TASK on HBO, Max, whatever - Ruffalo, Pelfrey and wooder ice

We’re 6 episodes in and 1 episode to go - a second season is planned per showrunner Brad Ingelsby

This is my favorite show on tv.
On the one hand, a cat and mouse crime drama - while also being a surprising spiritual meditation on the complexities of faith, forgiveness, death, and love. Every character is shaded with beautiful grey areas; and whenever I think I know, trope-wise, what’s coming the show does these lovely little unexpected zags with character or dialogue that constantly surprises me.

Do you love it too? And it’s ok if you’re mid on it or don’t like it - i’d love to hear those thoughts also!

I'm enjoying it a lot but I'm not sure I need or want a second season. Unless the first episode is Tom (Mark Ruffalo) saying to a new team, "OK, yes, one of my last task force got murdered and another one was betraying us to the people we were chasing, but don't worry, it'll all work out fine this time, I'm sure of it!"

I was thankful for last week's episode because it was getting a little hard to believe that the bikers and the FBI hadn't figured shit out yet.

too much misery upon misery but I guess I'm still enjoying it.

the park thing was dumb... surely that was guaranteed to get found out?

edit: i guess Inglesby hasnt confirmed s2 but has said he’s interested - scuttlebut is its RUMORED to have a s2 but nothing officially announced

anyway

i heard an interview w Inglesby today on Ringer’s Prestige TV podcast where he talked a lot about how much he loves writing character interactions & how much he doesnt like the procedural details so much

i think that explains this show a lot, maybe even perfectly

mr veg isnt a fan, he gets annoyed by all the stupid decisions & mistakes of the characters — but according to inglesby, that’s where he finds the most inspiration, is Tom & Robbie & everyone else not being good at what they do, and how those mistakes and bad choices then affect the plot

i am really into it myself

and while it is a heavy show i do find there’s so much lightness between characters, and in the lush natural landscapes, that stops it from being SO crushingly sad? idk
but i do like sad stories in general lol

also: i learned this early on

apparently the title of the show isn’t just literal, but is also a reference to Richard Rohr’s book Falling Upward - a meditation on aging & spirituality

“The task of the first half of life is to create a proper container for one’s life and answer the first essential questions: "What makes me significant?" "How can I support myself?" and "Who will go with me?"

The task of the second half of life is, quite simply, to find the actual contents that this container was meant to hold and deliver. This is to find our true self – our soul. In other words, the container is not an end in itself, but exists for the sake of your deeper and fullest life, which you largely do not know about yourself.”

(paraphrased)

but WHOA at that subtext for the whole season … i thought that was really fascinating

mr veg isnt a fan, he gets annoyed by all the stupid decisions & mistakes of the characters — but according to inglesby, that’s where he finds the most inspiration, is Tom & Robbie & everyone else not being good at what they do, and how those mistakes and bad choices then affect the plot

That's the best stuff! I remember reading an interview with Elmore Leonard a million years ago where he talked about the key to most of his stories being that the criminals just weren't very smart people.

mr veg was like, “I guess I just dont care about these scuzzy deadbeats” lmao

I really love this show and appreciate the depth in the characters. Can't see this having multiple seasons unless it followed a True Detective/Fargo pattern with different characters and locations each season.

i want a Martha Plimpton spin-off show - McGinty

I think there’s enough depth to Ruffalo’s character to sustain another season w a few new taskforce members

also s2 - Tom acquires chickens for Sam to feed watermelon to

mr veg was like, “I guess I just dont care about these scuzzy deadbeats” lmao

That was my response to Sons of Anarchy but then I found myself totally obsessed with the spinoff show, Mayans MC...

I think the twist at the end gets back to the point that Robbie wasn't all that bad at what he did? The plot is yoked to the fact he's been doing this revenge/robbery thing, but it's secondary to the fact he's struggling with this newly mixed family with his kids and niece following his brother's death, and he's been working for the sanitation company. By the FBI's reckoning, he's been robbing them for a while and it's not until this series starts that one of the robberies goes terribly bad and everything spirals. Not exactly planning on building a criminal empire with the money.

i loved SOA but the end of the tail end of thd series cheesed out a bit too hard for me so i havent been able to bring myself to try Mayans. The thrill is gone, etc

xpost well yeah that’s true but Robbie’s bad enough at his side of things that his endgame was “idk go to Canada i guess?” with all thd careful planning of a 10 year old stealing candy from the supermarket

Tracy (? Stacy?) pulled off the money, I dont think that happens without her coming up with that. Robbie isnt masterminding that part

That's the best stuff! I remember reading an interview with Elmore Leonard a million years ago where he talked about the key to most of his stories being that the criminals just weren't very smart people.

i like this, i usually rankle at criminals being too smart in things….

here, i didnt love the biker gang dudes behaving what i found to be unrealistic by wildly shooting @ robbie to kick off the entire shootout etc in ep 6 but maybe that was that dudes stupidity shining thru

overall this show isnt that good imo, lower tier hbo prestige thing

ruffalo was a billion times better in i know this much is true, which most ppl didnt watch i think

i really love Ruffalo in this! quiet & professorial in a way but so shambolic and messy, like you don’t really know if he’s a leader at all, even when he’s leading

yes, i live rumpled, shrunken ruffalo.

“who wants a pb&j?!”

*love*

god that scene was so starkly funny (and a little grim) - the deadpan faces of his daughters, like DAD WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK

I'm caught up now, love this show, and love how they placed the inevitable shootout climax early in the penultimate episode, and then let things slow down again and play out in a different (or at least parallel) direction for the duration.

only this show could have this kind of a finale <3

how the fuck does a crime show also works as like, idk, chicken soup for the soul or something.

anyway i loved this

Absolutely loved every minute of this. Every single character was so complete, I want follow-ups on all of them. Although I did question the wisdom of having a close-up of Mark Ruffalo's fingers drumming nervously at one point. There's no way Tom gets regular manicures.

Loved this too, been avoiding the thread since we were a tad behind. Great performances all around, but tbh I'm still mad that they actually killed off Lizzie, I loved her character so much.

Also a fan of Lilli Kay showing up as Grasso's sister in the last episode, really enjoyed her in Stick.

I wasn't sure in the end how I felt about this show, I loved aspects of it, esp Alison Oliver, in one of those performances that is almost indescribably brilliant, & Martha Plimpton, her "hey! I'm an emotional eater!" line just about killed me, but overall I don't think it juggled all of its various storylines as well as "Mare of Easttown" which Ingelsby also did, sort of has a similar vibe (maybe slightly less grim overall) and I really loved.

Loved every minute of this show. I missed Tom Pelphrey's presence in the final episode but I get the when & why of it all.

What a miracle Inglesby pulled off here - making me care about the fate of literally every single character on the show. I can't think of another show in recent memory that managed that level of depth with every supporting player.

agreed, the characterization plus the performances really landed for me, really beautiful moments through out the show.

haven’t seen Pelphrey before but he was so good as Robbie

i’ve not watched Mare but will check it out next

Mare of Easttown was good but overpraised. I liked this show a lot; I really thought this episode was gonna be superfluous and stretch the story out longer than necessary but it was exactly the opposite, a very graceful landing.

yeah there’s so much in this finale that other shows would not have included but that shade these characters so well

like the idea that Frankel/Grasso was maybe playing that motivation w his sister the whole time. either way the scene added a layer I wasn’t expecting that i really liked

I liked that we got just enough between Grasso and his boss, to understand how he got mixed up with the Dark Hearts too.

We watched this right after watching Black Rabbit and I was struck by the similarity a la “geez these ppl keep making bad decisions”

I agree there are some similarities, but this show is miles better than Black Rabbit.

Love these shows for just having just like 6-8 episodes. Any longer than that and lack the necessary attention span.

I also watched a couple of.episodes of this straight after watching Black Rabbit and it was like chalk and cheese xps

Black Rabbit was hot garbage imho.

Loved this, especially for its wonky structure, how they essentially stuck the big dramatic finale in the middle, then eased into something else entirely for the final episodes, which also featured more than its share of new faces (and still managed several tense moments).

Once again recommending "At Close Range," for those that want a real SE PA downer.

just caught up.

actually thought last week was the last episode and thought that was a really weird and brave way to end the series!

enjoyed the actual finale except for a thing or two, one was the sudden appearance near the end of the season of grasso's boss and the bigger bike gang guy. Like suddenly they're these intense antagonists. Feel like it would've had more gravitas if we had more of a sense of them earlier?

And one thing I found really odd.. when grasso's boss was telling grasso about what was going down and the main biker dude came in, why did he shoot the boss first and not grasso?

I was a little unclear what happened, too, because it was so fast, but I just figured they were both being targeted as loose-end direct connections to the police. Or maybe someone missed or was surprised.

One thing I liked about the late antagonist arrivals (and others) is that it hints at the bigger world out there. Feels like a very Michael Mann thing to do, a la "The Insider." We've been focused very much on a particular core group of players, but there are others in their orbit we haven't been tracking and/or privy to.

yeah that biker guy had been telling Dorsey not to worry about finding the money but he kept on at it - I guess instruction from up high was to cut off this rotting branch and not start anything that could prolong the fuckup even more? also I thought he did shoot Grasso as well?
Anyway I enjoyed the last episode even though everything sort of played out exactly how I thought it would RIP Grasso :( but this did not detract from it being what I wanted to happen.

I didn't get the same sense that's how it ended for him.

I've seen a couple takes criticizing the ending for being too tidy, but I disagree. I think a lot of the characters are *set up* for happier endings, but it's still largely only hopeful. Do we need spoiler hiding on the thread about the show? Just in case. We want to believe Maeve has a happy ending - and the money - but we don't know if she's safe or in danger. We think Tom has found peace with his son, but we have no idea how that relationship will pan out. Grasso is set up for redemption, but we don't actually know his ultimate fate - dead, jail, witness protection, who knows? I appreciate this ambiguity, dangling threads of storylines we just sort of assume have been tied up. We have been conditioned to read endings as tidy or happy, but in reality things aren't always that neat, and in this particular show, almost everyone left alive at the end remains haunted by violence and/or the death of someone close to them. Which of course is what set the story in motion in the first place.

avclub recap is nice

https://www.avclub.com/task-season-1-finale-recap-a-still-small-voice

I thought this was pretty good, I think my one major issue with it is the actual "task" premise...is this something that they actually do? Pull people from other law enforcement agencies to work on some FBI case?

I didn't get the same sense that's how it ended for him.

avclub recap is nice

https://www.avclub.com/task-season-1-finale-recap-a-still-small-voice

Is this the second time a Task recap has called someone 'Tom' who isn't Tom and massively confused me?!
Oh right it's because the Robbie actor is called Tom irl.

def a typo there.

Mare of Easttown was very good but this was outstanding. Really felt like a novel in how well-drawn the characters were, even the minor ones. I didn't mind the plot problems and think they still did a good job there. I loved that the ending was hopeful and not necessarily tidy, as Josh said.

Any movies written by Brad Inglesby worth watching?