Warning: This post contains spoilers for Episode 4 of Task.
As this week’s episode of Task came to an upsetting close, there was no denying the walls seemed to be closing in on Robbie (Tom Pelphrey). But, given there are still three installments of the HBO crime drama to go, we have to assume things won’t pan out exactly like they currently seem they might.
Following a bait and switch that resulted in Cliff (Raúl Castillo) being captured and tortured to death by Jayson (Sam Keeley) and his Dark Hearts crew, Perry (Jamie McShane) went to work trying to identify the original owner of the gun they found in Cliff’s car after Jayson drove him off the side of the road while he was waiting to make the drug deal. Since finding out the gun that killed Dark Hearts member Warren Clarke (Joshua Dye) at the trap house robbery gone wrong once belonged to one of their own, Perry has been on a mission to figure out who inside the biker gang was feeding information to the thieves. And his research paid off, as the episode’s closing moments showed him matching the gun’s holster to an old photo of Robby’s dead brother Billy (Jack Kesy) wearing the same one. Unfortunately, his focus then switched to the other person in the picture: Billy’s daughter Maeve (Emilia Jones).
In the hours leading up to Robbie and Cliff’s failed rendezvous with the supposed drug connect of Cliff’s squirrelly former cellmate Ray (Peter Patrikios), Maeve gave Robbie the ultimatum that if he didn’t turn Sam (Ben Lewis Doherty) over to the cops by the following morning, she would do it herself. But what if that would-be good deed lands her even more squarely in the vengeful sights of Perry and the Dark Hearts?
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This all seems really bad for Eryn (Margarita Levieva) as well, whom Perry already accused of being the gang’s rat after learning Jayson lied about Billy stealing from the Dark Hearts as an excuse for beating him to death over Eryn’s affair with him. It doesn’t help that Eryn was in fact the one tipping off Robbie and Cliff about which houses to hit. Our guess is that Perry’s offer to hide Eryn and her kids away somewhere Jayson could never find them wasn’t exactly genuine.
“Perry’s not concerned with what’s happening on his watch,” McShane said last week in HBO’s “Inside Episode 3” breakdown. “He’s concerned with what’s going on. I think he just feels like, alright, something’s happened. Something goes wrong as things do. Why is it happening? Who’s causing it? What do we do about it? How do we fix it? Boom, that’s it. But then there’s also the compassion of who winds up being involved in all that and what the repercussions of that [are].”
While Cliff refused to give up Robbie’s name despite the Dark Hearts’ less-than-pleasant interrogation techniques, if Perry chooses to go after Eryn or Maeve, it seems likely he’ll eventually uncover Robbie’s role in the whole mess. And when that happens, Robbie better make sure his kids are out of harm’s way.
There’s also the question of the mole inside the FBI, which the show seems to be leading us to believe is actually Kathleen McGinty (Martha Plimpton) rather than one of the three task force members working under Tom (Mark Ruffalo). Not only did we see her make that weird, “We may have a problem,” phone call after telling Tom to concentrate on the night ahead rather than the leak, but the camera also focused in on her in the background of the shot showing Tom’s dismay over the fact that the FBI’s sting operation happened at the wrong location. What are you up to Kathleen? Or are you simply another red herring?
Thankfully—or regrettably, depending on who you’re rooting for—just when it seemed like everything was working against Tom, he received a big new lead in the form of a photo of Sam captured on the iPhone of the concerned citizen Robbie beat the crap out of earlier that day. Robbie was in the photo as well, albeit with his hand blocking the majority of his face. But if Tom also gets a chance to talk to Robbie’s assault victim, it seems like he’ll have enough information to start zeroing in on him.
Presumably, this will all unfold as Robbie learns the fate of his best friend and grapples with the reality that the pair’s plan to escape to Canada has been derailed—unless he wants to go it alone. Meanwhile, we saw Emily writing out her victim impact statement for her brother Ethan’s sentencing and beginning to falter under the weight of her impossible family situation. Will she side with her brother over their adoptive family, throwing Tom’s family life into chaos as the investigation reaches a climax?
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