‘Task’ episode 4 recap: the moles are revealed

After Perry leaves his one-night stand with D, another senior, burlier member of the Dark Hearts pulls up and gives him a dressing down. They know from Tom’s tip-off that the gun used at the Zephyr shooting was one of theirs, so narrowing down the suspects includes thinking about who has personal beef with the Dark Hearts. Anyway, the burly man can’t figure out why Perry’s so fixated on keeping Jayson in power; the Mother Club wants him out.

Later, Perry meets with a member of Jayson’s posse, who’s been itching to unburden himself with the fact that Jayson killed Billy not because he was siphoning money, but because Billy was running around town with his girl, Eryn. (Remember, Billy and Eryn’s daughter is Maeve. More about that soon.) Jayson bashed him “so hard, and for so long,” the posse member says. The cover-up has been eating away at him for years. Heading to the gang’s bar, Perry swings a chain around his fist and gives Jayson a gentle beating – yet the old man will still help him out, it seems.

And it was all a dream

As Robbie is making moves to leave, visiting his Bartosz to organise a truck out of town, he’s wondering how he’ll bring it up to his kids – the most vulnerable scene in extraordinary circumstances. When we meet him and the kids at their watering hole, we’re introduced to an unnamed man who we quickly gather is Billy (played by Jack Kesy). This flashback must’ve taken place a year ago, as they talk about how Robbie is feeling insecure about his wife leaving him. Maybe she’ll find someone who’s more handsome, a better dancer, and well-endowed, his brother jokes. Robbie wakes up on the hood of his car, the trees in his reality looking dull, the water quieter.

Emily and Ethan’s “war zone”

Taking a quick break from the rest of Task, Emily has another session with her therapist, this time about her relationship with her older sister, Sara. Sounds like Tom and Susan’s biological daughter has a lot of resentment towards her adopted siblings. Two years before Susan’s death, Sara gave her parents an ultimatum that if they didn’t leave “Ethan’s war zone”, she would cut ties with them – she didn’t want to be a part of it. Emily concludes that Sara wanted to go back to “life before us”; Sara was at most in her early teens when Ethan and Emily came along. And here’s the revelation that I’m sat for: is Emily only allowed to feel gratitude towards Sara and Tom?

Later on, Emily’s co-workers at her part-time job corralled her to come drinking. She arrives home that night piss drunk, unleashing what she heard the other night between Tom and Sara, and how he doesn’t want anything to do with Ethan anymore.

Sammy’s ready to go home

Sammy is starting to miss home, leaving Robbie and Cliff scrambling for next steps. They’re thinking of either leaving him somewhere to be found or, stupidly, taking him along to Canada. After the lake, while Robbie visits Bartosz, Sammy slips out of the car to free the fish he caught. A man spots the kid through the bushes, asking where mum and dad are. Sammy has his home phone memorised by heart. Robbie tears him away, pretending to be Sammy’s father. The bystander manages to snap a picture of Robbie and Sammy before his bloody face meets the ground. As the verified tip shows later, Robbie’s hand is perfectly positioned to block his face. Aha!

As for his real kids, Robbie breaks down the escape plan to Maeve, who dubs it “Gilligan’s Island in Timbuktu”. It takes the cake of all his stupid ideas, she says. Robbie is looking to reaffirm his competence as a father, so he suits up for father-daughter dance practice with Harper. Though she reveals she never paid for her admission, thinking he wouldn’t want to go. She put the money back in his wallet.

Perry visits Eryn

The leaks on either side are being snuffed out rather quickly, no? Perry pays a visit to Jayson’s house, where the kids greet him warmly as “Uncle Perry”. After finding out about Eryn’s dalliance with Billy, she confronts her about having an agenda against Jayson. Why would I? She plays off. For he is my husband. As to why Maeve has excommunicated her mother so as not to be involved in the Dark Hearts world, don’t mother and daughter ever run into each other in this small town?

The park operation

Here’s where all the storylines converge. Kathleen had alerted Jayson that the FBI would be at the park waiting for Cliff and Robbie to show up. Eager, the team pounces on a white sedan who were looking for their lost dog. Meanwhile, Cliff is on the other side of town waiting for their fentanyl off-loader to show up on the side of a bushy road; Robbie is on standby in a car park to meet up after. A pair of headlights behind Cliff isn’t slowing down as it rear-ends him, then totals his car down the hill.

Perry, Jayson, and the Dark Hearts drag his body out of the car to interrogate him later. The poor guy’s face is utterly unrecognisable, with his cheeks swollen and stretched like Play-Doh. They want to know who is working with him, and, thankfully, Cliff doesn’t budge. Though he meets his fate with his head wrapped in industrial cling wrap. Robbie is now on his own.

It’s Perry versus Tom now

It’s dawning on me that Task is no cat-and-mouse between Tom and Robbie. With Tom going to Perry last episode offering to collaborate, it turns out the factions have the same goal. Now, it’s more about how they go about achieving it. By the end of the episode, Perry goes home to continue flicking through his photo album, while Tom is home flicking through Aleah, Grasso and Lizzie’s files. The two men are who we should be mirroring instead. Perry recognises the holster and gun strapped to Billy’s waist as the one he retrieved from the Zephyr shooting. With Maeve standing beside Billy in the photo, Perry has his eyes set on his next bait.

Meanwhile, Tom is still wondering who the task force leak is. Earlier that day, he asked Grasso if he and the others had gone through an initiation interview. Lizzie is the only one who didn’t, which, given her rough backstory, leads Tom to believe that she has ties to the Dark Hearts.

On a happier note, our girl Lizzie is doing just fine as she and Grasso head back to the bar for a post-op drink, mulling over what went wrong with the mission. They dance to her song, ‘The Sweet Escape’ by Gwen Stefani, before they head back to hers. Though Grasso, our good Catholic boy, can’t sleep with Lizzie, especially not in her marriage bed.