It Really Feels Like ‘Task’ Episode 3 Is Out to Break Me

I don’t know how TV creator and writer Brad Ingelsby sleeps, but he is somehow able to put his characters through unimaginable hell and then rest his head on the pillow at night. Don’t get me wrong, I love Task—and I enjoyed Mare of Easttown, too—but this is dark TV. Maybe, it’s just Ingelsby’s own brand of revenge against Philadelphia. The Eagles couldn’t win the Super Bowl in 2023 when he started working on Task, so now Mark Ruffalo’s grieving, overworked detective must learn to live with the fact that his adopted son pushed his wife down the stairs resulting in her death. If only Jalen Hurts and co. got it together sooner, we might have been watching Ingelsby’s first romantic comedy on HBO Sunday nights.

Instead, we’re watching episode 3 of Task, and it’s another doozy. Last week, episode 2 ended with one of the most dramatic cliff-hangers I’ve seen all year. Maeve (Emilia Jones) discovers that Sam (Ben Doherty) is the missing boy the cops are looking for and tries to turn him in anonymously. When her plan goes awry, she’s forced to sneak him back home. She walks through the front door as asks Robbie (Tom Pelphrey), “What have you done to us?” Truly, I don’t know how they’re going to find a way out of this one.

Right off the bat in episode 3, Robbie reveals his motivations for the crime. Audiences picked up a bit here and there from Tom’s (Ruffalo) briefing on the Dark Hearts last week, but now there’s no more mystery. “They murdered my brother,” Robbie reminds his niece. “Then, they had the nerve to show up at the memorial service, hug you, and shake my hand. Jason shook my hand with the same hand he used to beat your father’s brains out, and I had to stand there and fucking nod my head and say, ‘Thank you for coming.’ So, yeah. I’m gonna take their money so we can have a better life.”

Like I said, dark TV, Mr. Ingelsby. Please, keep going.

“Even if you did do it for the kids, they’re now gonna spend the rest of their lives without their father,” Maeve yells back. “Hearing stories about how he’s a murderer, a thief, and a kidnapper. That’s your legacy.”

“That ain’t my legacy,” Robbie says, trailing off. “No, that ain’t my legacy.”

“Now it is,” says Maeve.

Oof. Just rip out my heart and step on it, why don’t you? It’s tough when your favorite character on a TV show is actively destroying their own life, but Ingelsby just has such a knack at making you fall in love with Robbie. Plus, Pelphrey’s already won the Emmy in my book.

“I had a life, what life?” Robbie says. “Breaking my back out there to stink like other people’s shit and trash? Come home and have my kids ask me if their mother’s ever coming back, and I ain’t got an answer? No, I’m fucking tired of that life … I understand that I fucked up. Just let me take care of my kids, okay?”

Please, Task, don’t do anymore wrong by this man.

Back on Task

While Tom’s taskforce closes in on Robbie and Cliff (Raul Castillo), the Dark Hearts try and strike a deal with drug kingpin Freddy Frias (Elvis Nolasco). Perry (Jamie McShane) and Jayson (Sam Keeley) offer him 25 percent of the cut if he lets them know when someone comes looking to sell their stolen fentanyl. Remember, that’s Robbie and Cliff—though no one else knows that yet.

Freddy isn’t buying. He tells them a story about how racist bikers once beat him up and pissed on him, just because they didn’t like the color of his skin. So, he asks for 50 percent. Call it a surcharge for even having to work with the Dark Hearts.

Tom and Anthony Grazzo (Fabien Frankel) have a similar experience when they meet with Perry and Jayson for the first time later. They’re no help, not even when they ask the Dark Hearts members to help them in their search for a missing kid—one of their own.

Meanwhile, Robbie and Cliff meet with their contact on the inside of the Dark Hearts who’s been tipping them off to the trap houses. The big reveal? it’s Jayson’s wife, Eryn (Margarita Levieva). She had an affair with Robbie’s late brother, and now she’s out for revenge against the man who murdered him—a.k.a. her husband. So, Eryn tells Robbie not to move the drugs until the Dark Hearts take out Jayson for messing up their whole operation. Freddy’s involved now. They need to be careful. For Cliff, that’s not enough assurance that they can pull this off. “She got what she wanted,” he says. “We’re on our own. We gotta look out for ourselves now.”

Cliff takes Robbie to one of his old cell mates, who Task immediately introduces as a bad guy. He’s aggressive with his wife and makes unhinged jokes about flirting with his son’s girlfriend. Still, he agrees to introduce them to someone who might be able to help them move their fentanyl.

Tom’s Family Dilemma

Like I mentioned up top, Tom has a lot on his plate. He isn’t just investigating a missing boy and a string of violent robberies. Back home, he’s awaiting his adopted son’s sentencing. It seems Ethan (Andrew Russel) had a mental condition, and—following some psychotic break—killed his adopted mother, Tom’s wife. Tom isn’t sure that that he can forgive him. Ethan’s sister, Emily (Silvia Dionicio), is the only one who visits him.

We meet Ethan for the first time in episode 3, and he’s incredibly remorseful. “Whatever the judge says, I just have to deal with,” he tells her. “It’s all my fault.”

Ruffalo, Roll Out!

Aleah (Thuso Mbedu) and Lizzie (Alison Oliver) receive a tip from one of Peaches’s (Owen Teague) old coworkers that he was robbing houses with a trash worker named Cliff. So, the taskforce jumps into action.

When they arrive at Cliff’s, someone’s already broken in. Task shows the two hooded figures, possibly hoping that you assume them to be members of the Dark Hearts. But after a thrilling chase down, the task force captures the two assailants and ID’s them as Cliff’s old cellmate and his wife. It seems that instead of helping Cliff move the drugs, they thought they might have been able to break into his house and steal the fentanyl for themselves. They’re just out of luck, because Robbie has the drugs.

Tom suffers a concussion during the fight, however, after falling down a flight of stairs. Viewers may pick up here that this is quite the traumatic event for him, considering that’s exactly how his wife died. And yet, Tom is too focused on the investigation to really think about it.

Aleah interrogates the wife, Shelley, and shares that she is also a previous victim of domestic abuse. She has a titanium plate and three screws in her cheekbone, from a time that her abusive partner knocked her into the kitchen island. “I wrote my social security number on the bottom of every pair of shoes I owned just so my mother would be able to identify my body when he killed me,” Aleah says. Jeez, Ingelsby. Just when you thought this drama couldn’t get any darker. “I opened that door to escape a million times, and the only reason I didn’t leave sooner is because when I opened that door all I saw was darkness … but there’s light,” Aleah continued. She doesn’t explain how, but she eventually got free. Touched by her story, Shelley tells them everything. Cliff asked them to move the drugs, so they went to rob him. They just don’t know anything about a missing kid.

Right now, as far as Cliff is aware, he’s just waiting on this guy to send them a text detailing where to meet to sell the drugs. He turns on his phone to reveal a giant Flyers logo on the lockscreen—classic Philly man. Then, Anthony sends a text to Cliff to meet at Bailey Park for the drop. The new plan? Tom and the task force will try and intercept Cliff at the park.

A Mole, in Task?

Wouldn’t you believe it, Task spends the end of episode 3 turning the dial up another notch to 12. We were already at 11 with the missing boy chase last episode. Now, with the news that there might be a mole in Tom’s task force, we’re at 12.

Thanks to new intel from his old Dark Hearts investigator pal, Tom learns that the biker gang arrived at Cliff’s house just an hour and a half after they arrived. “How do the Dark Hearts know about Cliff?” he asks him. Well, it seems Tom might have a mole. Aleah, Lizzie, Anthony … one of them might be leaking info to the Dark Hearts. The investigator’s advice? “Suspect everyone.”

I swear, Task won’t end until Ingelsby drags everyone down. I can’t wait.

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