Summary
Task is heartbreak, riveting, near-perfect television, and Episode 6 is arguably the best of the season top to bottom.
People die. This is true in real life and even truer in television shows, since drama needs conflict, and conflict is invariably kicked off and concluded with violence. But a show like Task lives in a strange, hyperreal space, obviously fiction but so well constructed and intensely compelling that it feels a bit like it’s happening to you. Episode 6, boasting the needlessly flowery title “Out Beyond Ideas of Wrongdoing and Rightdoing, There Is a River”, is acutely aware of this. It kills off characters – serious, important ones – in the first few minutes, secure in the knowledge that it’s tearing strips from an invested audience. I felt like I was being waterboarded.
These deaths aren’t unexpected. Everyone on both sides of the aisle is in for it; they have been since the very beginning. But by the established rules of storytelling, you wouldn’t expect these two characters to be unceremoniously eradicated right now. Seriously, a co-protagonist? How can we possibly go on?
This is why the chaotic opening firefight in the Bushkill forests that kicks off this penultimate episode is so effective. There’s a profound sense of vulnerability and doomed, relentless inevitability to it. Tom and Robbie holding each other at gunpoint made for a great cliffhanger, but the downside is that it was essentially impossible for both of them to get out unscathed. And they don’t. But Brad Ingelsby, curse his name, killing off Lizzie for good measure felt like a needless twist of the knife, especially when we came so close to seeing Tom and Robbie teaming up and taking out the Dark Hearts and saving the day.
Grasso, man. You can pin so much of the heartbreak in Episode 6 on DJ Grassanova, that undeniably charming, morally complicated double-agent who still, even in the midst of all this carnage, can’t quite decide whose side he’s on. There are a bundle of cross-cutting subplots here – Tom and Robbie’s faux-allegiance, Kathleen being out in the field on the cusp of retirement, the Dark Hearts needing to get the drugs, Lizzie’s ears ringing under fire – but the most vital is Grasso playing both sides, trying to keep Lizzie alive while also ensuring Perry and Jayson get away. Lizzie’s delirium as her perforated eardrums trickle down her face is shared by all of us. It’s truly riveting telly.
Ingelsby also pulls the so-close-yet-so-far trick with Robbie’s revenge mission. I genuinely thought he was going to successfully strangle Jayson to death, and I wouldn’t have minded. That Jayson slips a knife between his ribs isn’t immediately apparent until Robbie falls over and Jayson hungrily gasps for oxygen. Then you think Robbie might make it. Tom chases Jayson away, drags Robbie to a squad car, and starts taking him to the hospital. Doesn’t make it, though. Robbie dies in his arms. Awful, awful stuff, and uncomfortably real-feeling. But the most savage blow is Perry and Jayson crashing into Lizzie as they make their escape, sending her body flying through the air and leaving her in a tangle of pulped limbs and scattered medical supplies. Grasso is genuinely devastated, but it’s a little too late for that.
The bad guys have won. Robbie managed to throw the bag of drugs into the river before his final confrontation with Jayson, but it’s easy to imagine the Dark Hearts will find it. Tom’s task force is off the case. Grasso is torn up about his involvement, but he hasn’t been exposed as the mole. Sam is in a facility, and Maeve may be looking at charges for not being honest with Tom when she first encountered him. It’s over.
Or is it? Not quite, no. Tom isn’t satisfied and is still fishing for information despite being technically off the case. Through Maeve, he learns that Robbie and Cliff were lured to a different park, not the one where the Feds set up the sting. Through Kathleen, he learns that Grasso was suspected of tipping off the Dark Hearts back in 2021, when he was part of a different task force. No official charges were ever filed. But Tom knows. So, he drives to Grasso’s place and finds him drowning his sorrows, and tells him in no uncertain terms that he knows. Even after that banger opening, Task Episode 6 delivers a contender for scene of the season. And all Grasso’s previous leading questions about forgiveness and confession and Tom’s past life as a pastor suddenly make a lot more sense. The writing was on the wall.
“I’m coming for you,” says Tom as he leaves. “So come,” says Grasso. The game’s still afoot, ladies and gentlemen. Tom might get his win yet. And while this doesn’t seem like a happy ending written down, it feels like one in context. It’s part of a string of climactic scenes that all feel that way. After visiting Sam in a facility that is basically a repurposed room in a prison due to budget cuts, Tom, still a registered foster parent, takes him home. And Maeve, who has to return home to a life of mothering kids that aren’t hers, whose fathers are dead, gets a knock on her door. It’s Ray’s wife, Shelly. Robbie told her to pass something along. He had already sold the fentanyl. The bag is full of cash. The one Jayson and Perry are chasing is full of flyers for his Canadian getaway. Even in his death, Robbie provided a new life for his family after all.
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