Created by: Brad Ingelsby
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hen it was announced that Brad Ingelsby had put down roots with HBO, inking a new three-year deal to make new shows on the heels of his smash-hit Mare of Easttown, expectations were high. How would the screenwriter follow up the murder mystery series that catapulted the Delco accent into the global stratosphere, earned Kate Winslet a much-deserved Emmy, and left viewers clamouring for even the slightest possibility of a follow-up season all these years later?
The answer is Task, a gritty thriller series starring Mark Ruffalo and Tom Pelphrey that has Ingelsby’s creative fingerprints all over it from minute one. While Mare of Easttown had a definitive small-town feel, revolving around the uncharacteristically shocking death of a young teen, Task broadens its focus, delving into the much seedier underbelly of suburban, working-class life, as well as what can be unearthed by one man’s vengeful pursuit. It may not reach the heights that Mare of Easttown climbed to week after week, but Ingelsby’s latest HBO project has just as much potential to leave you musing after each episode. It’s more than a crime procedural; it’s a bleak meditation on grief, faith, and what we ultimately lose by embracing revenge over forgiveness.
Tom Brandis (Ruffalo) is a man who left the priesthood to become an FBI agent, but these days, he’s much closer to the version that hands out fliers at career fairs and sneaks’ alcohol into his plastic Phillies novelty cup instead of working active cases. Six months before the series starts, the Brandis family suffered an unimaginable tragedy with the loss of Tom’s wife, Susan (Mireille Enos). The ripple effects are still playing out between Tom and his children — his biological daughter, Sara (Phoebe Fox), as well as his adopted daughter and son, Emily (Silvia Dionicio) and Ethan (Andrew Russel). That yawning chasm of grief has led to persistent tension at home, as well as Tom needing to be helped up the stairs so he can sleep off a night of too much booze. There’s little opportunity for him to remain adrift, however, when he’s called into a meeting with his FBI bureau chief, Kathleen McGinty (Martha Plimpton), to head up a task force looking into a string of armed drug-house robberies in Delaware County.
What Tom doesn’t yet know, and what Task doesn’t waste time in revealing to the viewer, is the identity of the individual behind these robberies. Robbie Prendergrast (Pelphrey) initially seems a far cry from the man who’s been assigned to hunt him down. However, in the wake of an episode that instantly jumps between these two men’s lives, juxtaposing their morning routines, a common throughline unites them in terms of how they’re both coping with a recent loss.
On the heels of his brother Billy’s death, not to mention his own wife walking out the door without looking back, Robbie is also unmoored, in search of the restitution he believes he’s owed. Using his garbage-collecting gig to rifle through other people’s trash, alongside his co-worker Cliff Broward (Raul Castillo), allows Robbie to determine which houses they should target to rob — and once they’ve disappeared into the night with their first duffle bag of cash, it becomes harder and harder to stop when the next payday could be twice as big. After one job goes sideways in a devastating fashion, Tom’s task force is kicked into high gear, while Robbie has to try and stay one step ahead, not just of the FBI but also a notorious motorcycle gang, who are now out for blood.
While Mare of Easttown was a series that primarily rested on Winslet’s shoulders, its success potentially living or dying on the strengths of its lead, Task immediately emphasizes that this is a two-pronged tale, the narrative anchored between Tom and Robbie’s respective journeys. As the investigation persists along, and more evidence is discovered, their seemingly disparate storylines begin to intersect. Long before that collision occurs, though, Ruffalo and Pelphrey are compelling to watch in their own scenes. Ruffalo’s subtle body language immediately captures Tom’s struggle to avoid being crushed under the weight of his own grief. Meanwhile, Pelphrey thoughtfully balances between a man who deals with loss through rage and one who can still catch himself marvelling at the world’s natural beauty.
Task wouldn’t work half as well, however, if it weren’t for the ensemble cast assembled around the series’ two leads. Emilia Jones is no stranger to inhabiting young adults forced to grow up much sooner than they should, after her star-making performance in Apple TV+’s Oscar winner CODA, but Maeve Prendergast feels like a natural evolution of that character, wise beyond her years and hardened by her circumstances. Maybe it’s also no surprise that, like Winslet before her, Jones is one of the few cast members who absolutely nails the Delco accent, despite being a Brit.
Those who make up Tom’s task force, a motley crew at best, reveal deeper layers with every episode. While it’s certainly a trip to see House of the Dragon’s Fabien Frankel out of his fantasy armour, his performance as Anthony Grasso is one of the show’s biggest surprises, alongside a quietly stunning Thuso Mbedu as Aleah Clinton and a messily endearing Alison Oliver as Lizzie Stover. Initially, both Tom and the viewer might be led to believe that this task force (often shorthanded to “task,” in the world of the show) is too dysfunctional to succeed, but this unlikely group earns some of the narrative’s most emotional scenes, with each member earning the spotlight in unpredictable ways. (Side note: any series that casts Plimpton as a beleaguered FBI bureau chief on the verge of retirement is already operating with a winning formula.)
On the other side of Task’s increasingly intensifying manhunt lies the motorcycle gang, among them an unsettling Jamie McShane as Perry, Sam Keeley’s Jayson, whose willingness to shoot first and ask questions later lands him in hot water with his own people, and Margarita Levieva’s Eryn, Jayson’s wife, who finds her loyalties to the club starkly divided due to circumstances beyond her control.
From the very first episode, Task differentiates itself from Ingelsby’s last high-profile HBO series through its story structure. Where Mare of Easttown’s reliance on the whodunit meant that every character was a potential suspect, Task doesn’t hesitate to clue us in to what’s happening on both sides of the legal line. What unspools more gradually, and over time, are other, more complex details that play into this bigger investigation — who’s navigating their own personal issues while leading the charge, like Tom, as well as who may be secretly tipping off the opposition about what’s coming. We know Robbie has a bone to pick by robbing these drug houses, but we don’t immediately know why, and as his present-day revenge resurrects past ghosts, it allows for a much fuller understanding, a bird’s-eye view of the entire situation and all the fated players who have been pulled into its orbit.
Some characters are reluctant in their involvement, while others have more personal reasons for continually pursuing justice — among them Mbedu’s Aleah, who delivers a particularly heart-wrenching monologue about barely surviving an abusive relationship in one of the show’s best scenes. By and large, most of the women who make up Task are afforded just as much complexity, intensity, and messiness as their male counterparts, but the series does fall into the unfortunate, albeit predictable, dead-wife trope with its treatment of Enos’ Susan Brandis, whose presence in the narrative is confined to a handful of flashbacks and her smiling photograph symbolically perched on Tom’s nightstand.
It‘s a shame, given that this hails from the same writer who gave us Mare Sheehan, but perhaps that’s simply crime procedural bias talking, because many of us know how great Mireille Enos can be when given ample runway to display her undeniable talents.
Pacing-wise, Task can also be somewhat scattered. Slower melodrama is not-so-equally intertwined with erupting action, and once the investigation plot really gets going, it threatens to drown out more welcome instances of character development. However, the series’ penultimate episode, written by Ingelsby and directed by Salli Richardson-Whitfield, is a masterclass in tension, as multiple parties converge on a remote area and the resulting showdown is deadly to a cataclysmic degree. That same sentiment carries through the overall experience of watching Task itself, a crime thriller engulfed in a grittiness much more similar to Sons of Anarchy than the HBO series that preceded it. Yet for all its high-intensity action, it’s in the show’s quieter moments where Ruffalo, Pelphrey, and the rest of the talented ensemble cast leave a lasting impression, emotional ripples that reverberate long after the initial impact has faded.
– Courtesy: Collider.com