Summary
Task excels again in Episode 3, introducing multiple new characters and points of view and delivering a stinging last-minute twist.
At this point, I’ve given up on my quaint hope that anyone in Task doesn’t have a deeply traumatic personal backstory. It’s a waste of time. Hope in general seems pretty naive in the context of Brad Ingelsby’s latest effort, which seems scientifically calibrated to put its characters and the audience through the wringer at all times. Episode 3, “Nobody’s Stronger Than Forgiveness”, shifts away from Robbie a bit (he and Cliff are in it, but barely) and focuses instead on Tom and his team, all in service of a last-minute twist revealing that one of them can’t be trusted. Typical.
I shouldn’t downplay Robbie’s involvement here, since the show’s plot still hinges on his personal revenge mission, which he confirms to Maeve after she confronted him about who Sam was at the end of the previous episode. The Dark Hearts did kill his brother, Maeve’s dad, and Robbie has been robbing the stash houses to defraud the organisation that not only killed his bro but had the nerve to turn up at his funeral shaking hands. Tom Pelphrey is so good in this scene that his outburst echoes through the entire episode. The idea of his life getting even worse is awful, even though it’s virtually an inevitability that it will.
And thus we move to the small matter of having to move several kilos of uncut fentanyl. You can’t be too obvious about it, or the authorities will find out. But you can’t use the usual backroom channels, since the Dark Hearts will find out. This significantly narrows Robbie and Cliff’s options, which the Dark Hearts have intuited, since Perry and Jayson try to strike a deal with a kingpin named Freddy Frias to give him 25% of the cut if he rats out anyone trying to move the drugs through him. Freddy isn’t inclined to work with a motorcycle gang, since racist motorcycle gangs have been making his life a misery since he moved to the U.S., but money talks, so a 50% cut might do it. This is one of those scenes that Task delivers sometimes that doesn’t need to be anywhere near as good as it is. Elvis Nolasco letting Freddy’s accent come through more strongly when he gets wound up talking about how that accent and the colour of his skin still compels people to look on him as lesser? Impeccable detail.
The cliffhanger ending of Task Episode 3 is such a strong takeaway that you barely even notice that “Nobody’s Stronger Than Forgiveness” straight-up reveals who has been selling out the Dark Hearts from within. It’s Jayson’s wife, Eryn, on the grounds that she was having an affair with Robbie’s brother when Jayson killed him. Needless to say, the situation has become a little too heated for her now, given the missing drugs and Sam’s kidnapping, but she still thinks Jayson will end up on a slab somewhere soon. Cliff, who is becoming increasingly terrified by all the police attention, thinks that he and Robbie need to move the drugs on their own, instead of holding onto them as Eryn advises, so to that end, he introduces Robbie to an old cellmate, Ray, who can possibly help.
Jamie McShane and Sam Keeley in Task | Image via WarnerMedia
Ray is awful. This is made clear right from his introduction, which finds him abusing his wife, Shelley. But he claims to be able to set Robbie and Cliff up with someone who can move the drugs behind the backs of the Dark Hearts, which, in a really roundabout way, gives Tom’s task force a meaningful breakthrough. After learning through one of Peaches’ old co-workers that he was robbing stash houses with a guy named Cliff, they head to Cliff’s house to find two masked assailants inside. After a tense fight, which sends Tom flying down the stairs – the concussion gives him a pretty on-the-nose flashback to his dead wife, who was thrown down the stairs to her death by their adopted son, Ethan – the gang arrests the intruders, who turn out to be Ray and Shelley.
It isn’t especially difficult to work out what Ray and Shelley were doing in Cliff’s house, but Shelley explains it to Aleah anyway after she compellingly shares her own experiences with domestic abuse. Thuso Mbedu is brilliant here in an episode replete with characters monologuing about their awfully sad backstories. Shelley reveals that Ray had talked her into trying to steal the drugs from Cliff’s house and sell them themselves. But she doesn’t know anything about Sam, or who Cliff’s mysterious partner was.
Luckily, there’s a solution for this, too. Cliff and Robbie are still waiting for a text from Ray telling them where to meet his contact. Tom and Grasso use his phone to set that meeting up, although it’s now not a drug meet; it’s a sting operation. It seems like the FBI has the upper hand already, and the net is closing pretty tightly around Cliff and Robbie.
But perhaps not. The damning reveal of Task Episode 3 comes when Tom learns that the Dark Hearts arrived at Cliff’s house very shortly after the FBI did, despite not having any way of knowing about his involvement. Unless, of course, someone told them. But since Tom is running an extremely tight ship, the only person who could have conceivably tipped the Dark Hearts off is a member of his own task force. You know all those characters we’ve gradually come to really like? One of them is a traitor.
Buckle up, folks. This is going to get even more traumatic before we’re done.
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