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Task Series-Finale Recap: Forgiveness

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Photo: Peter Kramer/HBO

There is no formula for prestige TV. Such watercooler viewing experiences occur like spontaneous combustion. Task’s goal was to compare and contrast two very different kinds of family men and their attempts at redemption, ranging from overcoming a nasty Vodka habit to securing a better future for their children. At its best, Task explored the complicated, flawed, but vivid lives of women left to pick up the pieces of broken men. This isn’t to say it didn’t explore masculinity with equal skill, only to point out creator and writer Brad Inglesby’s adept ability to explore the intersection of class and gender. Those moments recede in the final episode. When they do occur, the writing sparkles. There’s also some nice pacing, plot, and messaging in this last outing. Animals continue to be a motif, even if they’re not always a schema that maintains coherence. This time, as Emily, Sara, and Sam put up posters in the latter’s room, soft country music plays as they wax on about the plight of animals trapped in the zoo. It’s the moment where Sara seems to fully forgive Ethan for killing her birth-mom. She tells a story of a time Ethan went out looking for a neighbor’s lost dog. It’s touching, the kind of taut, thorny wrecking ball emotional moment that writer Brad Inglesby is so capable of. Watching Sam be forced to grow up in yet another house — and one where adoption is already so fraught — is mesmerizing. Watching Emily take in Sara of all people telling a story about her brother is even more electric.

The Dark Hearts are splintering, tensions brewing over where to shift their focus: should they retrieve the lost money or lay low? Maeve, meanwhile, is struggling to keep life somewhat normal for her uncle’s kids. Emilia Jones is great as a distraught woman realizing she’s coming into a massive amount of stolen cash. Tom, for his own part, rescues the orphaned Sam from being a ward of the state and starts taking care of him. Watching Tom teach Sam gardening is a nice touch.

Grasso is terrified of being found out as the mole in the task force. With Tom onto his ruse, he knows it’s only a matter of time before his time runs out and he’s arrested. So, in an act of desperation, he confesses everything to his sister, perhaps to expel the guilt of all the lives he’s cost the FBI, including his old lover Lizzie. Elsewhere, Aleah and Tom continue their detective work to nail Grasso, and the FBI discovers Eryn’s dead body. This discovery ultimately ends up completely fracturing the Dark Hearts. Their schism results in more factions than I can count: some of the gang want Grasso dead, some want Jay and Perry dead, some want the missing money, some don’t. The Dark Hearts realize that Robbie must have already sold the drugs and gotten the money. Of course, the viewer knows that he did, and Maeve has it. When Jayson realizes that it was Perry who killed his lover, he stabs his old boss Perry and goes on the lam.

The second half of the episode provides our action for the evening. Aleah and Tom go to confront Grasso, but he’s already neck-deep in danger. The Dark Hearts are trying to “tie up loose ends” by killing him off. He barely manages to escape, realizing they’re going to kill off Maeve in order to get their money back. He uses the last of his strength to drive over to Maeve’s and warn her. But he’s too late, his last act of absolution nearly dashed to pieces — Jayson arrives, waving around a gun and forcing her to grab the money out of the hen house. Finally, Aleah and Tom end up at the house, slowly sneaking around and trying to maintain the upper hand in a dazzling shoot-out. It’s a genuinely tense and thrilling scene. Maeve is in the hen house with Jayson, banging his gun around and nearly strangling her. She tries to run but fails, merely alerting her uncle’s kids to her plight. Luckily, the kiddo ends up getting to Grasso to tell him she’s in danger. Of course, they still see him as the good cop. And he is. Grasso’s the one to shoot and kill Jayson in the end and free Maeve, all while he’s in potentially mortal pain. Tom discovers Maeve’s backpack of money, but merely zips it back up. Not his problem. He’s a priest, after all. Give unto Caesar what is Caesar’s. Besides, Tom clearly has a soft spot for misfits. He even visits Grasso, who has miraculously survived the ordeal, in the hospital and tells him he never ended up giving anyone penance. “People beat themselves up enough on their own.” Hope, like forgiveness, is a fragile affair, a gift you must give to yourself.

The final arc in the episode is about Tom, Ethan, and Emily, and the way their dynamic is mirrored by Sam. Tom ends up giving an impact statement at his adopted son’s hearing and gives a stirring monologue about his failures as a father. Schizophrenia dogged Ethan when he killed his mother after a Risperdal shortage during the pandemic. He asks Ethan to look at him, and at first, he resists. “I forgive you, I love you,” he tells his kid. He has a similar talk with Emily, who finally calls him out on his drinking. Narratively, it’s a tricky sequence of gut punches — many of these people are cyphers, not people, just by the sheer lack of hours we’ve spent with them. Ultimately, Tom says he’s ready for Ethan to come home whenever the moment arises. The show does not reveal how the sentencing ends up going, instead concluding on a hopeful yet uncertain note.

Tom teaches Sam gardening and hangs his old Vodka-filled Phillies cup as decor on his veranda. He knows he has to let Sam go when a family comes for him. He needs to have a kind of unselfish love, the kind that perhaps his wife had. He and Emily stand at the door with Sam, mimicking an earlier scene with Tom and his late wife, Susan, when Emily and Ethan arrive. The show ends with Tom looking out the window at his garden, perhaps meditating on the nature of redemption. Such lofty throughlines are an important element of HBO prestige dramas and great crime thrillers. The Sopranos and Succession were also about the flawed nuclear family struggling against modernity. Industry is about naked ambition meeting the limitations of human fallibility. Crime dramas like Vera or Prime Suspect took a look at the plight of women whose careers came first. Mysteries need a brutal but tender human component. Often, Task struggled to match its ideals to its plot, but it was still a show worth watching. It will inevitably end up on many year-end lists and deservedly so. Like the family men at its core, it wasn’t always perfect, but it was enough.

Summary Judgement Appendix

• Emilia Jones was far and away the best part of this show. The scene where she’s tearing through drawers in this episode looking for her car keys is riveting.

• Line Readings: Sara: “I have not had DQ in so long.” Kathleen: “I need you to do something for me that we’re not supposed to do and you’re gonna do it for me anyway.”

• The credits set to various bird sightings is a nice touch.




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