There are few moves more baller than a long-delayed title drop and boy does Task earn it this week. The opening 18 minutes of this penultimate episode are a non-stop action thriller where the tension barely lets up even as we track the emotional arcs of half a dozen characters. Earlier in the season I complained about Task’s ensemble being too large and its structure being too amorphous. But it turns out Brad Ingelsby was playing an ingenuous long game, setting up story arcs like dominoes only to let them fall in perfect synchronicity in the climax.
In fact, it’s easy to imagine a modified version of the big forest shoot-out serving as the actual finale of the season. The three sides of the show intertwine as the FBI hunts down Robbie, Robbie hunts down the Dark Hearts, and the Dark Hearts shoot at everyone. Grasso tries to play both sides while Lizzie attempts to hold her shit together; Aleah proves her sharpshooter skills while Kathleen takes a bullet to the shoulder; and Tom and Robbie each get a moment to save each other, which is a lovely continuation of the melancholy friendship they forged last week.
While certain characters still feel “safe” (there’s no way this show ends without Tom visiting Ethan), Task doesn’t pull its punches with shocking character deaths. After a grueling, briefly heroic experience in the field, Lizzie winds up dying on the side of the road after the Dark Hearts ram her with their truck. And Robbie nearly manages to kill Jayson, only to get stabbed in the side himself, eventually bleeding out in Tom’s arms on the way to the hospital.
It’s easy to imagine a more cynical version of this show that leaves things there—with Robbie and Lizzie dead, Sam in FBI care, and the Dark Hearts and Grasso ultimately getting away. That would emphasize the limits of what law enforcement can do while still giving a certain sense of closure to the season. In this case, however, Task is interested in how life goes after a story “ends.”
That’s a fitting idea for an episode that ultimately reveals Robbie’s impact will carry on after his death. He may not have lived to see one of his crazy “change your life” schemes come true, but it turns out he was actually able to pull off one in the end. Last week, I lightly chastised him for not taking Shelley’s offer to sell the drugs through her friend Lee. But it turns out that’s actually exactly what he did. Everything that happened in the woods was just a decoy designed to maneuver him into a “kill or be killed” situation with Jayson. And while, presumably, Robbie would have preferred to walk out of those woods alive, at least he died knowing his family was taken care of financially.
That, combined with the way Robbie saves Tom and Tom tries to save him in return, makes this a beautiful farewell episode for one of the most quietly compelling TV performances of the year. I don’t know if Task has had a big enough cultural impact that Tom Pelphrey will be in the running for awards season accolades, but he’s done a tremendous job crafting a complex, frustrating, but ultimately endearing character who doesn’t quite fit any archetype I’ve seen on TV before. The way this episode brings his story to a close so early only to circle back around to him for its final shot is a moving, unexpected sendoff.
Unfortunately, you can’t quite say the same about Lizzie. While Alison Oliver has given a fun, delightfully messy performance this season, Lizzie never really emerged as a fully three-dimensional person. And killing her off on the heels of an episode that also pretty casually killed off Eryn doesn’t quite sit right with me. Yes, Task has killed off male characters like Cliff. And, yes, Aleah is also motivated by Lizzie’s death the way Tom and Grasso are.
But, as with Eryn, Lizzie’s death sits at least adjacent to the tradition of “fridging” female characters to motivate male ones. And while Ingelsby seems to be trying to create the same shock and surprise as one particularly unexpected death on Mare Of Easttown, Lizzie’s death is clunkier in execution. It doesn’t land as strongly since we’re also processing the death of a much more three-dimensional lead character at the same time.
It’s not enough to completely unbalance the episode for me, but it’s a bum note in what’s otherwise a fascinating turning point in the season. With Robbie out of the picture, Grasso now basically subs into the slot of the morally grey character stuck between the evil world of the Dark Hearts and the righteous world of the FBI. Only Grasso is perhaps an even thornier character than Robbie was.
Where Robbie had a loving family and a dead brother to give him a more sympathetic backstory, Grasso’s background is still obscured. He seems to know the Dark Hearts on a personal level, but he’s also working with (or for) someone else in the DelCo police department: his Chief Mike Dorsey (Raphael Sbarge), who we met during the park sting in episode four. Here, Dorsey wants to “control the narrative,” tells Grasso to forget about Lizzie, and shoves his head under a faucet when Grasso tries to start a fight.
While Grasso comes across like a slick mafioso in the scene where Tom comes to confront him about working with the Dark Hearts, I’m not entirely sure that’s actually his true personality. His desire to protect Lizzie during the shoot-out and his grief at her death both seem quite genuine. And there’s a chance he’s caught up in a wider web of police corruption rather than instigating it himself. (It’s interesting to think back on his speech about bad cops in the statie bar.)
Beyond that, a lot of this episode is about the Brandis family healing again. While I sort of expected they’d live in a fractured, traumatic space for most of the season, it’s really touching to see how much Emily and Sara have come back together in the brief time Sara has been home. Honestly, nothing reaffirms their sisterhood like their ability to move from a devastating fight to a giggly movie night in a matter of a few days.
The moment they gang up on Tom when he snipes at Sara is such a sweet, funny shift in the Brandis family status quo. And the idea of Tom fostering Sam because it’s what his wife would have wanted is a lovely way to dovetail those two season-long story arcs—ditto the way he fulfills Robbie’s wish and pushes to let Maeve out of custody rather than pressing charges. (I don’t know if it would actually be that easy to just let her go, but I agree with his assessment that a jury would find her super sympathetic.)
It’ll be interesting to see if and how Maeve and co. fit into next week’s finale or if this is basically the end of their arc until a final montage of them driving to Canada or something. As has so often been the case this season, I really don’t know what to expect from Task at this point. This episode ends with the idea of Tom and Aleah teaming up to avenge Lizzie and take down Grasso, which could be our main plot thread. But we also have Ethan’s sentencing and the Dark Hearts internal turmoil to get to as well.
There could be and probably will be more suspense and action to come next week. But that’s just one half of what’s made this series so compelling. Task’s true strength is its quiet humanism. When Tom comes to confront Grasso, he explains that Catholic confession is “a human practice,” something people do to help them process shame rather than something they’re doing for God. That, in turn, leads to an interesting juxtaposition between religious faith and Tom’s not-yet-proven belief that Grasso ratted out their plans to the Dark Hearts. If faith is something you believe without proof, how does that square with a corrupt cop who needs evidence to be taken down? I guess we’ll find out.
Stray observations
- • Leo is utterly adorable and also I want his curly hair routine.
- • The decision to use a more upbeat, swelling score for the scene where Robbie gets stabbed is haunting. It emphasizes how he comes so close to getting what he wants, only to lose it all again.
- • In his final moments, Robbie thinks of his kids, Maeve, and his brother Billy. Devastating stuff.
- • This episode is titled “Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a river.” (Try saying that three times fast.) It’s a riff on a Rumi poem.
- • It’s heartbreaking to watch Aleah discover the Bullseye patch that Lizzie made for her, but I also wish that this far into the season, Aleah felt like a more three-dimensional character in her own right. Re-anchoring her story around Lizzie’s death almost makes her feel more opaque.
- • After the county lost its funding, they started placing displaced kids in juvenile detention centers rather than foster housing—which is a very real, horrifying thing that happens. (If you’re interested in learning more about the experience of being a foster parent, I love this Instagram account.)
- • “Holy shit, is that an Edible Arrangement?”
