After three weeks of enjoying Task but also struggling to wrap my mind around its big-picture structure, everything suddenly snapped into focus this week. This isn’t a show about criminals vs. the law; it’s a show about three fathers desperately trying to hold their metaphorical and literal families together.
Most obviously, there’s Mark Ruffalo’s Agent Tom Brandis, the grieving father of Sara, Emily, and Ethan, who’s also a metaphorical father to a task force of young agents. Then there’s Tom Pelphrey’s trash-collector-turned-burglar Robbie Prendergrast, who doesn’t just have two kids of his own but imagines himself as the protective patriarch of an eclectic found family unit who will forge a new life together in Canada. And, finally, there’s Jamie McShane’s Perry, a national leader of the Dark Hearts motorcycle gang who sees chapter president Jayson as his surrogate son.
Locking into Perry as the main POV character for the Dark Hearts side of the show makes a world of difference when it comes to Task feeling more balanced and less scattered. This is now much more clearly a show about a trio of men trying to cling to their old-school sense of authority and an ensemble of younger characters caught up in their detached, chaotic, and sometimes volatile wake.
That theme really comes to the forefront in the show’s first flashback to Robbie’s brother Billy (Jack Kesy). Task has suggested Billy was a beloved figure among his friends and family, and here we finally get to see why. On a family day out at the lake, Billy is an absolute force of confidence, affirmation, and joy for those around him. He’s the life of the party, but he also gives the sort of calm, sage advice you want from an older brother—telling Robbie it’s better to let his marriage go rather than cling to a dying partnership. He’s the sort of guy who knows just what to say and how to say it, giving his brother a bit of tough love advice while also softening the blow with a dick joke and a heartfelt compliment.
We know, of course, that Billy’s wisdom has its limits. He’s still continuing to see Eryn rather than ending their affair—something we know will lead to his brutal death. Yet he’s so charismatic and assured, you get why Robbie keeps trying to emulate him with wise platitudes, grand paternal gestures, and insane plans to smuggle his family off the grid. Robbie thinks that if he approaches the world with enough confidence, nothing will ever go wrong. By the end of this episode, however, his daughter Harper is terrified, his niece Maeve is furious at him, his best friend Cliff is dead, and he’s been sort-of caught on film with sweet, kidnapped Sam. It turns out “fake it until you make it” isn’t always such great advice after all.
While Ruffalo takes a bit of a backseat after getting more of a showcase last week, we understand Tom’s failings as a father through a peek into his daughter Emily’s life. This week, she gets drunk with some co-workers and comes home throwing up, which isn’t all that crazy on the scale of rebellious teen behavior. (She even finds a gem of a protector in the sweet, nerdy Leo.) But as we see during one of her therapy sessions, Emily is processing so much more than teens her age usually have to grapple with.
It’s not just the impossible reality that her brother murdered their mom. It’s the way Emily’s experience as an adoptee colors her life too. Like so many adopted kids, Emily feels an immense social pressure to be “grateful” that her parents “gave her a second chance,” which leaves little room for the complex array of emotions kids so often feel towards their parents. Sara, for instance, was so upset with the way her parents handled Ethan’s mental-health struggles that she didn’t speak to her mom for a full two years before her death. But how would the world judge Emily if she were to draw such an intense boundary rather than emphasizing how “lucky” she feels to be adopted by a loving couple?
The more details we learn about the Brandis family tragedy, the more brutal it becomes. And poor Emily is carrying more than her fair share of the burden. While Tom has generally been quite sweet and supportive of his younger daughter these past few episodes, it’s also clear he has no idea of the depth of her feelings or the complications of her lived experience either. He’s so caught up in his own pain that he’s not really making space for hers. Like Robbie trying to cheer up Harper with a sweet at-home father/daughter dance, Tom’s various attempts to look after Emily have felt like a band-aid to a bullet hole.
With Robbie as a manic dad and Tom as a passive one, that leaves Perry as the show’s take on an abusive father figure. As Perry’s investigation into the Dark Hearts’ mole leads him to the truth about Billy’s death, he uses violence to regain a sense of control over his “children.” He beats Jayson with a chain when he finds out why he actually killed Billy. And he shoves Eryn into a chair while trying to suss out whether she helped organize the burglaries as a way to get Jayson out of her life.
Yet most horrifying of all is the way Perry’s physical abuse is entangled with a sense of paternal protectiveness. He offers to help Eryn leave Jayson, if that’s what she wants. And he’s desperate to get the drugs back so that Jayson isn’t killed by the Dark Hearts mother club. Like many an abusive parent, there are layers of emotional complexity to the way Perry operates. And the fallout of his abusive “parenting” style is carried on when Jayson runs Cliff off the road, beats him to a pulp, and—in a truly terrifying moment—suffocates him with a roll of plastic wrap. It’s a brutal turning point for the halfway mark of the season.
Given how much this episode manages to make Perry feel like a vital part of the show’s thematic world, I’m hoping for something similarly transformative from the task-force side of the series. Right now, Lizzie, Aleah, and Grasso are there to help move the FBI plot forward and provide some lighter comedic moments. But they don’t feel hugely thematically connected to everything else going on. Loosely, they’re another set of “kids” for Tom to look after, but the show hasn’t really emphasized that mentor/mentee relationship.
In fact, now that the task-force trio is so tied up in the “who’s the mole?” mystery, it’s hard to know whether to invest in its scenes as slice-of-life character studies or red-herring clues. Aleah is a loner, Lizzie is longing for connection and purpose, and Grasso is an earnest people pleaser. But are those their genuine personalities or acts they’re putting on?
Personally, I’ve been confused about Grasso’s religious background since episode two, where he explained that he grew up in a devout Catholic household but then asked why anyone would need a priest at a mass-casualty event. (Even if you don’t like the religion yourself, you would surely understand the concept, right?) That car convo made it sound like Grasso had turned away from Catholicism altogether, but here we see him wearing a (non-crucifix) cross necklace as he refuses to sleep with Lizzie in her “marriage bed.” There’s definitely something specific lingering in his religious background. But is that a thematic character beat or a clue that he’s lying about his identity? Is the writing clunky or do we just not know the big picture yet?
It’s hard to say. Last week, I suspected Tom’s boss Kathleen McGinty would turn out to be the mole, but this episode makes her overtly suspicious in a way that now makes me think it’s not her (or at least not her working alone). We also get our biggest sabotage yet, as the burner phone the FBI plans to use to entrap Cliff somehow winds up in the hands of the Dark Hearts, who run Cliff off the road before kidnapping and murdering him. Aleah is the one who holds up the burner at the opening briefing, while Grasso is the one handling it at the park sting operation. Lizzie, meanwhile, apparently had her own statie vetting process before joining the task force, which casts suspicion on her too.
If I had to vote, I’d say Grasso and Kathleen are working together in some capacity—either as the mole or potentially to flush out the mole. (They had a very pointed “we don’t know each other” intro last week.) But, honestly, I’d much rather just get to know these characters as people rather than keep them opaque for the sake of mystery. Task is at its best when it’s a character drama first and an FBI crime procedural second. “All Roads” helps bring the Dark Hearts side of the show into that character-driven place. Hopefully the task force can get the same treatment.
Stray observations
- • Cliff spends most of this episode in a semi-catatonic state, but I’m very impressed he never gave up Robbie and his family during his torture session. R.I.P. to a loyal one.
- • The Dark Hearts having printed-out photo albums from each of their rallies? Adorable.
- • One of the Dark Hearts members says that Billy’s murder has been “following us around like a curse,” which is an interesting addition to the show’s religious themes.
- • First the deer and chickens and now a fish? I’m very worried about Sam and all these innocent animal metaphors.
- • Aleah “Bullseye” Clinton has won the Police Pistol marksmanship competition two years running. Lizzie is going to make her a patch to celebrate.
- • After the scene where Robbie loses his mind rather than playing it cool when Sam gets lost, it’s really satisfying to watch Maeve dress him down for how dumb and shortsighted his “move to Canada” plan is. (“I can’t live without my kids.” / “Well maybe you should have thought about that before you started robbing those houses.”)
- • Lots of ticking time clocks are in play now: The Dark Hearts plan to kill (or at least maim?) Jayson on Friday. Meanwhile, Maeve tells Robbie he has until tomorrow morning to turn in Sam or she will.
