Diksha Sundriyal
The penultimate episode of HBO’s ‘Task’ delivers an intense chapter in the story of Tom Brandis and Robbie Prendergrast. The last episode ended with Tom and his team finding Robbie in the woods, while the Dark Hearts follow them. This episode picks up right at the end of its predecessor, with Tom calling out to Robbie to surrender. The FBI agent’s calls alert the rest to their position, and soon, Jayson, Perry, and their men find themselves on a bridge, looking at Robbie and Tom at a distance. The FBI’s presence prompts Perry to leave the scene, but Jayson is adamant. He fires a shot at Robbie, which unravels the whole situation, leading to unexpected tragedies. SPOILERS AHEAD.
A Brutal Showdown Ensues in the Woods
Jayson’s shooting leads Robbie to run into the woods towards the cabin, while Tom follows him, closely followed by a gang member. Robbie turns around to shoot, but it’s not aimed at Tom. He kills the gang member and drags Tom to the cabin for safety. He points out that Tom is out of bullets, so he cannot force Robbie to go with him. He also points out that Tom was supposed to stay at the lake where he left him, and his return has ruined Robbie’s plan. Meanwhile, Aleah and Kathleen try to follow Tom, but face heavy gunfire in which Kathleen is shot in the chest. Fortunately, the wound isn’t fatal, and she can wait while Aleah calls for help. Lizzie and Grasso also make their way towards the cabin, and he tells her to stay by his side. He doesn’t want her to cross paths with a gang member because he doesn’t want any of them to be apprehended, but he also doesn’t want one of them to kill Lizzie.
Jayson and Perry arrive at the cabin, which prompts Robbie to leave from the back door after asking Tom to stay put. Robbie calls out Jayson, and when the Dark Hearts leader finds him, Robbie throws the bag with drugs into the river. This makes Jayson lose his mind, and a fight ensues between them. Meanwhile, Perry enters the cabin, and he and Tom engage in a fight. It ends with Tom overpowering Perry and punching him to the point of rendering him unconscious. Before leaving the cabin, the FBI agent takes the gang member’s gun and, at a short distance, finds Jayson and Robbie. For a moment there, it looked like Robbie would kill Jayson, but the latter stabs him in the gut. Before he can finish the job, Tom arrives, and Perry runs away, leaving Robbie to his fate.
One patrol car arrives, and Tom hastily puts Robbie in it, and they drive away. Meanwhile, Lizzie and Grasso cross paths with the same gang member Grasso had let go a few minutes back. With Lizzie ahead of him, Grasso signals the guy not to take out his gun. But he doesn’t listen, and as soon as he moves, Lizzie shoots him. Grasso tries to keep the guy from bleeding out, while Lizzie processes what she has done. In the background, he sees Jayson and Perry and signals them to run away. Then, Lizzie hears Aleah’s call, and she runs back to the bridge to call for help. Grasso runs after her, realizing that Jayson and Perry will try to get back from the bridge. Lizzie reaches the car and calls for backup, but the moment she steps away, Jayson and Perry’s car comes around, hitting her so hard that she dies on the spot. Both Aleah and Grasso see it happen in front of their eyes, and they are both left devastated.
The Task Force Processes the Aftermath of the Shooting
Tom’s effort to save Robbie goes in vain, as the man bleeds out in the car, with the faces of his children, Maeve, and Billy, floating before his eyes before he passes away. The team has some good news about Kathleen’s survival. She goes through surgery, and it seems that she will be alright. Tom informs Grasso and Aleah that Lizzie’s ex-husband has been notified, and he will be coming to collect her possessions. The team is joined by two agents from Internal Affairs, who reveal that with Samuel Nance found and Robbie dead, the case is officially closed. The team is dissolved, though none of them can go back to active duty just yet. First, they have to go through briefings, which, when Aleah questions them, are called normal after a gunfight like the one they were in happens.
They are also told to give up their weapons, and Aleah is not happy about it at all, mainly because she knows that something else is going on. Tom goes home and talks to his daughters about the events of the previous day. He laments the death of young Lizzie, and Sarah hopes that he will return to mundane desk duty after this, though he doesn’t say anything to confirm that. She tells him that she is separated from her husband, which surprises him. Meanwhile, Aleah arrives at the safe house to discover that it is swarmed by FBI agents who are taking away all their stuff. She is allowed to leave with her personal belongings, where she finds a memento left behind by Lizzie. She asks an officer about what’s really going on, wondering if the task members are being looked into, but she doesn’t get an answer.
At his house, Grasso gets drunk, bearing the guilt and grief of Lizzie’s death. His boss comes around to tell him that the FBI interviewed him. He tells Grasso to keep himself together, if he wants the storm to pass, just like it did the last time. Grasso, however, cannot seem to let go of the fact that Jayson and Perry killed Lizzie so easily. Meanwhile, Tom visits Maeve and tells her about Robbie’s death. She is devastated, but perhaps not surprised. He mentions their meeting before, and asks her why she didn’t surrender Sam back then. She says she worried that she would be arrested, and then Robbie’s kids would have no one left. When Tom asks her about Cliff, she says that the last time she saw him and Robbie, they said they were going to Wissahickon Park, which is weird because Tom and his team had called him to Bailey Park.
Tom Makes a Shocking Discovery
Maeve’s revelation confirms the presence of a mole in their midst. Before Tom leaves, he tells the prosecutor to drop the case against Maeve because she had nothing to do with all that happened. Fortunately for Maeve, the prosecutor heeds Tom’s advice, and she is set free and reunited with her cousins. Tom’s next visit is to Sam, who is now living in a facility that feels nothing less than a prison. The FBI agent tries to talk to the boy, who has been through quite a lot in the past few days, and the sight of Sam melts his heart. At the house, Emily finds Leo, and their short conversation ends with him asking her to come to his magic show, and she promptly agrees. Meanwhile, Sarah bids farewell to her son and is comforted by Emily.
That evening, the sisters watch Bear Grylls eat something weird on his TV show when Tom comes home with Sam. Emily and Sarah are surprised, and Sarah asks him why he thought it would be okay to bring the boy home when they are already dealing with a lot of stuff. He says that he thought that’s what Susan would have done. Since he is still registered as a foster parent, he thought he could help Sam and get him out of that wretched place, at least for the time being. It becomes clear to the girls that there is no point discussing things any further with their father, which marks the end of that conversation. Later, Tom tucks Sam into Ethan’s bed and stays with him until the boy falls asleep.
The next day, Tom visits Kathleen, who reveals that the shooting has fast-tracked her retirement. He asks her why Internal Affairs is looking into his team, and she reveals that it’s because of Grasso. When Tom came to her about the leak, she decided to do her due diligence and discovered that some time ago, a complaint was filed against Grasso by his then partner, when he was a part of another task force. That officer accused Grasso of feeding information to the gang they were investigating, and unsurprisingly, that gang was Dark Hearts. Tom wonders why this didn’t come out the first time around, and she says that it was because the complaint was dismissed due to lack of proof. This does nothing to dampen Tom’s anger.
Robbie’s True Plan Comes to Light
Now fugitives of the law, Jayson and Perry hide out in the woods. While Perry fishes, Jayson makes a call at home. He is informed that the bar was raided and the Feds were all over the place. The gang members don’t know what to do next, but Jayson has no orders for them. When he inquires about Eryn, he is told that his wife seems to have disappeared off the face of the earth. This makes Jayson worried because he knows that while Eryn wanted to leave him, she would have never left the kids. He shares this concern with Perry, but the latter has nothing to say.
Later that evening, Tom visits Grasso, who has been drinking heavily. Tom sees the guilt he holds over Lizzie’s death, so he starts there. First, he tells Grasso that her death wasn’t his fault, and then he mentions that Lizzie shouldn’t have been there in the first place. When Grasso wonders why, Tom tells about Cliff being sent to the wrong park, which is when Grasso realizes what Tom is trying to do. The duo has a chat about guilt and responsibility, and at one point, Tom confesses that he is guilty of not seeing his son for the eighteen months he’s been in prison. He also tells Grasso that confession is for humans, for them to relieve themselves of the weight of their guilt, rather than about being forgiven by God.
The conversation ends with Tom telling Grasso he is coming for him, and Grasso retorting, “So, come.” When Tom reaches home, he finds Aleah outside his house. She is in no mood to hear any excuses and wants to know what’s going on, so Tom brings her in the loop. Meanwhile, Perry and Jayson go back to the river to look for the bag that Robbie had thrown into the water. They find it, but there are no drugs in it. It has old magazines, which makes Jayson wonder what happened to the drugs. It turns out that Robbie accepted Shelley’s offer after all. She put him in touch with Ray’s contact. They got the money, some of which was given to Shelley, while Robbie’s share was left in her care. He told her to give the money to Maeve in case something happened to him, and now that he is dead, Shelley shows up at Maeve’s door and hands her a bag full of money.
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