‘Task’ Is Barreling Toward the End

0:00Andy Greenwald:I need supports to have to clear the room. Stand up and walk now. Hello and welcome to The Watch. My name is Chris Ryan. I am an editor at TheRinger.com and joining me in the studio, my vagrant bird has come home. It's Andy Greenwald. That's right. Hold on. I'm just rubbing a little. A little just so your heart doesn't explode. Just a little cold water. I don't know if that works. You know me. I'm pretty emo. I cannot wait to get to the bottom with Brad Inglesby at some point about whether that trick works. Well, the thing is... Heart exploding? Is that like a loose term for it? Here's why it's a winning strategy.

0:39Andy Greenwald:If it ever didn't work... We wouldn't know. We wouldn't know. We don't have that testimony. Yeah, that's true. It has 100 % success rate. It's on the other side, that information. Greenwald, great to see you. It's Monday. We're here to talk about Task, Episode 5. To be fair, it's not Monday. We are recording this in advance. Just a little bit in advance. We've got some personal travel coming up. But we wanted to make sure that we had our recap episode all locked down. Fast talk. And boy, oh boy. This is an interesting one. Broadly speaking. Okay. First of all, let me just say I love this episode.

1:12Okay, thank God. Yeah.

1:13Andy Greenwald:I was worried you were about to zag on me. I was just going to say that broadly speaking, if someone perhaps wearing a hockey mask and a recreational bulletproof vest were to come up to me, one of my hitters, and they were like, hey, man, I thought there was going to be some more gun talk in this episode. I thought it was going to culminate. Did you? Well, I think we're... Did you? I think that the way that they did it is essentially like cutting... They cut it, and they'd have a cliffhanger at the most amazing moment at the end of this episode, which is called Vagrants. Yeah. And which finds Robbie and Tom finally meeting the Ruffalo Pelfrey conversation that we've been waiting all season for.

1:58Andy Greenwald:Just a week ago, Mark Ruffalo told us the characters never cross paths. But this is basically what I think Inglesby does very well and what this show is on a mission to do, which is to put on equal footing and equal standing the human element of the show. Yep. what is this character's arc and journey? What are they getting out of this experience? What are you getting out of this experience watching them? As well as what if we put heat in Delco? I am interested that you found this episode to be more bark than bite, even a little bit. No, no, no. In terms of expectations. I said people might think that.

2:35Andy Greenwald:Oh, this is how you stay. This is Vice President Ryan. Yeah. People have been telling you. I just said if a guy came up to me and was just like, damn, dude, I thought they were going to get after it. I mean, like, they're on the way to the thing. Tears in his eyes. Sir, sir, I thought they were going to get after it. In Chris Ryan's America, people don't get after it anymore. No. Because everyone's fine. I had that feeling more about the previous week because it was all tying, it was all heading towards the park, and I thought the park was going to be some big event. I was thrilled with this episode, mainly because the only fireworks I was hyper-invested in was Robbie.

3:18Andy Greenwald:Did it happen right here? My heart was exploding. Yeah. Was Tom and Robbie crossing paths. Yeah. When we spoke to a bunch of the creatives last week at Vidiot's, and Brad said that he took that very seriously. You made the joke. I was right behind you with a follow-up joke, if necessary, that was he going to do it in a diner. I think that was your joke that I stole. We were reading from each other's play sheets. Oh, that's true. I thought that was pretty good. That was kind of like the best case scenario of Liam Cohen and Robert Sala. You know what I mean? It's all within the rules. We're all sniffing out each other's scheme.

3:52I'm glad that we're the place to come for for eight-day-old coordinator beef. Can I tell you something? For teams that we do not cheer for. Can I tell you something?

3:59Andy Greenwald:You've known me for a long time. Yeah. And during the majority of our time knowing each other, you know that I am an absolute heart exploding sicko for our local teams, but generally don't care about sports. This is the year something switched where I have now developed like I think you've had this for a while. I now have kind of a cranial itch where I'm like, is there a game on right now? I can tell. If only I could have a game on. I can tell. Just any kind of game, I would watch it. I have become the target audience for ESPN the Ocho in my Quarenta Ocho year. I know. Because you're just like Blake Snell's arm slot analyst.

4:35It's crazy. That dude really strikes a lot of people out.

4:39Andy Greenwald:I turned that game on. I don't want to get too distracted, but your relationship to other teams is so pure. It's like a childlike kind of like, damn, he threw that ball far and he got it. Show it, show it, hit it out of the stadium. I turned on game one of Dodgers Reds like when it was already 6-0. Yeah. And I was like, this is for the real like seam heads. Yes. You know what I mean? You and Greg Dooley. Just focus. Anyway, anyway, anyway. We were talking about fireworks. We were talking about heart exploding. Let me say - The Tom Robbie meeting. Here's the thing that I admired most about this episode before we get into the specifics.

5:15I think that it's something that real long-distance runners develop.

5:22Andy Greenwald:I say real because I run all the time and I don't think I have this, which is a kind of innate sixth sense of the distance left to run. And you're aware of what's in your tank. You're aware of when you can push it. You're aware of when you might need to refuel. And you carry that rhythm with you from the starter's gun all the way through the finish line. And watching the way this seven-episode season has been constructed, to me, is a masterclass in the writing version of that sixth sense. I feel like Brad is pushing all the right buttons at all the right times. And bringing those characters together in an unexpected way early, even though it is kind of late in the scheme of the show, felt both surprising and natural.

6:06Andy Greenwald:that we are midway through the fifth episode and all the cards are on the table now. Like everybody knows who was doing the robbery. Everybody's in search of the people. Everybody's also aware of who's been selling them out. Well, not everybody. We are aware. The audience is now aware of it. And it feels so refreshing to be in the hands of a storyteller who knows when to hold them, knows when to fold them, and knows when to show the cards to advance the story that he wants to tell. And there are countless examples of shows that I feel like at this moment are either too precious with secrets or telegraphing too early that it's going to be something bigger, be a cliffhanger, blow into something else entirely.

6:45Andy Greenwald:This feels expert to me. And so much so that I had that secondary level of engagement with a show where if Robbie had killed Tom in that moment when he's walking him out of the car, if Tom had taken a shot at Robbie at the end of, at the, at the, at Water's Edge, I would have said, holy shit. But I also would have leaned in and been interested. Like there was a version in my brain of a show where one of these two leads exited the show because there's so much still there. That is such a sweet spot for the audience to be in. And it's very, very hard to shout out Liam Cohen scheme that up from your desk two or three years before you even shoot the thing.

7:22Well, here's the thing too. It's like, um, maybe if this show was set in, um, Cincinnati and had different actors,

7:30Andy Greenwald:Greg Dooley would still like it. I'd be like, yo, like, okay, let's go let's let's let's like get to the let's get to what we're getting to but because it's Pelfrey and because of the way that he performs especially for the last two episodes but very specifically this episode and two scenes one the scene with Aaron where he finds out that Cliff's been killed which you have seen in countless crime shows and crime movies is the main character finds out that the walls are closing in, that the only partner he had is gone, that he's out of options. And the way that Pelfrey acts that moment, that revelation, because it's not just my friend died, it's the surrogate brother that was standing in for the brother that these guys also killed is now gone.

8:21In the same way. Yes. And I think that, you know, there's this moment where Perry refers to Robbie as Crazy Robbie. We've never heard that before. And that's really all you need to know about the character. You know, I was thinking about like, we don't know, does this guy like hockey? Does he like to go to the movies? Like, I don't really give a shit.

8:42Andy Greenwald:Yeah. It's like just having a motorcycle gang president think that he's Crazy Robbie. Incredible. Is like, yeah, this guy's got, maybe he's a little like, maybe he's the kind of guy who thinks you can just run away to Canada with a million dollars in fentanyl money and a family that's not really yours. And it's such a smart, that's such a smart observation because we meet characters cold and we believe what we are shown. Or we imprint on them because you and I are both like enough from the area of where he's from. They were like, oh, I wonder if he did this and I wonder if he does that. We kind of know this guy.

9:17Yeah, right.

9:18Andy Greenwald:What we don't know and what that one throwaway line from Perry suggests is that maybe Robbie and his brother were balanced each other out. Yeah. Maybe Billy was the together one. Maybe he was the planning one who in some ways anchored Robbie to a reality. And once he was taken off the board, that Robbie spun out. We don't know any of that. What was the, I have another moment of Pelfrey excellence that I feel is related. I know it's the same one that you were thinking of. I think that the scene in the car with Tom and Robbie can go wrong or can become cliche so easily. like you you strive to have a moment where the cop and the robber are confront one another and you know you have these examples of things like heat where you're just like well how does it get better than that and i'm not saying that this was as good as the diner scene in heat it doesn't really matter but what they talked about was true to the kind of people that i think that those characters are yeah and and in you know again there's the efficiency of some of the more ambitious writing is really shocking and really impressive, that they connected on a level of humanity.

10:26Andy Greenwald:They recognize some innate good in the other, which then will be reflected in everything else that happens. I want to go back to, oh, just the other Pelfrey scene I was thinking of similarly was when he meets with Ray's wife, who this episode I realized was played by the great Mickey Sumner, daughter of Sting and star of Frances Ha. She's in Frances Ha, yeah. Yeah, one of those co-stars. That was, oh, she's great in this, especially like just such a remarkable memorable face. When he says, no, no, no, that's not true. Ray texted Cliff last night and you see Robbie thinking in real time. Tell an actor, think on camera.

11:03Andy Greenwald:That's really hard. I believe that that's what he's thinking. I love that scene. Another like, kind of like, so Shelly is going to get him to the Dominican drug gang kind of thing. It is the saddest Bruce Springsteen song I've ever seen on screen where it's just like, these two people are just fucking out of options and they are going to do something so stupid and desperate because they just, they do not see another way out. Shelly would probably rather die getting involved in a major fentanyl deal than stay with Ray. Or live another day with those goonish sons playing Xbox. Robbie is out of time living with Sam eating crispy pancakes and Maeve taking care of all his kids.

11:42Andy Greenwald:Do you know what's so, one of the more heartbreaking moments is a small one when he walks in to Freddy's dining room after Freddy has already been like, here's how we're going to play this. He walks in, those sad eyes are, they're just puppy dog eyes at that point. Yeah, he sells himself out. He just walks in with a face that says, will you adopt me? Like, will you please take me in? The thing you said about how we would feel about the show if it was in a different place, I think is an important one to address because we are obviously the mark for this show. And we love all of the references. There was a crazy one today.

12:15Andy Greenwald:Oh, some character was taken to Lankanell Hospital. that's a that's right that's a that's what they stitched up my broken wrist real good there yeah um and so we we do love that extra layer of familiarity with the show and it vibrates on our soul's frequencies but i think i would love it as much if it was set in cincinnati made by a creator from cincinnati because there's a and shot in cincinnati because they're in addition to the yeah in addition to the beautiful production and the acting and everything and and the writing it has the two things that matter most to me. It has just diamond sharp specificity, the names of the hospitals, the order at the diner, whatever it may be.

12:55Andy Greenwald:But it also has this generosity of spirit that gives humanity to every character. Every character. And whether it's Shelley in that brief moment. I think so. Similarly, like the moment, it's the kind of scene that maybe, like if it was a more traditional writer's room, might get kind of steamrolled. There might not be room for it. Someone might not fight for it. Or in the edit, a weaker showrunner might say, yeah, we don't have time for that. But the scene with Sarah, right, is Tom's daughter? Yes. The scene with Sarah. Emily. Oh, Sarah, the one. Sarah is smoking a cigarette, and she and Emily have this sort of little bit of a detente between themselves, a truce.

13:39Andy Greenwald:And Sarah's telling the story. Emily wasn't really starting anything. No, okay, so Sarah reveals something of herself, is vulnerable in a way. and it's just like it's like you know when you see when you go to a museum and it's an exhibit of an artist and there's like the big the beautiful canvas the big painting and sometimes if it's a retrospective there's the small sketch that they put in the room next to it or next or you know or near it so you can see how it started that little bit of Sarah's backstory felt like a pencil sketch but it hung in the same museum if that makes sense I found myself riveted by it I felt there was truth in it and it opened up my heart to a character that was not it doesn't enter the stage as someone you're particularly excited to see, frankly.

14:17I've continued to read the Richard Rohr book, Falling Upward. Seriously. Which is actually, I find to be, as a not particularly spiritual person, it's been somewhat interesting to read it in the aftermath of my mom's passing and everything. But there's a lot of stuff about storytelling in the book as well. And the usefulness of myth and the usefulness of storytelling to a society or to an individual. And I couldn't help but notice some of the very old, deeply underpinned storytelling mechanisms that Inglesby is engaging with. Robbie going back to a childhood home on the Lehigh River in the Poconos to have this final reckoning with his past, with his anger, with his soiled future now.

15:11and I think that that's my favorite shit is when you've got something that's like this story could only be told here and in this way but the story is the story we've been telling ourselves since the Odyssey is about a guy trying to get home you know and it's what makes Engels I think a really significant writer in television today is that he you know You could spot some loose ends here and there, but he's writing from a very deep place, I think, about a place that he knows very, very well.

15:49Andy Greenwald:You can be successful as a screenwriter if you are incredibly good at genre or structure or dialogue or form. And I think you can be successful maybe with a lower ceiling as a writer if you are able to passionately advocate for the things that interest you and that you believe in. the real masters of the forum I think are able to take that fountain of like true inspiration and then funnel it into a shape that is pleasing that is popular that is entertaining that's what that's what Mad Men was that's what Breaking Bad was and that's I'm not putting task on the level of that but in terms of the project and the way that Brad approaches the job I think that is what he is doing here.

16:33Andy Greenwald:I think that's what he is capable of. We were, this is not in any way intended as like a drive by or a stray, but it's an interesting contrast with the way we were discussing alien earth in that we could tell Noah Hawley's interests, his passions, what moved him in this story, which by the way, is a major thing to be able to do to communicate that. I think ultimately we were mid on the show because the vessel and the message were misaligned at times. This is a successful example of them being aligned and it's not easy to do. Yeah. Uh, let's talk about some of the more significant moments of the episode.

17:08I think you ever been to Bushkill falls. I can't say that I have, I was actually looking at a map. I didn't do into a lot of time. Well, I did Delaware river canoeing, but I've never, I don't really think I spent a lot of recreational time, honestly, in the Poconos to be completely candid with you.

17:27Andy Greenwald:Yeah. Um, so So that far up Route 100 is a little bit of a mystery to the kids. I'm a vet. I'm a vet up there. Okay, tell me about it. When I was a kid. Stroudsburg? And then you keep going north or what? Well, my grandparents were coming from Wilkes-Barre. And so there were a couple summers when I was a kid. The great steps out on Wilkes-Barre. Yeah, totally. The Serengeti of Pennsylvania. There were a couple, like one or two summers when I was really little, they rented a small house in the summer. I remember this classic only child shit. I remember being there with my parents and my grandparents and my aunt and uncle and like my grandparents, friends, Julian and Miriam.

18:08Andy Greenwald:It was not another kid in sight, not another kid within miles, within miles, which really explains a lot. What did you do? It's like poetry. I found some when I was home in Philadelphia recently, I found some photo albums of this time. And I'll say one thing. The adults seemed like they were having a hell of a good time. They like, my grandfather traveled with a wet bar. Yeah, right. Yes, it was like Bloody Mary time or whatever. And then like, I'm sort of off to the side with a transformer or a balloon. And like, that's my experience. I remember picking blackberries once. And then actually my other Bushkill Falls memory that I'll never forget is, I do remember my parents taking me to the falls.

18:46Andy Greenwald:It's beautiful. There's a few waterfalls up there. And there's like steps to climb, like not paved steps, but like wood framed cut out little like dirt path up to the waterfall. And my parents are not, which camera? This will not surprise anyone. Not really the outdoorsy type. Right. And I remember it was unique that we were doing this trip because I think the martinis were being served back at the rental. But I remember we walked up in such an odd way. And then after the waterfall, I said, why were we walking with me in the middle? And my mom was like, I told your father to do that because in case you fell forward or backwards, you wouldn't die.

19:25Andy Greenwald:Is that how steep it was? No. But my takeaway from that wasn't waterfalls are beautiful. It's that I'm one false step away from instant death. Let me get back to my balloon and my fucking Care Bear. I thought it was a transformer. Well, I'd both. Only child. I contain multitudes. Okay, so a couple of big moments from this episode. Ratso Grasso. We called it. And again, he withheld his sacred life force from Lizzie. That's a strange little joke. I know. But look, people out there, casuals, know your feelings about Lizzie. Yeah. That clip. I'm very, very happy about that. That clip of you taking a knee is at, last check, 2.6 million views.

20:16Andy Greenwald:Yes. So people know what you're about. I'm just saying. I was wondering what you thought of the scene between him and Jason in so much as what you think their dynamic was. I'm sure we'll get, we have two more episodes, so I'm sure we'll get the backstory on Grosso, why he's doing this. Are they childhood friends? Was he in the gang? Is his dad Perry? I don't know. But what did you think of their dynamic? because I thought Jason being like, just remember who the fuck you're talking to, obviously indicated that he felt like he had Grosso in kind of a headlock, but Grosso is also like, do what I'm telling you to do, you know?

20:59Andy Greenwald:Yes. His feeling, his behavior suggests that, you know, it's typical for a thriller. He's like, I'm in control of this actually. Yes. Which I thought was interesting. He's also, you know, this is not unexpected for the show, complicated enough that I think that his narrative of himself, that he's a good guy is plausible, right? That he's just trying to keep everybody's motors running. Yeah. Right? Like, keep everyone alive, keep the system in place. I don't think we're going to find out that he's a sociopath. No. I mean, perhaps. But I think it's going to be something more like either I grew up in this world or they had something on me.

21:37Andy Greenwald:I will say, of all of the many characters that we spend time with or get slight POV moments with, Jason, I think, is the least sketched out. I understand his motivations and his brute force, but in terms of... Even Perry has some moments of... Certainly not grace, but... Regret. Regret. Yeah. And you see the complicated emotions... Yeah, we'll get to Perry in a second. ...swirling inside of him. Jason, so far, is more of a blunt instrument, and that may change as things move forward. I guess the question remains... I mean, I guess that makes that moment of Grosso not sleeping with Lizzie, I guess, thoughtful.

22:21Or seen in a different light, because now you know that there's something about him, his interest in Tom's past and the priesthood. There's something about his kind of sweetness. It doesn't seem like an act. It seems like maybe that's the person he wants to be, and he knows he's not.