Task Episode 4: Is This the Mole?

Storming into the bar, Perry lays a punch on his unsuspecting friend with a fist wrapped in metal chains. He screams at Jayson and spits all over face as their heads lock like two rams. Jayson tries to make it up to him by stating that their informant came through. They know about Cliff’s drop-off at the park tonight, and they plan to intercept it. “I’m sorry, Perry,” Jayson says before he leaves. “She was gonna take the kids.” Troubled fathers—they’re everywhere in Task.

This is the most color I’ve seen from a shot in Task yet.

Robbie’s Last Chance

In a flashback, Billy tells Robbie that he should just let his wife leave is she wants out of their relationship so badly. Something is off, and she’s not happy with Robbie anymore. Maybe it’s his family’s connection to the Dark Hearts. Maybe it’s just something else entirely. Either way, Billy offers his brother some advice: just learn to let some things go. I can see what Ingelsby is putting down on paper here. Robbie needs to let this personal vendetta go and look for a way out. By now, though, he’s just too far in.

When we cut back to the idyllic lake from the flashback to see Robbie and his family there in present day, all the color is gone. We’re back to Task’s grays and dark greens and browns, as Cliff sits in the water hugging his own legs—knees to his chest.

The duo leaves to meet with a truck driver who says that he can take them and their families up to Canada after the drop-off. But after a bizarre turn of events, Sam is discovered by a good-natured stranger just trying to help him find his family. Robbie punches the living daylights out of him, and they flee the scene.

Later, Maeve tells Robbie that his plan is ridiculous. “I don’t see a school anywhere around here, or a grocery store, or a doctor’s office,” she says. “In a lifetime of stupid ideas, this one takes the case.” If Robbie can’t live without his children, then he should have thought about that before he started robbing houses. “You’re not going to ruin their lives just because you ruined yours,” she tells him. “You have until tomorrow morning. If you don’t turn Sam in then by then, I will.”

Robbie tries to lift his own spirits by practicing for the father-daughter dance with his daughter, but she tells him that she’s scared. She suspects that something is wrong—“just like when mom left.” Hell, she didn’t even buy them tickets to the father-daughter dance. “Guess we better make the most of this one, huh?” Robbie says. I’m sure the school would let them both go to the dance anyway, but it’s not a good omen.

Poor Brandis

Tom Brandis is one of the saddest characters I’ve ever seen on TV. In this episode, he tells Anthony (Fabien Frankel) that he originally joined the priesthood because he thought there was a higher power in this world, so he wanted to be closer to it. “The longer I stayed, the further away I felt,” he continues. Ouch. Ruffalo plays Brandis’s depression like he’s actually lived it, which is so funny because the actor genuinely seems like such a happy, easygoing guy in real life.

Rats!

The Sting

Now, this whole situation is about to go topsy-turvy. So, let’s reestablish the facts. Robbie and Cliff believe that they’re about to meet Ray’s contact in the park and exchange the fentanyl for cash. Cliff is heading out alone first to show them a sample and demand to see proof of the money before they deliver the rest. That’s when Robbie will drive over in a separate car and finish the exchange. Meanwhile, Tom’s task force is waiting in the park to ambush Cliff and find out the whereabouts of the missing kid. None of that is about to happen.

A white car that looks like Cliff’s pulls into the park and doesn’t stop, so Anthony sends Cliff a text from Ray’s phone. “Is this you?” he writes. There’s no response. So, cops surround the car and find a couple just searching for their lost dog. False alarm.

When we cut back to Cliff, he’s driving on a road somewhere else when he looks at his phone. There’s no text message from Ray that reads “Is this you?” Instead, we only see a text that Cliff sent: “Here.”

Jayson has Ray’s phone somehow—which we can tell from the Flyers background—and he reads Cliff’s text before driving his car off the road. When Robbie drives to the drop-off location, he’s nowhere to be found.

Never take Grasso to the marriage bed.

Grasso and Lizzie’s Weird Night

The two task members go out for drinks after the sting failure… and end up rolling into bed. They’ve been flirting heavily over the past four episodes, so it was about time that Task upped the stakes here for their side-character romance. And yet, something incredibly strange happens. Anthony pauses and asks Lizzie if they’re having sex “in the marriage bed.”

Lizzie is divorced, and she refers to her ex-husband as “like the worst decision” she ever made. But Anthony is fixated. It’s a sacred place to him, and he won’t have sex there. So, he leaves. “I want to, obviously,” he says, “just somewhere else.”

I have no idea what to make of this scene. Lizzie’s face makes it seem like she’s endeared by this gesture, though she also thinks it’s a bit silly. Let me just say this. Ladies, do not think that you need to get a whole new bed every time you sleep with someone new. And men? Maybe relax a little.

“It was almost like being at your own funeral,” Castillo tells Esquire.

R.I.P. Cliff

It’s possible that Ingelsby just figured we needed a bit of levity in this crazy plot before we find out what happened to Cliff, because Jayson and the Dark Hearts have beaten his face into a bloody mess. His cheeks are swollen, his eyelid is shut, and his nose looks broken in multiple places. He’s like a crushed tomato. Cliff’s strong, though, and he refuses to sell Robbie out. So, Jayson wraps Cliff’s head in cellophane and suffocates him. It’s horrifying to watch.

When I talked to the actor who plays Cliff, Raúl Castillo, he told me that the vibe on set that day was haunting. “It was almost like being at your own funeral,” said Castillo. “People spoke quietly. They couldn’t even look at me—they were just turning away. It’s a gruesome effect.”

I’ll say! You can read my interview with Castillo here.

After Cliff’s harrowing death, both sides get to work. Perry magically finds that Cliff’s gun looks the same as one of Billy’s guns from an old scrapbook. Meanwhile, Aleah alerts Tom to a tip from the guy Robbie beat up in the parking lot. It’s a photo from the guy’s cell phone that shows Sam is alive. Perry stares at a photo of Maeve while Tom does to same to the sliver of Robbie’s face poking out from in between his fingers. It’s not looking good, folks.

I think I figured it out.

The Phone

Before I leave you this week, there’s just one scene that really got under my skin. I swear, I watched it back over a dozen times, and I left this episode damn near certain that Anthony is the mole.

For starters, we watched him text someone “Is this you?” when that dog-searching couple entered the park. Cliff never received that text. Not only that, but Jayson had Ray’s phone. I know this is true, because it had the Flyers background that Ray revealed last episode. Plus, Jayson received Cliff’s “here” text.

Technically, anyone from Task could have handed Ray’s phone over to Jayson. Aleah could have snatched it from the evidence locker. So could Lizzie—or even the suddenly shifty Katherine. But wouldn’t Anthony know that he was holding the wrong phone? Did this random new phone Anthony have on him also happen to have someone named Cliff in its contacts? I mean, who did Anthony think he was texting? Did he just send a fake message?

This is all mighty suspicious behavior, if you ask me! Either Task didn’t think the audience would catch it, or I just figured it out. Your move, Ingelsby,