<em>Task</em> Episode 1 Recap

As someone who hails from the Greater Philadelphia Area, I would often joke during the peak of Mare of Easttown’s popularity that the Delco accent sounded completely normal to me. Every what are youse dern over there? sounded like proper English to my wooter-ice-soaked brain.

So, Mare creator Brad Ingelsby kickstarted his new HBO drama, Task, with Mark Ruffalo’s character asking his daughter if she wanted to meet for Rita’s after school. He asked this, of course, as he drank from an oversized, plastic Phillies cup. That's when I knew that it was our time to shine once again.

Task stars Ruffalo as a semi-retired FBI agent named Tom Brandis, who spends his days recruiting new members at a local career fair. Thanks to a string of violent robberies in the area, he’s roped back into fieldwork and asked to lead a task force to find and arrest the culprits.

Tom is very much the central figure of Task. He’s the Columbo-esque detective on the case (Ruffalo would make a fantastic Columbo, by the way), and much of Task’s debut episode is spent building out the beginnings of his complicated backstory. There’s some mysterious family drama at work. His adopted son is awaiting sentencing in prison for an unknown crime and Tom refuses to visit him. He’s facing five to fifteen years. Tom also used to be a priest, but gave that life up when his wife died. Then, he decided to join the FBI, of all career paths.

Faith and forgiveness will likely define many of the characters' arcs as I recap this new crime drama for the next two months. We're dealing with heavy family trauma here. And somehow, the premiere deftly balances these serious subject matters with characters who sound like they’re gargling marbles.

Who would suspect the garbage man?

Enough about Ruffalo. To me, Tom Pelphrey’s character, Robbie Pendergrast, is the main character of Task. Make fun of Kate Winslet’s accent all you want in Mare of Easttown, but when Pelphrey spoke, it scared me how accurate he sounded. I’m talking goosebumps. When he points at a travel ad for Canada and says, “Look at that, you can ern yerern island,” it was like a spell that transported me back to South Street. I might not be a Cheese Whiz guy, but Robbie is yelling to the man behind the counter for some “Whiz Wit!” for sure.

Right off the bat, it's no secret that Robbie is the man that Ruffalo is after. A garbage collector by day, Robbie spends his nights robbing local drug dealers in a smash-and-grab scheme much like Bryan Tyree Henry's plan in Apple TV+’s Dope Thief. The drug dealers won’t report the money missing to the police because it was already obtained illegally. Plus, who would suspect the trash collectors?

Though Robbie is the show's antagonist, he’s not cruel. He’s just a guy trying to provide for his two kids through dangerous means. He’s saving up cash so that he can lie on a hammock on some private island he wants to purchase in Canada—some Candy Mountain paradise. At this point, it already feels safe to guess that he’ll likely never get there.

Much like Tom, Robbie’s family life is also filled with grief. His wife seemingly walked out on their family a year ago. Now, his young niece Maeve (CODA’s Emilia Jones) watches over his two kids. Life’s hard on her as well. Her father—Robbie’s brother—is no longer in the picture, either. “Uncle Billy” was murdered, his kids reveal. We just don’t know why or by whose hand yet. “I’m miserable,” Maeve tells Robbie. What does she know about raising someone else’s kids? “What’s the definition of insanity?” asks Maeve. “Staying at the freak farm and thinking something’s going to change?”

It’s not until Tom starts investigating the case that we learn a little bit more about how Robbie’s family got this way. Turns out, seven out of the nine houses they’ve hit belong to members of a violent motorcycle club called the Dark Hearts. It more than likely isn’t a coincidence.

That’s a tough task, for this group.

Alongside Ruffalo, Task stars Fabien Frankel (House of the Dragon) as Anthony Grasso from the organized crime division, Allison Oliver (Conversations with Friends) as State Trooper Elizabeth Stover, and Thuso Mbedu (The Woman King) as Sergeant Detective Aleah Clinton. They make up the small investigative unit tasked with bringing these home invaders down—all from their new headquarters in an abandoned stash house.

Elizabeth, or “Lizzie” as everyone calls her, is a bit ditzy. She complains about the smell and didn’t receive the brief on their investigation. Her email address? [email protected]. Maybe it went to spam! Anthony and Aleah seem more like straight shooters. Or at the very least, they don’t spend their off time getting plastered off vodka from a plastic cup while bird-watching like ol’ Tom.

If anyone else in the cast nailed the accent, it’s Emilia Jones.

It was bound to happen. Robbie and Cliff’s operation goes sideways as they hit their tenth house. They bring along a third for this hit, a young man played by Owen Teague (Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes). But the homeowners are combative, Robbie can’t find the money, and then an armed visitor enters with what looks like the moneybag. In the chaos, the stranger shoots and kills Teague’s character—resulting in a gunfight that only Robbie and Cliff walk away from. I don’t know if they’ve ever killed someone before, but this seems like the first time that they’ve left some dead bodies behind.

That’s not all. As Robbie takes the bag and prepares to leave, they spot a young boy who walks out from the basement. He can't be more than eight years old. “Are you my dad’s friends?” he asks them. “Yeah,” Robbie responds. This father of two couldn’t hurt a kid, right?

No, of course not. As Tom and his task force investigate the crime scene, Robbie brings the boy back to his home. Even if he’s technically doing the right thing here, this is still kidnapping. And if you thought it was a bit strange that the FBI was putting so many resources into an investigation into stolen drug money, well, a missing child is certainly something that the whole town might be invested in when we see episode 2 next week.

You can’t tell me that you’re not at least a little on Robbie’s side.

If you’ve seen a fair share of crime dramas before Task, I can’t promise you that we’re headed into completely new territory for the genre here. What I can tell you is that Task’s first hour features some of the most well-rounded and realistically human leads I’ve seen in a long time.

Tom is on the right path morally, but he's spiritually troubled—and Robbie is the complete opposite. He wants peace for his family more than anything, and he’s not afraid to achieve it by taking it away from others. But there’s a reason why Robbie isn’t hitting the richest homes he can find in Delaware County and pilfering their luxury watches like Jon Hamm in Your Friends and Neighbors. From what Task shows of Robbie’s life so far, it’s clear that he's a good guy at heart. That shouldn’t just make him a better antagonist as Task goes on; it should also make for a better story.

I’m already rooting for Robbie to figure out this terrible situation out before Ruffalo finds him. And if I get to keep watching Tom Pelphrey's performance every Sunday, then I couldn’t think of a better place to be this fall.