‘Task’ Episode 4 Recap – Ingelsby Continues To Put Us Through The Wringer

Watching Task really is an exercise in being put through the wringer. Here are a bunch of people who are mostly well-intentioned but all deeply traumatised, trapped in a situation beyond their control that just keeps escalating. In Episode 4, “All Roads”, this is more deeply felt than ever and builds to a moment of brutality that was inevitable but is still difficult to reconcile. I think it was the prosthetics. Cliff was a nice guy, man, and he went out looking like the Elephant Man.

Anyway, the previous episode left a lot of juicy drama on the table. Tom’s task force contains a potential mole. But it’s also trying to set up a sting operation that’ll hopefully allow for the apprehension of Cliff and the rescue of Sam, using Ray’s cellphone as a lure. Almost all of this episode’s tight tension-building comes from this setup, since we know that Cliff and Robbie – who neither the FBI nor the Dark Hearts have yet managed to identify – are walking into a trap of some kind. It’s just a question of whether they’ll be ambushed by the Feds or, given the leaky field office, by Jayson and Perry.

We might have a lead on the mole, by the way. In Episode 4, Task strongly implies that it’s Tom’s boss, mentor, and obvious friend Kathleen, but it’s so obvious about it that I think it may well be a red herring. Kathleen making a suspicious phone call right after Tom leaves the office seems like a wildly uninteresting way of revealing this information, one unbecoming of a show of this one’s quality. And it also dovetails with us becoming increasingly fond of the rest of the task force. We had Aleah’s stirring recounting of her experiences with domestic violence last week, and here we get more of the charmingly eccentric romantic relationship between Lizzie and Anthony, which culminates with them both climbing into bed together… but not sealing the deal because Anthony can’t bring himself to violate the sanctity of the marital bed.

Anyway, needless to say, this is all pretty tense, since there’s an ominous ticking-clock quality to the sting that you just know is going to cost someone their life. But there’s also a smaller version inside the Dark Hearts, too. Eryn has essentially pulled off the coup she was hoping for, since the brass – those above even Perry – want Jayson out of the way. His death has been scheduled for this coming Friday, giving Perry, who is apparently very fond of Jayson for reasons that seem entirely mysterious to me, a very short window to sort this problem out on his own and potentially save his life.

This leads Perry on a minor investigation that gives him the information we gleaned last week. Billy wasn’t killed because he was skimming off the top, as Jayson claimed, but because he was running around with Eryn, which also makes her the prime suspect as the mole who gave the garbage men information about the Dark Hearts stash houses. He confronts her later, but she denies it and seems to convince him of her innocence, but I’m not so sure. This string of scenes pulls double-duty, as it doesn’t just get Perry in position plot-wise, but also reiterates how smart he is – he figures out the entire chain of events and Eryn’s personal motive in one brisk morning – and how dangerous he can be.

It’s almost like Cliff gets a sense of this telepathically. Ingelsby twists the knife in a flashback scene of Robbie and Billy that parallels a present-day scene at the same lake, and you can see the colour bleed out of the image in real-time, and Cliff near-comatose with anxiety, hugging his knees in the water. It’s both visually and thematically awful, since it eradicates any of the hope that might have existed for these characters when Billy was still alive, things weren’t so bad, and the only hope for a future wasn’t hiding in a rural Canadian wilderness.

Maeve doesn’t go in for the Canada idea, which is perhaps just as well, since there’s no way Robbie and Cliff are going to get that far. The first clue comes when they’re randomly spotted in a parking lot and Robbie assaults a man who tries to take a photo of him and rescue Sam; the second comes when Maeve delivers a justifiable ultimatum. Robbie needs to turn Sam in and bring an end to this entire debacle, since there’s no way his kids are relocating to the middle of nowhere on the back of his own mistakes. His kids are already sick of his bullshit. There’s a terribly depressing scene in which Robbie gets all suited and booted to take his daughter to a father-daughter dance and she reveals that she didn’t even buy the tickets since she just assumed he wouldn’t want to go. Tom Pelphrey’s reaction is devastating. I hope he wins something for this show.

Margarita Levieva and Jamie McShane in Task | Image via WarnerMedia

Anyway, the big moment of Task Episode 4 is the deeply complicated three-way sting operation, so we might as well talk about that, since there are a few details that I’m not sure I necessarily kept track of. The general idea is simple enough. Tom’s task force is waiting in the wings to lure Cliff and Robbie to a meet. Cliff and Robbie think they’re communicating with Ray, and that they’re about to meet his contact to swap the fentanyl for heaps of cash. Cliff goes ahead to provide a sample and get proof of intent, then Robbie, who has the motherlode, plans to sweep in and complete the deal. The FBI intends to arrest them both before that happens. Easy.

But, thanks to the mole in the Feds, the Dark Hearts are also aware of this and are using the opportunity to move on Cliff. This creates a degree of confusion, since the Dark Hearts have access to Ray’s phone – identifiable through its Philadelphia Flyers lock screen background – which was earlier twice seen in possession of the FBI. Aleah had it initially, and Anthony was handling it during the sting, sending Cliff a text reading, “Is this you?” when a car pulled up to the meeting spot. But when Cliff texts Ray’s phone a message reading, “Here”, Jayson reads it, prompting him to run Cliff’s car off the road, and there’s nothing else in the text chain, despite Anthony having apparently sent a message earlier.

I can’t quite figure this out. Is the timing different? Does Anthony have a different, maybe cloned version of Ray’s phone that has been swapped out at some point, potentially by the mole? Wouldn’t he notice it wasn’t the right phone? Was it a decoy? Is he the mole? I just can’t quite tell.

What we do know is that the Dark Hearts very much have the upper hand. After running Cliff off the road, they kidnap, beat, and eventually kill him, with Jayson suffocating him with a roll of cellophane in a deeply horrifying sequence that is genuinely difficult to watch. Cliff doesn’t sell Robbie out, though. But that doesn’t mean the net isn’t closing around him. He was photographed in the parking lot by that good Samaritan, albeit only partially, and that photo has found its way to the FBI via a tip. And Perry recognises Cliff’s gun as one of Billy’s, solidifying the personal connection between Billy and whoever’s out to get them. It’s only a matter of time. I’m sure the wait will be excruciating.

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