Task Recap: Suspicious Minds

I am beginning to have my doubts. There’s a lot of sparkling promise in this show, but it’s buried under a lot of red herrings, false starts, and broken promises. Great performances are shrouded by the sheer number of characters vying for our attention. There’s no way not to compare this show to Mare of Easttown, so here goes: Mare had a clear theme and executed its vision with startling and brutal audacity; Task is muddled, pulling the viewer in a million different directions without enough time spent on any one character. This is often my problem with ensemble shows: I get bored. I’ll admit my first watch through Mare did not fully grab me until episode five, so I’ll hold out hope a little longer, but I feel confident in saying this is not the Zeitgeisty show that Brad Ingelsby’s previous juggernaut was. It’s a delicate character balancing act that isn’t always paying off. Luckily, it’s not all bad. It’s a nice entry into the fall weather, replete with the typical high amount of empty prop coffee cups appearing at stakeouts, study sessions, and police debriefings.

The episode begins with Tom haunted by voice-overs, warnings from the previous episode: “Suspect everyone.” It’s a bit corny, but sure, we get the vibe. This is a show heavily interested in the way paranoia turns us all into weapons of mass destruction in our communities, especially when everyone’s looking to escape the ennui of their small-town blues. Everyone’s trying to figure out who their actual enemy is. The Dark Hearts are trying to discover who would hate them so much, Robbie and Cliff are trying to figure out how to get to Canada with their family intact, and the police just want to know who took Sam. They’ve already pointed the finger at Cliff, but as we’ll see, that doesn’t end up helping them too much in the end.

The Dark Hearts’ man behind the curtain, Perry, is hell-bent on discovering what’s going on inside his gang. The men want Jayson out, and he needs to know why. Apparently, the whole reason Jayson killed Robbie’s brother, Billy, was because he discovered that Billy was sleeping with his wife, Eryn. So Jayson killed Billy, beating him to a pulp. “It’s been following us around like a curse ever since,” one gang member says. The Dark Hearts, for whatever reason, weren’t a fan of this vigilante justice. Now, all of a sudden, Perry has a new suspect to pounce on with a possible mole leaking information about the Dark Hearts. He’s right, of course, even if he doesn’t know it yet, and Eryn won’t squeal. It’s another ticking time bomb. Perry ends up punishing Jayson for lying about why he killed Billy by whipping him with a chain.

Tom, however, is no closer to discovering who the mole in the FBI is, though the show heavily hints it’s his boss (Martha Plimpton). In fact, their attempt to broker a drug deal with Cliff goes belly-up. He was nowhere near the park where they arranged for a meeting. They do, however, manage to discover that Sam is still alive and even get a partial photo of Robbie, though they still have no idea who he is.

While the FBI doesn’t intercept Cliff for a deal, the Dark Hearts do. As Robbie waits nearby with the full fentanyl load, the gang charges Cliff’s car and topples him over the side of the road, capturing him only to realize he isn’t working alone. Jayson brutally tortures him, but he won’t reveal who his partner is, instead spitting blood before they Saran Wrap his face and suffocate him. It’s perhaps the most violent scene the show’s produced yet. Even though Jayson doesn’t get the name of Cliff’s partner, he does retrieve a gun that Perry is able to trace back to Billy using an old photo of the deceased troublemaker standing alongside his daughter, Maeve. Little do they know, Maeve has given Robbie until the morning to turn Sam in. She’s tired of his harebrained schemes and knows they’ll never really make it in Canada.

Once again, Lizzie and Grasso end up at a bar, and this time things turn hot and steamy as they dance to Gwen Stefani’s “The Sweet Escape.” It doesn’t take long for them to start making out and end up back at Lizzie’s place. The problem is that he doesn’t want to have sex in her “marriage bed,” so they put things on pause for the moment. The romantic drama serves as a welcome distraction from the uneven pacing of the rest of the episode.

Emily’s subplot may be the best through-line present in this episode. During therapy, she breaks down over her anger at her adopted family, expressing that she didn’t ask to be adopted by Tom. “I’m so grateful … but sometimes I feel like I’m never allowed to feel. God forbid I ever get annoyed … I don’t feel lucky,” she says, finally snapping after hearing Tom say he can’t ever forgive her brother for killing Tom’s wife and her adopted mother. She ends up going to a party to blow off steam with co-workers, only to come home drunk, throwing up cherry water ice and vodka. She finally breaks, yelling at Tom about their mounting tension. “I’m really sorry that you adopted me and I ruined your perfect fucking lives.” It’s a vicious, almost victorious moment, Emily finally being able to let out the simmering feelings she’s been holding back. Everyone’s at a crossroads, standing over a geyser just about to explode. Who’s going to survive after the smoke clears?

• Apparently, we are four days into the timeline of this show. Perhaps they are doing a 24-hours-per-episode thing, but it’s a bit unclear. It’s hardly the tense clock that counts down The Pitt.

• The show really wants us to care about Robbie and Harper’s upcoming father-daughter dance, but it’s spent hardly any time turning Harper into an actual character.

• It is wild to see Isaach de Bankolé in this show and then go and see Claire Denis’s The Fence at the New York Film Festival this week. He’s severely underused in both as a prop for Black spirituality. Nothing like his earlier roles in Chocolat, No Fear, No Die, or even his other network TV guest roles.

• Line reading: Emily’s friend: “It’s cherry water ice with a teeny-tiny, fuck-ton of vodka.” Lizzie: “It’s not about the lyrics, Grasso, it’s about the feeling!”

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