming along rather nicely, I think.
