Mark Ruffalo and Tom Pelphrey play Tom and Robbie, a grieving FBI agent and an outlaw just trying to figure it out.
Photo: Peter Kramer/HBO
Task offers two possible cures for the male-loneliness epidemic: Pick up new pastoral hobbies, such as gardening and birding or, like Robin Hood, form an outlaw band of Merry Men. Brad Ingelsby’s follow-up to the much-beloved Mare of Easttown switches focus from steely women to feeble men. Mare brought the intimate, personal lives of flinty women into focus with just the right mix of humor, trauma, and hope. It bordered on the saccharine at times but usually landed the gloom and doom at just the right moment to remind us that being a cop is inherently a fucked-up business. It worked as a procedural that continued to investigate the afterlife of the victims’ devastated (and sometimes viciously protective) families. I recently forced my partner to watch the entire show in one go during a flight from Tokyo to Brooklyn, and I was surprised at how well it held up.
Instead of Kate Winslet and Jean Smart, Task gives us Mark Ruffalo and Tom Pelphrey as two single fathers down on their luck, struggling to get by. It’s a thriller masquerading as a procedural, a cat-and-mouse game between a grieving FBI agent and an outlaw with too many mouths to feed. Once again, Ingelsby turns to the outskirts of Philadelphia and Delco. Ruffalo plays Tom, an FBI agent whose son is in prison for reasons not entirely clear after his wife has died. Pelphrey plays Robbie, a garbage man who moonlights as a thief who loves to wear a terrifyingly realistic skull mask. His wife left him to raise his kids with his niece, Maeve, brilliantly and sardonically played by Emilia Jones. Oh yeah, his brother’s dead.
The symmetry of the two men is clearly the focus of the series. The first episode, “Crossings,” features multiple montages comparing and contrasting Tom and Robbie as they go about their day jobs and nightly routines. As Tom tries to rein in new recruits to the FBI, Robbie goes on his garbage route with Cliff (Raúl Castillo back on HBO after his dashing turn in Looking) in order to scout out drug houses. Later, Tom pours vodka into a Phillies cup and watches birds flutter by at night while Robbie gets his guns ready and shakes down a trap house. Of course, Ingelsby wants us to see how the two stack up not just professionally but spiritually. Tom is a lapsed priest and former Catholic. The show opens with him struggling to kneel and pray. His friend Daniel Georges, humorously and wisely played by arthouse favorite Isaach De Bankolé, is a priest who tries to get him on the right track, even sending him articles from the Catholic Worker, only for Robbie to mock him by knocking on the table and asking if God’s inside the linoleum. “No more Merton or Augustine,” he retorts. He prefers fiddling with his new favorite birding app: Merlin. In his own whimsical way, Robbie is the more spiritual one, shooting the shit with his pal Cliff about romance, fate, and life. “I think I’m ready to share my life with someone,” he says. Cliff says he prefers to be alone. “Of course you do,” Robbie says. “You’re a monk.” Cliff snaps back: “Monks pray.” Some sort of salvation narrative seems ripe, but who will be redeemed remains to be seen.
This isn’t a whodunit; it’s a thriller — a race of wits and weapons between two men. Most of the pilot is spent setting up the chessboard and introducing the key players. Martha Plimpton plays Kathleen, Tom’s soon-to-be-retired boss at the FBI, who has assembled a task force to catch the culprits behind the drug-house robberies. The task force itself is only briefly introduced here, but the recruits, such as Evan Peters as Zabel in Mare, will likely play a key role in the upcoming season. There’s the sly and confident Grasso (Fabien Frankel), the clean and put-together Aleah (Thuso Mbedu), and the zany, confused, and possibly in the middle of a separation Lizzie (Alison Oliver), who didn’t even take the time to read the brief.
On Robbie’s end, the main reluctant collaborator is Maeve, his niece, who feels the weight of the world on her shoulders. The dynamic between the two is best showcased when Robbie gets himself trapped in her closet right as Maeve comes home with a suitor. When he finally comes out, a brief altercation leads Maeve’s would-be paramour to flee. Robbie tries to apologize, but Maeve’s having none of it. She’s tired of raising someone else’s kids when she’s barely 21, something Robbie can’t even remember. When her date asks if she’s an artist, she wryly turns it into a come-on: “I’m nothing. Absolutely nothing.” Jones is a revelation as the aggrieved niece who’s forced to care for her uncle’s kids. “The definition of insanity is staying at the freak farm thinking anything is going to change,” she barks with a slight lisp, clapping back at her uncle when he tries to smooth over his boundary issues. Jones is excellent as a 40-year-old in a 21-year-old’s body, tired of carrying the load with little reward. She throws a drink in her uncle’s face when he criticizes her cooking. Ingelsby’s strength lies in quickly building these lived-in, tiresome, and painful family dynamics that reinforce the burden of trauma and responsibility that the downtrodden must carry. When Maeve goes in after their fight, Robbie’s daughter begs her not to leave. She knows the family wouldn’t last long without a maternal figure.
While the premiere has a lot to set up in terms of the chase that will come in the proceeding episodes, it’s the crisis of masculinity and male loneliness that is the strongest current running through Task — the failure of men to shoulder the obligations in their family life. But Ingelsby provides an empathetic approach; his men are surprisingly gentle, eager, almost puppy-dog-like in their dogged desires. This first episode features many shots of Tom trying to connect with his daughter as his son is about to go to trial, juxtaposed alongside shots of Robbie playing with his two young kids. But we know such sweet scenes can’t last. Children are both a key motivator and cudgel for these men. Everyone is staring down the barrel of impending confrontations. Robbie can’t get away with a life of crime unscathed forever, and Tom is facing his son’s impending trial.
At the end of the episode, tragedy strikes when Robbie’s latest robbery ends in one of his henchmen and all of the drug house’s attendants dying. It’s a tense heist that marks a turning point for the show — there’s finally real danger. Chekhov’s Glock goes off. Things go wrong when one of Robbie’s men loses his gun and their mark recognizes another. They quickly realize they’re not getting out of this one without bloodshed. It’s not quite as mesmerizing or shocking as the show’s director, Jeremiah Zagar, would have us believe; the aftermath is the show’s real thrill. Pelphrey delivers a heartbreaking expression during the showdown when he realizes that the man he killed has a child. “Are you friends with my daddy?” The kid asks. “Yes,” he replies. The final shot is Robbie carrying the child into his house in a pose reminiscent of a pieta. What will Maeve think of having one more mouth to feed?
• Many cop shows are trying to reformulate in the wake of calls to abolish the police. Even Tana French’s latest crime novels have featured a cop who retires due to the systemic racism of his previous job. It’s a tricky needle to thread. Some make their protagonists anti-heroes, some craft plucky non-professional detectives to solve crimes. Ingelsby prefers to craft murky cops who struggle with the job and don’t always want to put away the perpetrators they feel sympathy for.
• Food is less central to this episode of Task than the premiere of Mare, but Mark Ruffalo’s Tom seems to love gardening. His boss even thanks him for the lovely tomatoes he gifted her. Besides Maeve’s bad cooking, the primary Philly-oriented food here is water ice. Tom’s daughter works at one such stand.
• There are a lot of familial unknowns left dangling at the end of this episode. How did Robbie’s brother die? How exactly is Maeve his niece? Who owns their house? Their fight doesn’t make it clear. But it’s sure to be a season-long arc tug-of-war. Ditto on how Tom’s wife died and why his son is in jail. No detective has an unhaunted family life. It’s not the way of this prestige TV genre.
• A favorite line read, Emilia Jones spitting out: “It’s a Ree Drummond recipe.” She also mercilessly calls her date a “6 out of 10.” Perhaps the least inspiring was a haggard Martha Plimpton rolling out the clichéd: “I need you back in the field.”
• Those ghoulishly realistic masks are terrifying. Pelphrey dons the skull, Castillo takes on the Devil, and the now-deceased Owen Teague played the wolf.
• The FBI’s fear over a turf war with the Dark Hearts seems ominous. So far, we’ve yet to meet any of their proper heavyweights; we have only encountered their grunts and goons.
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