One of the things that makes Task so compelling is that its world is tiny and its time frame is incredibly tight. It’s been two days since Robbie and Cliff went to Ray to try to sell their drug haul and maybe four or five since they kidnapped Sam. By the start of this episode, the FBI already have a lead on Robbie and it just takes one quick, tense visit to Maeve’s house for Perry to piece together the fact that Cliff and Robbie were friends. There’s no hiding in this world. This is a small enough town that Robbie’s brother and best friend were both murdered by the same man.
Task isn’t a show about if or even when everything is going to go wrong. It’s about the few agonizing moments where our characters are trapped between the hope of a better future and the inevitability of tragedy. Yet even so, it’s still shocking just how quickly the shit hits the fan in this antepenultimate installment. Halfway through this 60-minute episode, Perry has murdered Eryn, Grasso has been revealed as the Dark Hearts mole, Maeve has turned Sam over to the FBI, and Robbie has taken Tom hostage after the two almost casually cross paths at his house.
While Task hasn’t exactly been a slow burn so far, it’s followed something of a familiar rhythm each week: a bunch of moody character scenes, a tense action/suspense set piece in the third act, and a denouement with some sort of cliffhanger to set up the next episode. Here, however, the show explodes that structure in a thrilling, destabilizing way. If this were all happening in a season finale, it would be exciting but expected. But with two episodes left to go, it genuinely feels like anything can happen in “Vagrants,” right up through its cliffhanger climax.
For all those exhilarating swerves, however, what I love most about this episode is how it returns to the vibe of the premiere, which was my favorite hour of the show before this week. We open with Robbie’s story about how he and Billy used to brace themselves with cold water before jumping into the freezing quarry in winter. They were worried that their hearts were going to explode and, in a way, that’s what happens to Robbie this week.
For Robbie, this season has been a brutal lesson in the sunk-cost fallacy. This whole saga began because he was obsessed with the idea of finding meaning in his brother’s death. He wanted to use his sadness and anger to rob his way to a better financial future for his family. Instead, he’s driven Maeve away, gotten Cliff killed, and now inadvertently contributed to Eryn’s murder too. Robbie thought his impulsive idealism could build him a shiny new life. Instead, he’s lost nearly everything he truly cared about.
One of the more striking motifs in this episode are the shots of families enjoying picnics by the lake. So many of our main characters are riddled with trauma and grief that it’s jarring to remember this is also a world where people are living happy, normal lives. That was once the life that Robbie had, as we saw in last week’s flashback to his family day out at the lake. Now, however, so many of his loved ones are dead or estranged that that world feels a million miles away.
That ties into the other big returning motif from the premiere—Tom’s love of bird watching. For as on-the-nose as the metaphor is, it’s heart-wrenching to hear Tom compare Robbie to a “vagrant,” a bird that’s strayed so far from its normal range it’s forgotten how to find its way home. Most of them don’t survive, Tom explains, to which Robbie hilariously responds, “Wow, what a lovely story, thank you for sharing, Tom. I’ve kidnapped the world’s most depressing human.” Tom is trying to tell Robbie he can go home again, although that ominous shot of a dead deer by the side of the road suggests otherwise.
This is a really tremendous episode for both Tom Pelphrey and Mark Ruffalo, as Robbie and Tom reach two very different turning points. For one thing, it’s fun to see both characters in their A-game. While it’s stupid to go into Robbie’s house without backup, I loved Tom’s whole act about being an aging, befuddled agent looking into a cold case. (“There’s the DNA and the sequencing machines and the AI…”) And after a season of bad instincts, I love that Robbie can immediately spot Tom’s lie.
Mostly, however, this episode provides an emotional turning point for both characters. For Tom, being held at gunpoint clarifies how he feels about his family. The moment he thinks he might die, all he wants is to talk to his children again—not just Emily and Sara (who get their own lovely bonding moment this week) but also Ethan. After a year of living in indecision and avoidance, Tom is finally ready to face the future. The priest in him might call that an act of divine intervention.
For Robbie, however, this hour is about slowly realizing he has no future. While he never gives up entirely, from the moment he gazes up to see a hawk flying through the sky he seems to accept that whatever happens, this isn’t going to end well for him. He still visits Freddy Frias to try to sell the drugs and he doesn’t take the opportunity to turn himself in to the FBI when he could. But he also seems to accept—hell, maybe even encourage—the idea that he’s going to die in this process.
After an initial burst of tough-guy energy to take Tom hostage, Robbie mostly falls back into a state of quiet vulnerability, which really highlights what great, grounded work Pelphrey has done with the character. The car conversation about god and the afterlife emphasizes what a devastating, in some ways unfair, place Robbie has found himself in. He may be a criminal and a pretty lackluster dad/uncle, but there’s a clear difference between him and Perry, who instinctively drowns Eryn in order to stop her screaming for help.
Robbie’s instincts have always been gentler. After the initial burglary went wrong, Robbie’s impulse was to bring Sam home and look after him. After kidnapping Tom, he decides to drop him off in the woods rather than kill him. And as Tom is leaving, Robbie’s only plea is to keep Maeve out of all the damage he’s caused.
Robbie may be a fuck up, but he’s a sympathetic fuck up. And Pelphrey plays that incredibly well. As the episode ends, it’s unclear whether he’s called for a meeting with the Dark Hearts to kill them or to let himself be killed by them. Pulling a gun on an FBI team sure feels like a “death by cop” situation. But with two episodes left, this show could take its story in any number of different directions.
We’ve also still got much more to learn about how and why Grasso started working with the Dark Hearts, what Jayson will do when he finds out his surrogate dad murdered his wife, and how Freddy Frias is going to fit into all of this—not to mention everything with Tom’s family, Aleah’s pointedly mentioned marksmanship skills, and Lizzie’s post-divorce house exorcism. Given how Mare Of Easttown unfolded, I wouldn’t be surprised if there are a few more twists in store before this season is up.
But whatever happens, I hope this isn’t the last we get of Pelphrey and Ruffalo together. I thought Tom and Robbie’s eventual meeting would be impactful on a plot level, but what stands out most is just how much more emotionally rich their stories feel now that they’ve shared them with one another. While Heat is a clear influence on Task and perhaps the most obvious reference point for Robbie and Tom’s mid-season conservation, this episode even more so captures the melancholic energy of Catch Me If You Can to me. I’m not rooting for Tom and Robbie to take each other down; I’m rooting for them to somehow find a way through together. Now the question is which ending will Task emulate.
Stray observations
- • The scene where Perry stops by to visit Maeve is so incredibly tense. Of all the characters on this show, she’s by far the best one at handling herself in a crisis.
- • Robbie maybe had a chance for a clean break if he had trusted Ray’s wife Shelley to sell the drugs through her friend Lee. Tragically (and understandably), he doesn’t believe that her desire to escape Ray’s abuse and forge a new life for herself is sincere.
- • Just for the record, Eryn’s death is pretty much the dictionary definition of a “fridging.”
- • It’s really nice to see Sara and Emily bond, as Sara admits she separated from her husband after he cheated on her and then tells Emily she shouldn’t be compelled to feel grateful all the time. It’s not what their mom would have wanted.
- • Kathleen is an emotional eater, okay? I feel like she and Mare would get along well.
- • One of the more tragic details of the season is how Sam’s tumultuous experiences in and out of foster care seem to have made him willing to go along with all the Prendergrast madness in a way a kid from a stable home maybe wouldn’t.
- • Knowing what we know now, it’s interesting to revisit the scene in episode three where Tom and Grasso go to talk with Jayson and Perry at the biker bar.
- • So how many would-be criminals are cancelling their SiriusXM subscriptions tonight?
