[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for Task Season 1 Episode 4, “All Roads.”]
Task‘s latest episode raised the stakes after a sting operation went wrong and heightened the curiosity of task force leader Tom Brandis (Mark Ruffalo). But while the criminal plot thickened, task force members Lizzie Stover (Alison Oliver) and Anthony Grasso (Fabien Frankel) got a lot closer, as they mostly gave into their apparent romantic lust for one another.
Fans were teased with the possibility of Lizzie and Grasso in a previous episode when the duo got a drink together after work, and they did the same in this latest installment, “All Roads.” The drinks led to some dancing along to Gwen Stefani‘s “The Sweet Escape,” which sent them stumbling and kissing through the doors of Lizzie’s home.
But what appeared to be a casual hookup was immediately stopped in its tracks when Grasso had a hard time following through as he realized they were in the same bed Lizzie shared with her ex-husband. “Is this the marriage bed?” Grasso questioned, and Lizzie didn’t understand his hang-up over the matter when she called her broken marriage “the worst decision” she’d ever made.
Peter Kramer / HBO
Still, it was a threshold Grasso wasn’t OK crossing, and Lizzie accepted that. But could there have been another reason Grasso was holding back? “I don’t want to say,” Frankel teases to TV Insider. “Whether it’s to do with his actual relationship to religion or not… I think that’s part of the ambiguity of him.”
As viewers will recall, Grasso told Lizzie about how he used to DJ at Catholic school dances, and he was rather connected to his religion. Still, that didn’t stop him from asking Tom about his former life as a priest prior to joining the FBI. But it’s clear from Grasso and Lizzie’s connection that there’s a lot to build off.
When viewers met Lizzie, she was rather abrasive and lacked a sense of confidence that she seemingly found in this episode, particularly with Grasso. “[I think she’s] just someone who’s clearly not in the right job or in the right headspace,” Oliver says of her character, “and so all of that stuff was really important to color in because I think underneath all that chaos and defensiveness… is just a lack of self-confidence and also a lack of sense of self.” She adds, “When someone is sort of in the wrong place, everything else becomes a mess, too.”
As for what Grasso sees in Lizzie, Frankel shares, “I think there’s something innately enchanting about Lizzie as a character. Grasso is very confident in his skin, and there’s something quite pure about Lizzie. I think he feels protective [over her]. You could see them being childhood friends… like when she walked into the room, I think he immediately was like, ‘I know exactly who you are.’”
Where will their case with the task team lead them next? Tune in as the series continues to unfold, and let us know what you thought of this latest development in the Lizzie-Grasso relationship status.
Task, Sundays, 9/8c, HBO and HBO Max