Late one night, Robbie (Tom Pelphrey) is out with his friends, laughing. There’s an anxious tremor echoing through the car — Cliff (Raúl Castillo), sitting shotgun, can’t hide his nerves — but it only elicits more chuckles from the driver, who’s all but perfected the practice of self-serenity. His chosen music carries a soothing pulse and leisurely lyrics, and when Peach Boy (Owen Teague) questions the vibe, Robbie calmly explains, “Transportative [sic], isn’t it? Takes you away from your reality, puts you in another.”
Robbie invites Peach Boy to close his eyes and imagine white sandy beaches, a big blue ocean, and beautiful women asking to dance with him. As Peach Boy sways sensually in the backseat, Robbie reaches his point: “Everyone’s fucking happy as shit on that beach,” he says. “You don’t got a care in the world.” Then, as Peach Boy’s dreamy dancing gets a little more graphic, the men laugh and ride deeper into the night.
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Circumstances aside, it’s easy to believe everyone in that car, at that moment, is happy as shit, too; that these are the good times they should be savoring, rather than the reality they feel the need to escape. But the conditions eliciting stress aren’t so easily tossed out, nor could they be for this specific crew on this specific evening. Robbie and the boys are on their way to a trap house, which they plan to loot, quickly and cleanly, as they have a half-dozen times before. The stolen cash won’t go toward buying their own island, like Robbie and Cliff joked about earlier — there isn’t enough for that. Instead, the blood money will be repurposed toward something if not good, then necessary: their families, their futures, their personal slice of paradise.
“Task,” from “Mare of Easttown” creator Brad Ingelsby, is “transportative,” too. Robbie’s practical version of that blissful beach is a remote quarry near his rural home. But over the years, his halcyon memories of swimming there with family and friends have darkened to a cold, isolated present. “Task” is so ingrained in the arduous lives of its dueling leads — Robbie and Tom (Mark Ruffalo), the FBI agent assigned to catch him — that it’s able to simultaneously sweep us away to another place and level us with its wrenching reality. Casually shedding the clichés it’s built upon, HBO‘s crime saga mounts a potent blend of cat-and-mouse chase, bleak family drama, and a character study of quite a few characters under extreme emotional duress. The laughs may be hard to come by, but the emphasis on caring — not as a burden to escape, but a responsibility to embrace — more than makes up for the hardships along the way.
That’s life, isn’t it? A good one can find compassion even where it appears there’s none to be found.
When the seven-part series starts, Tom is reeling from the recent death of his wife, Susan (Mireille Enos) and the ongoing incarceration of his son, Ethan (Andrew Russel). Mourning the woman who lured him out of the priesthood and torn over what to do for his youngest child as he awaits sentencing, Tom can’t even find solace in God. He prays most mornings — before dunking his head in an ice bath to shock himself back to an agonizing existence — but there’s no response. “I’m lost,” he bluntly, honestly, tells his teenage daughter, Emily (Silvia Dionicio), as Ruffalo’s soulful eyes convey his heartbroken truth.
Tom’s self-aware suffering is one of many subtle ways “Task” defies convention. This isn’t a man in denial. He doesn’t need a gruff talking-to from his partner, nor is there a case he can crack to make everything at home OK again. His unimaginable situation leaves him with no obvious path forward — a purposeful choice by Ingelsby for a character who’s literally trained in trauma recovery. (Tom got started with the FBI when they asked him to counsel victims at disaster sites.) Now, he’s trying to use the tools that have always helped before, and they’re not working. He’s not only lost, but abandoned and hopeless.
Robbie isn’t faring much better. His brother was killed a few months back, and while his wife didn’t die, she’s still gone — having walked out on him and their two kids when times got hard. Now, Robbie is the only adult responsible for three minors, although his niece, Maeve (Emilia Jones), is handling most of the childcare. She cooks (enduring the complaints of her picky younger nephew), cleans (looking after the rural home, including a chicken coop out back), and works part-time at an arcade (with the one friend she has time to see).
Robbie tries to be appreciative of the young matriarch’s sacrifices. His love for his kids comes through in the easy-breezy demeanor he brings home from his day shift picking up trash, buoyantly bouncing through a busy home to play with his son and charm his daughter. (The light Pelphrey infuses into Robbie is a brilliant, devastating choice, especially when cast so starkly against Ruffalo’s hopelessness.) But his night job — stealing stacks of cash from drug dens — leaves a darker mark, no matter how well he composes himself before each raid, and his past damage paired with mounting responsibilities and a dangerous side-hustles leaves him just as wayward as Tom.
Maeve is practically a third lead (giving “CODA” star Jones her belated “Winter’s Bone” moment), and her wise-beyond-her-years perspective doubles as a check on Robbie’s recklessness and a reminder of how much familial responsibility is traditionally thrust upon women. Robbie can only chase down his own dreams (and demons) because Maeve’s at home with the kids, doing the domestic and emotional labor by keeping him updated on their lives, maintaining relationships that don’t even involve her. She’s a hero in her own right, and “Task” rightly portrays her as such.
Similarly, Tom can only chase down Robbie and his team with the help of colleagues who are mostly women. In addition to his boss, Tom’s task force consists of Grasso (Fabien Frankel), an affable bro and lapsed Catholic who still wears a cross around his neck; Lizzie (Alison Oliver), a green local cop who’s easily startled; and Aleah (Thuso Mbedu), a smart, experienced, sharpshooter who’s basically everything Lizzie is not. Yet it’s the two women who form real bonds — with each other and the rest of the team — while Tom and Grasso tend to do their own thing (when they’re not throwing shade at the religion that failed them). Oliver and Mbedu, both excellent in their own breakthrough roles (“Conversations with Friends” and “The Underground Railroad,” respectively), are impressive again here.
Enriched by regular moments of grace, “Task” still moves at an engrossing, steady pace. Ingelsby preserves the thrills of a relentless investigation while foregrounding his ensemble’s relatable — often painfully so — experiences with guilt and forgiveness. Action is steadily interspersed throughout, including multiple tense chases scenes and a heart-in-your-throat shootout. Mysteries aren’t the focus, but there are lingering questions that pop up and pay off in timely fashion. Each character’s overall arc is satisfying, with a few minor hiccups (but with immense credit to casting director Avy Kaufman), and the story is balanced in a way that should reward weekly viewing.
Still, it’s the way that Ingelsby interrogates the building blocks of a good life that hits the hardest. Tom and Robbie have been dealt bad hands. There’s nothing they could have done to prevent their present circumstances (or, at least, nothing alluded to by the show), but what they do next not only drastically impacts their own quality of life but also their families’. What do we owe our loved ones? What do we owe the next generation? What do we owe ourselves? Ingelsby weighs these choices against each other without getting preachy or searching for answers that aren’t there. Instead, he leads with compassion for all his characters (well, almost all of them), and that appreciation, under such dire constraints, leaves no excuse for forgetting to lead with empathy ourselves, amid comparably better days.
Watching “Task” may bring to mind Michael Mann’s “Heat” and Ben Affleck’s “The Town,” or Bruce Springsteen’s “The River” and Ruffalo’s last HBO series, “I Know This Much Is True” — movies, songs, and shows that run bone-deep in their recognition of the distinctions that make us unique, the commonalities that connect us to each other, and the hands of fate that too often make you wonder what could’ve been. Such comparisons aren’t a slight, just as “Task” doesn’t suffer for its similarities to other shows. (The DelCo accents are bound to get a ton of press, but I barely heard them by the finale.) Great stories can take us away from one reality and immerse us in another, or they can heighten reality to such a degree it’s all you can see. What matters is that, either way, they resonate so strongly you can’t help but give a shit.
On this ride, the tears are just as valuable as the laughter.
Grade: A-
“Task” premieres Sunday, September 7 at 9 p.m. ET on HBO.
