This hour perfectly captured the show’s appeal.
There was a heavy emphasis on Angelo. There were answers around every turn. There were suspenseful and thrilling moments.
Then it all came to a screeching halt with those last five minutes, which were a bit of a letdown after such a fascinating ride.
Since The Ferryman was revealed to be Agent Grant during Memory of a Killer Season 1 Episode 8, we knew these final two hours of the first season were going to be all about Angelo discovering the mystery person’s identity.
They could have easily stretched this into that finale, having Angelo continue to remain oblivious, while Grant took the final steps in her master plan to ruin everything Angelo had ever touched.
But the series took a different avenue with Memory of a Killer Season 1 Episode 9, and the episode was better for it.
Starting the hour off with Dutch channeling his inner John Wick was a fantastic action piece, especially since we don’t see much outside of Angelo kicking someone’s ass every week.
Dutch is still a low-key mystery, and even though we know he’s a ruthless businessman with zero loyalties, we now also know that he can get his hands dirty. Not only did he take down Gilchrist’s men with ease, but he was smart enough to also take her hostage and not just kill her out of anger.
No matter what Dutch may have believed about what Angelo told him previously, Gilchrist wanting him dead woke him up to the fact that Angelo was in some real danger.
And when Dutch came clean to him, it actually felt like one of the first conversations I can remember between the two where I fully believed that Dutch was being forthright and honest with his longtime friend.
I don’t believe Dutch just sets out to lie to Angelo at every turn, but he keeps him at arm’s length. He didn’t tell Angelo that he knew Gilchrist when he first mentioned it, because he needed to gather his own information on the woman and the situation before showing his cards.
No matter how far back they go, Angelo’s still the “boss,” and Angelo being pissed off that Dutch kept something from him is understandable, but it’s also not as if Angelo is this beacon of truth at every turn.
Now, do I firmly believe that Dutch is forever and always trying to keep Angelo alive? Honestly, I’m not totally sold on that.
The season began with Dutch as the number one suspect, and over time, that has clearly dissipated and almost completely vanished since Grant’s reveal as the big bad. But let us not forget Dutch’s ever-present ‘I made you, and I can break you’ attitude.
That kind of person is probably not someone who can ever be fully trusted, because even if they gaslight you into thinking they have your best interests at heart, they will eventually have to choose between letting you be your own person or continuing to treat you like they know what’s best.
It’s not lost on me that we never actually saw any of the conversations between Dutch and Gilchrist, only his version of events. He may end the hour looking like some kind of hero, but I have a sneaky suspicion that there’s A LOT more about Dutch to be revealed this season.
You know what was revealed? More about Nicky, including how she came to be involved and what drove her actions throughout the season.
I am still very confused about how Grant could have predicted that Angelo would go into that club when he was working another case and meet Nicky. Plus, Angelo approached her, didn’t he?
There’s something a bit off about the origins of Angelo and Nicky, but at least we learned why she was trying to set him up, and my goodness, Grant really went full villain after the death of her son.
The whole season has elevated The Ferryman to supervillain status, but seeing that flashback of Grant with Nicky in the interrogation room showed just how far down the rabbit hole she had fallen.
I’m sure at some point she was an FBI agent looking to do the right thing, but the person sitting across from Nicky showed no sympathy, no care, and no morality.
Instead, she saw a broken woman at her lowest moment, whom she could mold into an asset on her revenge tour.
Nicky was put into a terrible predicament, and it’s easy to say she should have done this or that, but in reality, she likely felt she didn’t have a choice but to do what Grant said.
But don’t we always have a choice?
Nicky certainly ended up making one later on when she went against Grant’s wishes, so technically, couldn’t she have done that all along?
That’s an oversimplification, I know, but hearing Nicky’s backstory put everything we saw her do into a larger perspective. And it was never black and white.
One thing I did hate, though, was how much she messed with Angelo’s mind because no part of him should have thought he could trust her, but he was still confused about her intentions, even after he knew she had some connection to The Ferryman.
Angelo should have been through with her then!
Throughout the hour, Angelo finally got hip to the fact that Grant was somehow part of everything, and following her into that restaurant to see Patrick Dempsey and Gina Torres dancing around each other was perfection.
Now that we know Grant’s known about Angelo all along, every glance, every word, took on a new meaning.
And Angelo may not have fully known that Grant was The Ferryman, but he knew, at the very least, she was connected, and he was using that interaction to usurp something that would help him make the connection clearer.
Boy, did he get it when Julia showed up.
I absolutely can’t say enough about how wonderful that scene was, with Julia dropping the Arthur name, and Angelo recognizing he’d been caught, but then everything shifting onto Grant’s shoulders when it was revealed she was Parks’ mother.
Everyone had a role to play in that scene, and it was just so well done.
Grant, later calling Angelo, drink in hand and tears streaming down her face, was another immaculate scene, and a chance to actually hear Grant admit out loud how much she’d lost her way.
She blamed Angelo for turning her into a monster, refusing responsibility for her actions.
Her pain about losing her son, who by all accounts was a good man, is unfathomable. And wanting to make Angelo pay for his crime? Okay.
But killing those closest to him, whose only crime would be sharing the same DNA as Angelo, was what made her a monster. And at least she recognized that.
Angelo, on the other hand, seems very beholden to this code of never killing people who don’t “deserve” it, and if this whole situation with Parks doesn’t convince him that his chosen profession leaves a lot of room for error, then nothing will.
Whether or not Angelo views himself as a monster or not, he’s playing God for money. He doesn’t really get to stand on any kind of moral high ground, even if he’s facing off against someone like Grant, who’s willing to burn the whole ground down for a flicker of vengeance.
Speaking of Grant, her deciding that she wanted both Michael and Maria dead felt like she was just bored or something, because, to that point, she had seemed very meticulous about what she intended to do.
Yes, she already tried to kill Maria once, and it failed, but keeping her alive all this time, and then deciding right when she was on the cusp of giving birth to kill her AND Michael at the same time seemed just truly diabolical and less about methodically breaking Angelo down, and instead going for the jugular.
Her biggest mistake was assigning Nicky the task of sabotaging Maria’s home, even though she should have known Nicky had one foot out the door.
This wasn’t even a case where I think Nicky fell in love with Angelo and felt crushed about deceiving him, but instead her just being unwilling to aid in the death of an innocent woman and her child.
But before we get into the final moments, the meeting between Grant and Angelo was so odd.
It’s still extremely weird that Grant figured out Angelo killed her son, but never once suspected Gilchrist. It’s also safe to assume that if she knew nothing of Gilchrist, she knew nothing of Dutch, but I’m just having a hard time believing that.
There are so many connections to be made, and it’s almost as if once Grant discovered the actual person who pulled the trigger, that was all she could be consumed with, and that’s plausible on its surface, but considering how meticulous she was, it’s hard to imagine she never dug deeper.
Did anyone believe that once Grant killed Gilchrist, she was going to drop her vendetta against Angelo? Good, me either.
She didn’t come this far to just let it all go, but sending Angelo off to choose between Maria and Michael wasn’t as terrifying as the show wanted to make you believe it was.
To this point, there have been a lot of deaths, but nothing of serious consequence. We already knew, thanks to Nicky’s phone call, that she was going to help Maria in some way, and the cut away from actually showing Michael being strangled meant he was going to be fine, too.
Therefore, we were placed in moments that should have genuinely worried us, but the lack of real peril made them feel hollow and undercut the suspense the show tried to build.
Right now, the stakes feel incredibly low.
The biggest shocks were Maria seeing her hitman Daddy firsthand and maybe questioning him moving forward, and Angelo side-eyeing the hell out of Dutch for coming to save the day with Michael.
Dutch can keep saying he’s doing everything to protect Angelo, and Michael by proxy, but all I saw was another instance of him lying to Angelo.
Was the outcome good? Sure. But all it should have emphasized to Angelo was that Dutch will always choose control over honesty, stepping to play the hero when it benefits him, and keeping everyone else in the dark.
Killer Notes
- Why do I feel like this season is heading towards Dutch being taken out and Angelo and Joe taking over the business? Could that be possible?
- The building super giving Angelo a walkthrough and play-by-play of Nicky killing her ex-husband was not funny, but it kind of was. Because why was he so eager to give a stranger all that information?
- An underrated but sweet moment was Angelo showing Michael Maria’s pictures, and the two just sitting there in a fleeting moment of happiness.
- The way Grant and Angelo were finally face-to-face, and neither made a move on the other, was madness!
With one episode left this season, there is still A LOT of ground to cover!
Please let me know in the comments what you thought about this one, but also what you think will happen in the finale!
You can watch Memory of a Killer on Mondays at 9/8c on Fox.
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