In Task episode 2, after bringing Sam home, Robbie lied to him about his connection with the kids’ parents and didn’t reveal the fact that they were both actually dead. When Maeve found out that Robbie had brought Sam home, which meant that she’d have to look after another kid in addition to Wyatt and Harper, she confronted her uncle about it. And Robbie lied to her as well about who Sam truly was. But after a brief conversation with Sam, where he revealed his parents’ names, and doing background search, Maeve came to the realization that there was a yellow notice out for Sam. Without giving it a second thought, Maeve proceeded to abandon Sam at the local marketplace, call 911, and let the authorities deal with him. That backfired, because instead of waiting for the police to come pick him up, Sam made his way back into Maeve’s car. So, Maeve had no option but to take him back home and reprimand Robbie for cursing them. That wasn’t the only problem that Robbie was staring at; the bag that he and Cliff had stolen from the drug house that Sam was in had, well, uncut fentanyl in it. So, they had to find a way to sell it without alerting Dark Hearts or the gang’s associate, Freddy. Meanwhile, Dark Hearts’ Jayson and Perry were on the lookout for the drugs, the one who had leaked the info that the payload was in Derek’s house, and Sam. And while the task force was on the lookout for Sam, its leader, Tom, had to deal with some personal issues pertaining to his son, Ethan, facing prison time, which led to a pretty heated (borderline racist) argument between his biological daughter, Sara, and his foster daughter, Emily. How were these plot threads explored in episode 3 of the show? Let’s find out.
Spoiler Alert
Eryn Is The Informant
Robbie and Maeve have an argument about the former’s mission to hurt Dark Hearts, where it’s finally revealed that Robbie’s brother and Maeve’s father, Billy, used to work in Jayson’s gang. And Jayson was the one who killed Billy and then showed up to his funeral to give Maeve a hug and shake hands with Robbie. Back then, Robbie was powerless to do anything about it, but in the present day, he has seemingly found the courage to attack Dark Hearts’ drug dens, burgle them for cash, and use it to pave a better future for him and his family. Maeve is of the opinion that Robbie’s crusade is going to backfire horribly, and it’s not only going to affect him, but also his entire family. It’s insinuated that it took the whole unit a lot of time to recuperate after Billy’s death, and Maeve, like a sane human being, wants to keep things peaceful and tolerable. However, Robbie has apparently been possessed by the ghost of a Viking or something, and he has taken a vow to destroy Dark Hearts or die trying. Sam, unaware of all this complex human drama, is busy playing with the chickens. Sam had raised a pretty important question in the previous episode that caught the attention of eagle-eyed viewers: do chickens dream? Well, as per an Australia-based animal welfare organization called World Animal Protection, yes, chickens do dream. Scientists have observed that chickens experience rapid-eye movement (REM) while sleeping, which means that they do dream. While we do know that androids dream of electric sheep, since chickens can’t speak, we don’t know what they dream about. If I have to guess, I think their thoughts oscillate between food and ridding the world of human beings.
Going to the less important aspects of the show, it’s finally revealed that the Dark Hearts insider who has been leaking information to Robbie and Cliff is none other than Jayson’s girlfriend, Eryn. Cliff goes ballistic on Eryn because her bad intel has led to the death of four people, they have drugs instead of cash, and they have a kid that both Dark Hearts and the FBI are looking for. Robbie tells Cliff to take a walk and puts forth the same point but a little more calmly. Since Eryn is the reason why Robbie and Cliff are in such a difficult position, Robbie wants her to find a way to help him move the drugs. Eryn asks Robbie to sit tight for a while, because Dark Hearts is probably planning to give Jayson the boot, which’ll make him vulnerable enough for Robbie to kill him and avenge Billy. Why does Eryn care about avenging Billy? Because Eryn was cheating on Jayson with Billy, and when Jayson found out about it, he killed Billy. However, for Robbie, fulfilling his revenge saga is as important as securing the money that’ll allow him to leave Pennsylvania for good with his family. And to make that happen, he is desperate to sell the drugs. Since Freddy is off the table, Robbie settles for a guy that Cliff knows: Ray.
Robbie and Cliff Meet Ray
We get a brief scene of Sam getting swimming lessons from Maeve before the focus of the episode shifts to Cliff and Robbie heading over to Ray and Shelley’s house to talk about how they can sell the aforementioned bag of drugs without popping up on Freddy or Dark Hearts’ radars. Ray offers 2 options: either they can cut the fentanyl themselves and sell it somewhere in Kensington, or involve Lee Whitehead, who can involve the Colombians and get the job done. Since the Colombians have been raring to enter the drug business in Pennsylvania, Robbie and Cliff agree to go for the second option, and Ray promises them that he’ll get in touch with them when Lee is ready to make a deal. Jayson and Perry meet up with Freddy to talk about the stolen drugs, but instead of starting with that topic, they begin fear-mongering. They remind Freddy that Dark Hearts control the pipeline (of drugs) while Freddy “owns the city.” But due to the raids by the Halloween crew (that’s what they are calling Robbie, Cliff, and the dearly departed Peaches), Dark Hearts’ distributors are not getting their product on time, or not getting their product at all. So, Jayson and Perry are afraid that these distributors will seek the help of the Ecuadorians or the Colombians to get their drugs and cut out both Dark Hearts and Freddy. Hence, as a sign of trust and mutual understanding that Freddy understands that he and Dark Hearts are in this war together against other communities making inroads into their business, Perry wants Freddy to alert him if somebody comes to Freddy to move 12 kgs of fentanyl. If he does so, as per Jayson, Freddy will get a 25 percent cut.
However, Freddy wants a 50 percent cut, and Jayson and Perry immediately say that they can’t pay such a high price for drugs that originally belong to Dark Hearts anyway. Jayson and Perry say that they are being generous by agreeing to give Freddy anything, which is when Freddy tells them that he is the one who is being generous for being in the same room with a biker gang despite being a victim of racial violence inflicted upon him by a biker gang. Also, that 50 percent counts as reparations for all the business that he has lost so far due to the racists that run the drug operations. Freddy points out that his product is much better than what Dark Hearts produces, but the distributors will still go to them because they hate anyone with a bit of melanin in their skin. Now, we don’t see Jayson and Perry agreeing with Freddy’s terms, which is why I have a feeling that, regardless of whether or not that stolen cache of drugs ends up in Freddy’s hands, Dark Hearts is going to kill Freddy and take over his business, just because he has disrespected Jayson and Perry so harshly. That’s for later, I suppose. Perry and Jayson head back to their headquarters, and Perry consults the owner of the bar, Dee, regarding weeding out the traitor that’s walking amongst them. Dee points in Shane’s direction, but we know that that’s just speculative, because the real traitor is Eryn. It’s possible that Shane is betraying Dark Hearts by working with someone else, but he isn’t involved with the Halloween crew. By the way, there’s a good chance that Dee does know about what Eryn is doing, and she is purposefully creating a misdirect to keep Eryn safe.
Ray and Shelley Are Arrested
Kath shows up at the task force’s headquarters to get an update on the investigation into the masked robbers as well as the missing kid, which is just an excuse for the writers to seamlessly recap the events of the previous 2 episodes. After that’s done, Tom and Anthony take off to look at some ballistics research based on the bullets that were found in the bodies of Joanne and Warren. As per the expert, Hank, those bullets match the ones that were found in the bodies of the victims of a shooting incident from 2017 in Reading, where members of Dark Hearts were attacked by another gang called The Vipers. That leads Tom and Anthony to the conclusion that Robbie, Cliff, or Peaches used to work for Dark Hearts, and now they have turned against their own—which is a piece of information that we are already privy to. Surprisingly enough, just based on that info, Tom and Anthony head straight into the lion’s den, Dark Hearts HQ, to interrogate Jayson and Perry about the gun, the bullets, Sam, and more. Of course, Jayson and Perry get very defensive because they want to find the perpetrators and punish them before the FBI can.
Aleah and Elizabeth head over to Peaches’s workplace to tell his colleagues to share any information they have about him that can help the FBI locate Sam. One of the workers over there, Denny, sets up a meeting with Aleah and Elizabeth, and the only useful thing that he says is that the guy who Peaches used to “hit houses” with is Cliff, and he works at J and W Waste Management. We get a brief scene featuring Emily and Ethan where they talk about how either of them are doing, how the sentencing is going to go, and what Tom truly thinks of him. And then the focus of the episode goes back to the task force as they head over to Cliff’s house to apprehend him. However, instead of Cliff, they find Shelley and Ray robbing Cliff’s house. Both Shelley and Ray are arrested, and Tom sustains a pretty solid injury to his head while trying to catch the perpetrators. When Robbie arrives at the location to drop off Cliff, they notice the mayhem that has unfolded there, and both of them appear confused because they don’t know what hit them all of a sudden. Going back to the task force, they begin interrogating Shelley and Ray, and they manage to set up a fake meeting with Cliff and Robbie; as in Cliff and Robbie will arrive at Bailey Park thinking that they are going to meet Ray and Lee to talk about the quality of the drugs they have, but in reality, they’ll be arrested by Tom’s task force.
There’s A Mole In The Task Force
Cliff and Robbie are seen discussing how they can escape to Canada once they have the money in hand, which is when they get the text from Ray’s phone, asking them to meet at Bailey Park. Robbie says that they should “scope out” the place because he doesn’t trust Ray one bit. Since the next step of their mission will happen 24 hours later, Elizabeth and Anthony go out to have some drinks—it concludes on an extremely sweet note, and Alison Oliver’s expressions almost brought me to tears. Aleah drops off Tom at his house and informs Sara about the precautions he needs to observe after the concussion that he has suffered; Tom ignores all the precautions almost immediately, by the way. Once Aleah is gone, Sara apologizes to Tom about how she behaved with Emily. Eventually, they arrive at the topic of Ethan’s role in the death of Susan, Tom’s wife. Tom admits that he doesn’t actually want Ethan to return home. Unfortunately, Emily just hears that part and realizes that she is alone in her fight to give her brother a second chance at life. We get a glimpse of the life this unit had, through a dream sequence, before things went sideways. However, the dream sequence doesn’t last long, and Tom has to wake up to Joe at his doorstep with info on the biker gangs operating in Pennsylvania and the footage from the pole cam that Tom had asked him to install.
At the end of Task episode 3, it’s reconfirmed that Jayson did kill Billy, and that a certain Brandon Symentz, a lieutenant of Dark Hearts, visited Cliff’s house 90 minutes after Ray and Shelley were arrested and stayed there for around 4 hours. Tom asks Joe how someone from Dark Hearts knows about Cliff. Joe hypothesizes that someone from Tom’s task force is leaking information to Dark Hearts and that Tom should suspect everyone. I don’t like this! I was just starting to fall in love with every member of the task force. But I guess I should have taken Anthony’s speech about Elizabeth being one of the most honest officers he has ever seen as foreshadowing for this very twist. Now, this could very well be a red herring, and there’s no actual leak in the task force. However, if there is one, it’s probably going to be Elizabeth because she seems to be the most innocent one there. She can’t shoot anybody. She can’t fight properly. She is very vocal about her feelings. So, nobody is going to doubt that she is in cahoots with Dark Hearts. Maybe that’ll serve as a commentary on how “good cops” don’t actually exist and the FBI is mostly made of corrupt individuals. Anyway, those are just my thoughts on this episode of the show. If you have any opinions on the same, feel free to share them in the comments section below.
