Memory of a Killer Season 1 Episode 6 Has The Walls Closing In On Angelo

Angelo got some tough news, and while it wasn’t unexpected, it made me think about the longevity of this story.

Everything about Memory of a Killer centers on Angelo’s double life, but with his disease progressing, the core premise of the show shifts as Angelo’s ability to maintain secrets becomes compromised.

So, where do we go from here?

With Alzheimer’s running in his family and Angelo’s recent memory issues, things with Angelo hit a breaking point where he could no longer ignore what was happening to him.

And to be honest, I wasn’t sure we would get to this point with Angelo.

It’s hard to truly know Angelo’s feelings or thoughts. Even as we see different facets of him, the real Angelo remains elusive, shaped by the personas he adopts for survival.

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When he’s with Dutch and Joe, he’s a seasoned killer with a one-track mind. And when he’s with Maria, he’s a devoted father. But he hides so much from everyone around him, slinking into the skin of whoever he needs to be at any given moment, that it’s impossible to know who the real Angelo is at his core.

Getting the early Alzheimer’s diagnosis was a tough moment for him, as you could see a million different emotions flitting through him. And it was made all the sadder because you knew Angelo wouldn’t have a support system to lean on.

Angelo could never tell anyone in his hitman life about his illness, and he would never tell Maria at this point either, because it would invite a level of scrutiny he couldn’t afford in his life.

So, instead, he shouldered it alone, and he moved on like his whole world wasn’t suddenly tilting on its axis.

With the foray into the past during Memory of a Killer Season 1 Episode 5, the whole Nicky potentially being an opp storyline was sidelined, but it came back in a big way here, though it only got more confusing.

Angelo and Nicky’s whole relationship was built on lies, much like all of the relationships in Angelo’s life, but it seemed like once he got what he needed from Nicky in the form of information, he liked her company enough to engage in the pseudo-relationship they found themselves in.

Angelo does not seem like the type to do anything for himself, especially not date or let his guard down in any meaningful way.

And it’s not as if he and Nicky were full-fledged in love and building a life together, and it seems to be a situationship at best, but finding out that she had some connection to the Ferryman threw him off kilter.

Typically, Angelo is quick to make a decision, even though we do see moments of hesitation. But seeing him genuinely not know what to do about Nicky, and just replay hearing her voice on the other end of that phone line, was interesting because you could tell the effect it was having on him.

He didn’t account for his lady friend potentially being involved in the assassination attempt on his daughter, and thus, he wasn’t sure how to attack the situation.

I assumed he would just get right to the heart of matters and confront Nicky straight away because Angelo’s not exactly in the business of true subtlety, especially as it relates to attacks on the people he cares about.

But his decision to try to lure her into a trap essentially seemed a little out of character for him, though, maybe that’s the clue that, at the very least, he has feelings for Nicky.

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With her not falling for the bait, where does that leave him?

The thing about Nicky is that she seemed like a nice lady who might have gotten mixed up with the wrong people. And I was slowly coming around to the idea that maybe her connection to everything was purely happenstance.

That theory went out the window quickly when she took the medical records from Angelo’s doctor, because what the hell was that?

So, not only is she mixed up in this whole Ferryman business for real, but she’s seemingly bribing his doctor for intel into his health, so she can do what with it exactly?

This whole thing is getting very messy, and Angelo’s so behind the eight ball in so many areas of his life. Since the setup didn’t work, his next step should be full-on surveillance, but I fear he may let his guard down.

Nicky’s duplicity is only one of the issues Angelo currently has in his life, though he’s completely unaware of the others.

Thinking back on it, Angelo’s killing of Henry Block was pretty sloppy. Sure, he took him to some off-the-beaten-path place to kill him, but he should have buried him somewhere and ensured there was no possible way his body could ever be recovered.

Not only was his body eventually recovered, but they’ve got fibers, buttons, boots, and phones that can all be connected back to the killer. And what gets me is that Angelo’s too busy trying to find the Ferryman and killing people to really understand that everyone, including his own family, could be closing in on him.

I know that Angelo presents himself as the least threatening person on the planet when he’s in dad and copier salesman mode, but the fact that Dave seemed to never even for a second think that he could have been involved showed me what kind of cop he must be.

Knowing that Henry was the one who shot at Maria should have made the cops at least give a cursory glance at anyone who may have wanted to get revenge on the man.

Agent Grant clearly sees the chessboard in a way Dave is unable to, probably because of his close relationship with Maria and, by extension, Angelo, and something tells me that if she got her hands on the fiber Dave now has, she would find a way to connect it back to Angelo in a heartbeat.

I am curious to see, now that the idea has been floated, whether it awakens something in Dave.

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It’s very difficult to get a read on a lot of these secondary characters because they’re so underdeveloped, and quite frankly, not many of them are all that intriguing. Especially those who are further removed from Angelo.

Jeff continued his stretch of just existing, bringing little to the narrative at this point. He’s just perpetually stressed out about Maria, and instead of taking his stress to Maria, he took it to Dave.

The two men could not be more opposite, and I wonder if Jeff was a rebound now that we have confirmation that she and Dave dated at some point in the past.

His decision to hire his PI cousin and go directly against Dave’s orders will definitely come back to bite him, though it would be kind of funny if Jeff were the one to break the case wide open before Dave or Grant did.

I’m trying to imagine Jeff deducing that Angelo is a cold-blooded hitman, and I am very confident that Angelo would not think twice about eliminating him if it meant keeping himself safe and protecting his relationship with Maria.

During the hit on the accountant gone rogue, when Angelo was about to kill the bodyguard and saw that vision of Michael, it felt like an omen for something to come.

The bodyguard didn’t deserve to die if we’re being honest. He wasn’t the mark at all, just a man doing his job, and he became a casualty of something much bigger than him.

Might that be the fate of someone like Jeff? I could see it.

All these walls are starting to close in on Angelo, and Angelo doesn’t even feel the heat yet. But once he does, there’s no telling what he’ll do to protect the lives he’s built and keep his daughter safe.

Killer Notes

• I love that Joe heard Angelo admit that he killed his father, and it had barely any effect on him whatsoever.

• The beginning threw me off because for a hot second, I forgot what show I was watching. Obviously, Angelo would be killing the priest and not having a crisis of conscience.

• Maria’s quest to defend herself feels so disjointed from everything else. It’s obviously leading towards something, but what that something is and whether it’ll be interesting are up for debate.

A lot happened in this hour, and at the same time, nothing happened at all.

If anything, this was the calm before the storm, because with only a handful of episodes left this season, everything is headed towards hard truths and confrontations between various characters.

Perhaps you enjoyed this one a bit more than I did, and if that’s the case, I’d love to hear from you in the comments!

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