As someone who hails from the Greater Philadelphia Area<\/a>, I would often joke during the peak of Mare of Easttown\u2019s popularity that the Delco accent sounded completely normal to me. Every what are youse dern over there? sounded like proper English to my wooter-ice-soaked brain.<\/p>\n So, Mare creator Brad Ingelsby kickstarted his new HBO<\/a> drama, Task<\/a>, with Mark Ruffalo\u2019s character asking his daughter if she wanted to meet for Rita\u2019s after school. He asked this, of course, as he drank from an oversized, plastic Phillies cup. That’s when I knew that it was our time to shine once again.<\/p>\n Task stars Ruffalo as a semi-retired FBI agent named Tom Brandis, who spends his days recruiting new members at a local career fair. Thanks to a string of violent robberies in the area, he\u2019s roped back into fieldwork and asked to lead a task force to find and arrest the culprits.<\/p>\n Tom is very much the central figure of Task. He\u2019s the Columbo-esque detective on the case (Ruffalo would make a fantastic Columbo, by the way), and much of Task\u2019s debut episode is spent building out the beginnings of his complicated backstory. There\u2019s some mysterious family drama at work. His adopted son is awaiting sentencing in prison for an unknown crime and Tom refuses to visit him. He\u2019s facing five to fifteen years. Tom also used to be a priest, but gave that life up when his wife died. Then, he decided to join the FBI, of all career paths.<\/p>\n Faith and forgiveness will likely define many of the characters’ arcs as I recap this new crime drama for the next two months. We’re dealing with heavy family trauma here. And somehow, the premiere deftly balances these serious subject matters with characters who sound like they\u2019re gargling marbles.<\/p>\n Who would suspect the garbage man?<\/span> HBO<\/span><\/p>\n Enough about Ruffalo. To me, Tom Pelphrey<\/a>\u2019s character, Robbie Pendergrast, is the main character of Task. Make fun of Kate Winslet\u2019s accent all you want in Mare of Easttown, but when Pelphrey spoke, it scared me how accurate he sounded. I\u2019m talking goosebumps. When he points at a travel ad for Canada and says, \u201cLook at that, you can ern yerern island,\u201d it was like a spell that transported me back to South Street. I might not be a Cheese Whiz guy, but Robbie is yelling to the man behind the counter for some \u201cWhiz Wit!\u201d for sure.<\/p>\n Right off the bat, it’s no secret that Robbie is the man that Ruffalo is after. A garbage collector by day, Robbie spends his nights robbing local drug dealers in a smash-and-grab scheme much like Bryan Tyree Henry’s plan in Apple TV+\u2019s Dope Thief<\/a>. The drug dealers won\u2019t report the money missing to the police because it was already obtained illegally. Plus, who would suspect the trash collectors?<\/p>\n Though Robbie is the show’s antagonist, he\u2019s not cruel. He\u2019s just a guy trying to provide for his two kids through dangerous means. He\u2019s saving up cash so that he can lie on a hammock on some private island he wants to purchase in Canada\u2014some Candy Mountain paradise. At this point, it already feels safe to guess that he\u2019ll likely never get there.<\/p>\n Much like Tom, Robbie\u2019s family life is also filled with grief. His wife seemingly walked out on their family a year ago. Now, his young niece Maeve (CODA\u2019s Emilia Jones) watches over his two kids. Life\u2019s hard on her as well. Her father\u2014Robbie\u2019s brother\u2014is no longer in the picture, either. \u201cUncle Billy\u201d was murdered, his kids reveal. We just don\u2019t know why or by whose hand yet. \u201cI\u2019m miserable,\u201d Maeve tells Robbie. What does she know about raising someone else\u2019s kids? \u201cWhat\u2019s the definition of insanity?\u201d asks Maeve. \u201cStaying at the freak farm and thinking something\u2019s going to change?\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s not until Tom starts investigating the case that we learn a little bit more about how Robbie\u2019s family got this way. Turns out, seven out of the nine houses they\u2019ve hit belong to members of a violent motorcycle club called the Dark Hearts. It more than likely isn\u2019t a coincidence.<\/p>\n That\u2019s a tough task, for this group.<\/span> HBO<\/span><\/p>\n Alongside Ruffalo, Task stars Fabien Frankel<\/a> (House of the Dragon<\/a>) as Anthony Grasso from the organized crime division, Allison Oliver (Conversations with Friends) as State Trooper Elizabeth Stover, and Thuso Mbedu (The Woman King) as Sergeant Detective Aleah Clinton. They make up the small investigative unit tasked with bringing these home invaders down\u2014all from their new headquarters in an abandoned stash house.<\/p>\n Elizabeth, or \u201cLizzie\u201d as everyone calls her, is a bit ditzy. She complains about the smell and didn\u2019t receive the brief on their investigation. Her email address? Snickerdoodle223@yahoo.com. Maybe it went to spam! Anthony and Aleah seem more like straight shooters. Or at the very least, they don\u2019t spend their off time getting plastered off vodka from a plastic cup while bird-watching like ol\u2019 Tom.<\/p>\n If anyone else in the cast nailed the accent, it\u2019s Emilia Jones. <\/span> HBO<\/span><\/p>\n It was bound to happen. Robbie and Cliff\u2019s operation goes sideways as they hit their tenth house. They bring along a third for this hit, a young man played by Owen Teague<\/a> (Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes). But the homeowners are combative, Robbie can\u2019t find the money, and then an armed visitor enters with what looks like the moneybag. In the chaos, the stranger shoots and kills Teague\u2019s character\u2014resulting in a gunfight that only Robbie and Cliff walk away from. I don\u2019t know if they\u2019ve ever killed someone before, but this seems like the first time that they\u2019ve left some dead bodies behind.<\/p>\n That\u2019s not all. As Robbie takes the bag and prepares to leave, they spot a young boy who walks out from the basement. He can’t be more than eight years old. \u201cAre you my dad\u2019s friends?\u201d he asks them. \u201cYeah,\u201d Robbie responds. This father of two couldn\u2019t hurt a kid, right?<\/p>\n No, of course not. As Tom and his task force investigate the crime scene, Robbie brings the boy back to his home. Even if he\u2019s technically doing the right thing here, this is still kidnapping. And if you thought it was a bit strange that the FBI was putting so many resources into an investigation into stolen drug money, well, a missing child is certainly something that the whole town might be invested in when we see episode 2 next week.<\/p>\n You can\u2019t tell me that you\u2019re not at least a little on Robbie\u2019s side. <\/span> HBO<\/span><\/p>\n If you\u2019ve seen a fair share of crime dramas before Task, I can\u2019t promise you that we\u2019re headed into completely new territory for the genre here. What I can tell you is that Task\u2019s first hour features some of the most well-rounded and realistically human leads I\u2019ve seen in a long time.<\/p>\n Tom is on the right path morally, but he’s spiritually troubled\u2014and Robbie is the complete opposite. He wants peace for his family more than anything, and he\u2019s not afraid to achieve it by taking it away from others. But there\u2019s a reason why Robbie isn\u2019t hitting the richest homes he can find in Delaware County and pilfering their luxury watches like Jon Hamm in Your Friends and Neighbors<\/a>. From what Task shows of Robbie\u2019s life so far, it\u2019s clear that he’s a good guy at heart. That shouldn\u2019t just make him a better antagonist as Task goes on; it should also make for a better story.<\/p>\n I\u2019m already rooting for Robbie to figure out this terrible situation out before Ruffalo finds him. And if I get to keep watching Tom Pelphrey’s performance every Sunday, then I couldn\u2019t think of a better place to be this fall.<\/p>\n You Might Also Like<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.yahoo.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" As someone who hails from the Greater Philadelphia Area, I would often joke during the peak of Mare of Easttown\u2019s popularity that the Delco accent sounded completely normal to me. Every what are youse dern over there? sounded like proper English to my wooter-ice-soaked brain. So, Mare creator Brad Ingelsby kickstarted his new HBO drama, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2005296,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25173],"tags":[21917,316735,365601,364327,357793,357792],"class_list":["post-2005295","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artists","tag-hbo","tag-mark-ruffalo","tag-robbie-pendergrast","tag-task-force","tag-tom-brandis","tag-tom-pelphrey"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/The-Task-Premiere-Already-Has-Me-Hooked.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2005295","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2005295"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2005295\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2005296"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2005295"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2005295"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2005295"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/span><\/div>\n
Cast Tom Pelphrey In Everything<\/h4>\n
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Task Force, Assemble!<\/h4>\n
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Robbie, We\u2019ve Got a Problem<\/h4>\n
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I’m Strapped In<\/h4>\n