Part of what made Mare Of Easttown such a cultural sensation was that it had a clear central hook: watching Kate Winslet give a transformative, stripped-down performance while her character tried solving a tense whodunnit. But while Task shares the references to Wawa and water ice, it’s turning out to be a very different kind of show. Instead of a central mystery, the first episode seemed to be setting up a Heat-style two-hander, in which we’re eagerly anticipating the inevitable confrontation between FBI Agent Tom Brandis (Mark Ruffalo) and burglar Robbie Prendergast (Tom Pelphrey). But though that’s definitely the show the poster is selling, these past two episodes have expanded the world of the series in a way that’s lost even that hook.
With the kidnapping twist and the introduction of the Dark Hearts motorcycle gang as major POV characters, Task has now become a sort of amorphous slice-of-Delco-life character study for a dozen major players that’s also sometimes a tense FBI action procedural/drug running drama. And while that’s not inherently a bad thing, I do think it makes the series a little harder to grab onto at times. Individually, I like pretty much every scene we get in “Nobody’s Stronger Than Forgiveness.” But, taken together, I’m not sure they add up to a particularly cohesive episode—even in a “this is one chapter of a seven-hour movie” way.
Still, given that the writing is strong, the acting is top-notch, the action is tense, and the editing has a compelling dream-like quality to it, I’m not sure how much that really matters either. I don’t know how I’d elevator pitch this series to someone who asked me what it’s about (family, faith, and the FBI, I guess?). But I felt sucked into most of this week’s installment—starting from the opening argument between Robbie and Maeve. As we’ve heard before, Robbie is obsessed with the idea of death having meaning, even if he has to find it retroactively. And that’s leading him down a slippery slope in which he continues to justify worse and worse decisions in the name of finding a solution that makes it all worthwhile.
I was also really struck by the monologue from Philly drug lord Freddy Frias (Elvis Nolasco), in which he negotiates for a 50-percent cut to help Jayson and Perry find their missing drugs. It seems like an outrageous request at first. (Jayson and Perry offer 25-percent.) But once Freddy recounts a brutal attack he experienced at the hands of some racist bikers and highlights the racism inherent to the Philly drug trade itself, it becomes clear he’s negotiating for more than just money. He’s reclaiming the power his white rural neighbors would deny him.
If you squint, you could probably say that this whole episode is about power and powerlessness. There are through-lines about sexism and domestic abuse, as well as a beautiful scene where Maeve teaches Sam to swim with a much gentler touch than her own father did. Rather than (literally) throw a kid into the deep end, Maeve empowers Sam by teaching him to float. As she puts it, “That’s the thing about getting older. You get to choose what you take from your parents. And what you leave behind.”
It’s the same sort of idea Emily is struggling with as she goes to visit her brother Ethan (Andrew Russel) in prison. She’s desperately trying to hold her family together even as she knows they can never return to the way things once were. That makes it especially devastating when she overhears her dad tell her older sister that he doesn’t want Ethan to return home. A happy flashback to the day Tom and his wife Susan (The Killing’s Mireille Enos) welcomed Ethan and Emily into their family underlines just how much was lost in the tragedy. Still, after the Brandis family stuff was a real highlight last week, it feels a little tacked on here, like the show is checking that box instead of truly investing in the emotional drama.
Instead, the most compelling parts of “Nobody’s Stronger Than Forgiveness” hinge on the show’s three main worlds (Robbie/Cliff, the FBI task force, and the Dark Hearts motorcycle club) and the question of if/when/how they’ll cross paths. Some meetings come sooner than expected. After setting up the mystery last week, this episode fairly casually reveals that the Dark Hearts mole is Eryn (Margarita Levieva), the girlfriend of chapter president Jayson.
As at least one of you predicted in the comments last week, Eryn had an affair with Robbie’s brother Billy and when Jayson found out, he killed him for it. Eryn then teamed up with Robbie and Cliff to help them get revenge, but now each side blames the other for escalating things to murder and kidnapping. Meanwhile, Tom and Grasso openly pay a visit to Jayson in order to float the idea of the FBI and the biker gang working together to rescue Sam and flush out their mole. (The gun that killed Sam’s parents was used by a member of the Dark Hearts in a 2017 shootout with their rivals, the Vipers.)
Given how quickly and easily the show’s worlds cross paths elsewhere, “Nobody’s Stronger Than Forgiveness” pulls a fun fake out as the task force manages to track down the name Cliff Broward from one of Peaches’ old co-workers. When the team go to raid Cliff’s house, however, they find a woman named Shelley (Mickey Sumner) and her shithead husband Ray (Peter Patrikios) trying to rob the place instead. Earlier in the day, Cliff and Robbie had turned to Ray to help them sell their massive payload of drugs, only for Cliff’s old cellmate to double cross them and try to steal the score for himself. It’s another one of those twists that almost makes the show feel like a dark comedy.
The raid itself is tense and thrilling, even if Tom getting pushed down the stairs and then seeing a vision of his dead wife feels, uh, a little on the nose. It also gives each of our newbie task-force members something to process. Thuso Mbedu proves her tremendous acting chops in the interrogation room scene where Aleah connects with Shelley over her own experience with brutal domestic abuse. Meanwhile, Lizzie drunkenly laments her tendency to freeze on the job, which is what got her placed on this task force to begin with. Thankfully, Grasso is there to cheer her up with a sweet toast (and an awkward helping of “not all cops”).
The whole thing serves as a sort of mini case of the week for the FBI half of the show, which helps propel us into next week as Tom and Grasso use Ray to help them lay a trap for Cliff and Robbie. (Everything with Ray’s interrogation is also darkly funny.) It’s just that when the episode then cuts away to a scene of Perry flirting with bartender Donna to get info on the gang’s mole, the impact starts to feel diluted. There are only so many characters we can care about in a seven-episode miniseries that wants to focus more on emotion than plot. And Task could probably benefit from a less-is-more approach in terms of how much it wants to tackle each week.
At least the end of the episode finds a hook that could propel the series the way the whodunnit angle did for Mare. It turns out that in addition to Eryn leaking Dark Hearts information to Robbie and Cliff, someone in the FBI has been feeding information to the Dark Hearts too. That puts Lizzie, Aleah, and Grasso in the hot seat—although, personally, my money is on Tom’s boss Kathleen McGinty. Martha Plimpton feels like a big enough get that you want to do something interesting with her, and we know Kathleen isn’t too thrilled with the FBI now that she’s being forcibly retired.
Given how unusually Task has been structured so far, though, it’s hard to say whether that mystery will carry us through the rest of the season or whether it’s just a hook to take us into next week. Either way, hopefully it’ll give the show a slightly stronger narrative spine from which to hang all its many compelling character scenes.
Stray observations
- • There’s a cool long take where we follow Perry, Jayson, and Freddy through a kitchen and into an adjacent building.
- • Sam’s obsession with deer staying off the road really feels like it’s foreshadowing someone getting hit by a car, right?
- • The security footage of the Redding shootout is hilariously high quality—especially for 2017.
- • Would a group of construction workers really be that openly sexist to two FBI agents? It seems like the badge would protect them, but maybe I’m naive.
- • Speaking of which: Are we supposed to see it as sexist that Tom seems to be taking Grasso under his wing in a way he isn’t with Aleah and Lizzie?
- • Alison Oliver and Fabien Frankel are giving the showier, more immediately “fun” performances of the young FBI agents, but, man, Thuso Mbedu is just so great. Watch the way Aleah has to quietly stop herself from panicking when she first hears about Shelley’s history with abuse.
- • It looks like there’s trouble in paradise for Sara and her husband Andy. She texts that her visit home is “Awkward. Hard. Just can’t wait for it to be over.” And he psychotically responds, “When can we talk about us???” Sara may have been an asshole to Emily last week, but those three question marks have garnered her at least a little more sympathy from me.
