Diksha Sundriyal
HBO’s ‘Task’ begins with a parallel between two men. One is Tom, whose morning ritual has him put his face in water full of ice cubes. The other is Robbie, who sticks to getting coffee. Both are revealed to be single fathers. While Tom has a teenage daughter, Emily, Robbie has two young kids and one niece named Maeve. Both men drive to work, but while Tom sets up a table at a job fair to represent the FBI, Robbie goes to work at S&W Waste Management, where he drives a garbage truck with his friend and colleague, Cliff. And from here, the differences get more pronounced as crime comes into the picture. SPOILERS AHEAD.
Tom and Robbie’s Similarities Come to the Fore
While Tom and Robbie’s morning may have started with both men driving off to work, their evenings look wildly different. Tom returns to an empty house, ending the night with a drink. Robbie, however, goes off with Cliff to case a house as a potential target. The duo has been keeping an eye on the house for several days. In the morning, they come to its doorstep as trash collectors. Having gone through the trash, Robbie and Cliff know that the house belongs to low-level drug dealers who have made several sales over several days, which means there is a lot of cash in the house. The next morning, they discuss online dating and buying islands in Canada. Robbie talks about his intent to go back into the dating pool. It has been about a year since his wife, Karen, left, and by now, it’s clear that she is not coming back.
He wants to move on from her, but doesn’t know how to navigate the world of online dating. Because he wants to share his life with someone, Cliff encourages him to give online dating a chance. As for himself, he prefers to be alone. Then they drive by the same house again, and this time, they decide to rob it at night. But they are not going to do it alone. They have a third accomplice, named Peaches. They meet him on their drive back home, teasing him about his low-hanging pants while he talks about his plans to marry the girl he has been dating. They tell him about their plans, and he knows how it will go down since the three of them have done this before. He agrees to see them later at night. The duo goes home, where they are greeted by Robbie’s two children and his 21-year-old niece, Maeve, who has made dinner, which doesn’t seem edible.
Meanwhile, Tom begins his day by picking tomatoes from his farm. As his daughter leaves for school, he tries to communicate with her, but there is an awkwardness between them that suggests that he hasn’t been a single dad for long. Back at the job fair, he sits at his table and opens a parcel, which contains a set of binoculars. He uses it to look around, allowing us to see the stall of Easttown PD, establishing that Tom and Mare exist in the same universe. He is interrupted by a young man, who seems interested in the FBI but doesn’t know how he would fit in. He gives him his background to assure him that the FBI is limitless when it comes to hiring people. He studied philosophy in school and was a priest before he turned towards the FBI as a career. Currently, he is off field duty for personal reasons. This interests the young man, and he walks away with a pamphlet.
Robbie and Co. Rob a House of Drug Dealers
Tom visits a lawyer, where it is revealed that his son, Ethan, is currently in prison for an unspecified crime. His hearing is in a few days, and the victims’ statement can make a huge difference in the sentence he receives. Interestingly, the statement must come from either Tom or Emily, which means that Ethan hurt his own family member, which is most likely Tom’s wife. The lawyer asks Tom to talk to Emily, in case she wants to be the one to write the statement. That evening, Tom visits Emily at her workplace, an ice cream shop, and relays the lawyer’s message to her.
Meanwhile, Robbie tucks his children in bed and tells them the story of Uncle Billy. The story is fictional, where Billy fights the dragon, but the part about him dying is real, though Robbie doesn’t reveal what exactly happened to Billy. Later, he goes to Maeve’s room, where he finds her smoking. They have a little chat about her turning 21 nine months ago, which completely slipped Robbie’s notice, and then, he heads out with Cliff and Peaches, and they rob the house. Before stepping in, Robbie does a gesture where he touches his shoulders one by one.
When Peaches asks him about it, he reveals that, as children, he and his brother used to go swimming at the quarry, where the water used to be so cold that if you jumped into it, your heart could stop. So, before going into the water, they would rub some water on their shoulders to regulate their body temperature and calm their heart, so that it wouldn’t burst when they jumped in. When Peaches points out that they are not going swimming, Robbie says that he just does it to calm his nerves before doing something that could possibly end with him dying. The plan goes without a hitch, and they walk out of the house with the money they’d been eyeing all this time.
Tom Assembles a Task Force to Investigate the Robberies
The next morning, Tom gets a text from his boss, Kathy McGinty. She calls him to the office, where he catches her mid-conversation on the phone. After she hangs up, she tells him that she is being forced to retire because her superiors want new blood in the department. But that’s not why she called Tom. She wants him to go back into the field, and despite his arguments about it being too soon and him not being ready, she is not going to take no for an answer. He is told about a string of robberies and home invasions that have taken place around Delaware County. They have clocked three masked people for it, who are mostly targeting the locations owned by the biker gang called Dark Hearts.
It must also be noted that the robbers have only targeted drug dealers so far. The FBI worries that these robberies might lead the biker gang to exact revenge, which could lead to a turf war, which no one wants at this point. Tom’s job is to apprehend these people and put a stop to the robberies, preventing the crimes from escalating. For this, he has been three officers: State Trooper Elizabeth Stover, Sgt. Det. Aleah Clinton and CD Anthony Grasso. To Tom, they all seem a little green, but Kathy assures him that they are all up to the task. They have also been given a safe house, which used to be a drug house that they confiscated. The house is not in good condition, so before the officers arrive, Tom does some cleaning.
Meanwhile, Robbie, Cliff, and Peaches enjoy their time off and jump into a quarry. While they rest, Robbie gets a message, giving them a new lead. Then, he and Cliff go to case the house, and this time, Cliff points out that the man standing at the porch is looking at him funny. He is a little freaked out, but Robbie encourages him, saying that this is the job that they’d been vying for. They cannot go back, and so, the plan is made to rob the house. At the house, Maeve prepares to go on a date, even though she doesn’t particularly like the guy. She hangs out with him just because it provides her with an excuse to leave the house and go out to have some fun. Meanwhile, Tom drops a suit for his son to wear at the sentencing. When asked if he’d like to meet his son, Tom refuses and leaves as soon as he has signed off on the suit.
Robbie and Maeve Have a Fallout
Later that night, Robbie tries to write a sophisticated message to a woman on a dating site, but then he gets a message from a woman who asks him if he wants to have sex, which makes him realise that perhaps he is thinking too much about it all. While listening to music, he walks into Maeve’s room and gets a weed joint from her stash. As soon as he lights it, he hears Maeve entering the house with her date. He hides in the closet, but is trapped there when Maeve and her guy start to make out. Before things get too far, Robbie comes out of the closet, taking the couple by surprise. The guy thinks Robbie has broken into the house and tries to fight him, but Robbie overtakes him and throws him out of the house.
Later, he apologizes to Maeve about it, saying that he threw the guy out because he didn’t like being attacked in his own house. Maeve points out that it is not his house. The house belonged to Billy, and when he died, he left it to Maeve. Their conversation turns into an argument as she accuses him of having taken over the house and leaving her to take care of his children, while he goes around doing god knows what. He tells her that if it’s too much for her, she should leave. He can take care of his kids by himself. However, she counters that if she believed he was capable of it, she would have left a long time ago.
The next morning, Tom meets his team at the house. The first one to come into view is State Trooper Elizabeth Stover, who seems to be fighting with her ex, who, in her absence, is moving out of the place they shared and is taking some stuff. The argument is about a recliner, but clearly it’s more than just that. Tom doesn’t interrupt her and meets with the other two, who seem more contained. They patiently wait for Lizzie, who, as soon as she sits down, points out a weird smell, which leads her and Anthony to argue, as he points out that everyone can smell it, but they are being polite by not pointing it out.
Tom stops them from bickering any further. He confesses that the place is not in the best condition, but that’s all they have. He invites the three of them to find their rooms upstairs and set up their offices. Before he can talk about the case any further, Lizzie reveals that she didn’t get the case file. Tom confirms that her email is the one with “snickerdoodle” in the name, and she confirms it, to her embarrassment, while stating the mail may have gone into spam. Tom gives her a hard copy of the case file with some time to study it, marking a break in their meeting.
Robbie’s Next Heist Goes Terribly Wrong
Later that evening, Tom does some birdwatching and welcomes his friend, Danny, who is a priest. They know each other from when Tom was a priest. They drink and remember the good old days, but Danny can see that his friend is struggling. By the end, Tom gets so drunk that Danny has to carry him up the stairs. When Maeve arrives, she helps them, and while Danny tries to console her that Tom will get better, she doesn’t seem so convinced. This is not the first time she has seen her father like this. The same night, Tom, Cliff, and Peaches conduct another robbery. However, things don’t go so well this time.
The man they attack is not only a little difficult to overpower, but he also seems to recognise Tom’s voice. Meanwhile, his wife is also not easy to capture either. She puts up a fight and even pulls off Peaches’ mask. Eventually, they tie her down right next to her husband, but when she tells him that she has seen one of their faces, the man points out that they are in a mess. Things get worse when another man walks in while the trio is yet to find any money in the house. The man becomes immediately suspicious and pulls out a gun. Peaches decides to handle him, while Robbie looks for the money, and Cliff points a gun at the captive couple.
Things escalate quickly as Cliff becomes impatient and leaves the couple alone long enough for them to break out of their ties. At the same time, Peaches and the third man engage in a gunfight, which ends with Peaches getting shot in the head, and the whole thing ends with Robbie and Cliff shooting the couple and the third man to death. Realising the mess that has been made, they decide to flee. But before they can walk out the door, they meet a boy in the hallway. He seems to be the son of the couple they just killed. He is innocent enough to believe that the gunshots were fireworks and asks the men if they are his father’s friends. The next morning, Tom is woken up by the message about the gunfight.
After plunging his face into the icy water, he drives to the crime scene. While Anthony and Aleah are there, Lizzie is nowhere to be seen. Anthony updates Tom about all they have found out, which leads them to the basement, where they find a child’s bed and toys. The question is, where is the child? When Lizzie walks in, she informs them that the child was a boy who was there yesterday, as confirmed by a neighbour. It seems that the team may have underestimated Lizzie a bit. While the task force wonders what happened to the boy, we see Tom and Cliff drive up to the house. Before walking in, Tom gets the sleeping boy out of the backseat and carries him inside the house.
Read More: Where is Task Filmed?
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