[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for Task, Season 1 Episode 1, “Crossings.”]
Brad Ingelsby (Mare of Easttown) is back with a new edge-of-your-seat drama as Task kicks off on HBO, and the premiere episode sets up a twist ending that tees up the weeks to come.
As revealed in the premiere episode, Robbie Prendergast (Tom Pelphrey) is a sanitation worker who is searching for a way to improve the lives of his kids, and others around him, including grown niece Maeve (Emilia Jones) and pals Cliff (Raul Castillo) and Peaches (Owen Teague). He determines his best course of action is to rob trap houses he knows have been selling drugs, based on their garbage output.
The catch? His choice of targets is stirring up trouble with a local gang known as the Dark Hearts, which forces out-of-action FBI agent Tom Brandis (Mark Ruffalo) to return to work and head up a task force to uncover who is responsible. Tom’s boss Kathleen (Martha Plimpton) puts him in charge of three young up-and-coming law enforcers, Lizzie (Alison Oliver), Aleah (Thuso Mbedu), and Anthony (Fabien Frankel).
Peter Kramer / HBO
While Robbie hits up houses with Cliff and Peaches for a time, things go awry in their final job when the targets claim to recognize one of their voices and Peaches briefly loses his mask and gun, sparking confusion and tension. The trio of robbers soon realizes the money they came for isn’t present, and that’s when a Dark Hearts member arrives toting a bag presumably filled with money.
With the homeowners tied up in a bathroom upstairs, the man goes to investigate and runs into Peaches on the stairs, killing the young man and leaving Cliff and Robbie to scramble. In the end, the Dark Hearts member is dead, the homeowners are killed, and Robbie and Cliff are forced to make a swift exit.
The catch? The homeowners have a little boy who has wandered up to the main floor of the house from the basement after hearing “fireworks,” running into a maskless Robbie and Cliff. Left with only a few options, considering this boy has seen their faces and remains unaware of the dead bodies upstairs, the episode’s final moments reveal that Robbie and Cliff took the boy with them back to Robbie’s home with his niece, Maeve.
Peter Kramer / HBO
“If he didn’t do what he did, the story is over before it starts,” Pelphrey tells TV Insider about Robbie’s decision-making process. “And that’s what Brad [Ingelsby] does so well, is that he provides us with, right at the end of the first episode, a truly impossible situation.” As viewers quickly learn, killing the boy isn’t an option for the caring father in Robbie. “That goes against everything that Robbie is. So we take that off the table. Who knows what Cliff would do if Cliff were by himself? Robbie’s not gonna do that…”
The risk of getting caught is raised if they leave the boy behind, though, as he could send authorities in their direction, so, as Pelphrey puts it, “Kind of leaves you one option, which is you gotta take the kid.”
“I think that’s what’s so compelling about this show that Brad does time and time again, is he’s like, ‘I’m going to set things up in such a way that there’s no good decision, and then the audience gets to look at it and see that and feel it in such a way where they go. Yeah, what else is he gonna do?”
As for pushing his limits when it comes to the robberies, Pelphrey adds, “It’s about the money. He’s raising his two children now by himself, his wife left, and Maeve’s got her job, but that’s not bringing in a ton of money, and so you got this house you gotta pay for and you got these two kids you gotta raise, and his salary ain’t ain’t cutting it.”
And that’s the same case for Peaches, according to Teague, who points out that Peaches has “Got a wedding coming up, and he needs money to pay for that.” Ultimately, he puts his trust in Robbie and Cliff. “These guys are like his older brothers, they’re the closest thing that he’s got to like a real family, so if they say we’re going to do this, he’s not gonna ask questions about it.”
As for filming the robbery scene gone wrong, Teague acknowledges, “It was intense. It was a fairly controlled environment, and we had a great stunt team, but a lot of the stuff, between me and the couple that we were hitting… it had to be me, cause you gotta see my face. It’s funny, I remember, we were tearing apart the room looking for something, and they were like, ‘OK, and action!’ And I’m like, blood lust and throwing stuff everywhere, and we cut, and I realized that it was only a rehearsal. Tom Pelphrey goes, ‘It’s a rehearsal, buddy.’”
“I felt so bad,” Teague recalls. “The prop team had to reset it all.”
While Peaches may have fallen, Robbie’s kidnapping scheme is sure to raise the stakes of his drama. Don’t miss what comes next as Task continues on HBO, and let us know what you hope to see as the season unfolds in the comments section below.
Task, Sundays, 9/8c, HBO and HBO Max