Summary
Memory of a Killer really turns up the heat on both Angelo and Maria in “Dr. Parks”, with the walls closing in on all sides and everyone turning out to be entirely untrustworthy.
Just when you thought it couldn’t get much worse for Angelo in Memory of a Killer, Episode 7 comes along. “Dr. Parks” is the first time I’ve felt a bit sorry for the cold hitman whose mind is failing him; he’s now being gaslit from so many angles, and becoming so desperate to try and postpone his hastening decline, that it’s difficult for him not to cut a sympathetic figure. Despite all the murdering, obviously.
You can sometimes see little caveats baked into the script that are intended to humanise Angelo a bit; never accepting contracts on civilians, and that sort of thing. But Patrick Dempsey has been so good at playing an emotionless killer that this stuff doesn’t really work. This dude has taken a lot of lives and hasn’t thought twice about most of them. But now there’s one in particular that he can’t seem to get out of his head.
This is largely thanks to Angelo’s doctor, who, thanks to the previous episode, we know is being strong-armed by Nicky. So the experimental memory treatments he keeps subjecting Angelo to aren’t really intended to help him, as Angelo thinks, but to scramble his brains even further so that he can be gaslit. Thanks to the treatments, sleep deprivation, and Ferryman-related stress, Angelo begins to hyper-fixate on an old hit he unquestioningly carried out on an enigmatic doctor apparently incapable of lying. Since Dr. Truthful claimed that whoever sent Angelo had deceived him, he’s now adamant about figuring out the precise circumstances of the job.
This angle mostly exists to facilitate Angelo sharing more than he probably wanted to with Dutch, since he’s so far removed from the original hit that he can’t retrace his steps and needs to get the information from elsewhere. That includes telling Dutch about the Ferryman – who I still suspect might be the Ferryman, by the way – and inadvertently making his long-time friend and employer worry a little about his pet assassin, especially since he has other business associates breathing down his neck.
But the Ferryman remains a couple of steps ahead either way. Angelo’s efforts to track a shipment back to him through Wesley result in Wesley being killed and a chilling note being affixed to his chest. Things are not going well on that front.
Then again, they’re not going well anywhere. The walls are very much closing in on Angelo, especially regarding the Henry Bloch case. Because Jeff can’t keep his nose out, he turns to his overly enthusiastic PI uncle, who delivers an analyzed button from the expensive suit jacket to Dave. The evidence is inadmissible in court, but it leads Dave down a path of actual policework, which determines that the fibres in the suit are so ludicrously expensive that there are only three high-end stores in New York that stock the right brands. Dave still can’t see the forest for the trees, since he’s not exactly inclined to assume Angelo is a killer, which is why he doesn’t connect the dots when a witness describes him almost exactly. But when Maria later reveals that Angelo wears the super-expensive brand in question, the cogs begin to turn.
Maria’s having a bad time of things in Memory of a Killer Episode 7, too, for what that’s worth. At her yoga class, she just so happens to make a new friend… Nicky, who has infiltrated the place to get closer to her and pump her for information that she can use to further manipulate Angelo. She does this later, reminding him of things that he apparently told her about his personal life that she really gleaned from Maria, only making Angelo even more inclined to turn to his doctor’s experimental treatments. It’s a slippery slope.
Maria also has to deal with the fact that her mother’s killer, Earl Hancock, is now her cable guy and is taking the opportunity to be as creepy about it as possible. I’m not sure about this whole angle since I can’t imagine anyone would be so blasé about sending a murderer to the home of one of his victims, but Maria can’t get a restraining order either way. I have a sneaking suspicion that all of that secret weapons training is going to be put to use sooner rather than later.
What “Dr. Parks” does confirm is that Nicky is not the Ferryman. She is, however, working with Hancock in order to clear a debt with the Ferryman, which makes her dangerous in her own right, if not necessarily in the same way. Romance isn’t going to be on the cards for Angelo, that’s for certain, but the true identity of the Ferryman is clearly going to be a twist that the show milks for as long as possible.
