Task S1 E2 "Family Statements" Review

As is fairly standard for a TV show's sophomore episode, Family Statements has its mind set on creating new problems for our characters and making the ones that were already there worse. For as awful a man as he can be, Robbie was only trying to do the right thing when the boy his gang had just orphaned shyly walked into the trap house living room. However, the police don't acknowledge subtleties when it comes to missing persons cases, especially those involving children. Task is very good at getting its rich and complex characters into trouble, whether because of their naivete, their weaknesses, their goodwill, or just their entertainingly bad luck. It's not the most fleet-footed show out there, yet it stays entertaining because its characters are always in trouble, and believably so.

In the vein of the first episode's exploration of empathy, Family Statements introduces the Dark Hearts Motorcycle Gang, drug dealers straight out of Sons of Anarchy trying to handle both this new task force and the fallout of the trap house incident. Police officers pull most of the narrative strings for either good or mistaken ill in Task, but the show also lets us live among these bad-boy bikers for some time, enough time to see them as the human beings they are. It's a logical next step for a show as character-driven as this one, one that makes me want to see which of our very well-developed characters will walk away from this escalating turf war, and sadly, which of them will not. The die has been cast. Life hasn't given these people the option of not playing the game, and the only question that remains is how good each of them is at it.

Just as it introduces new characters, Family Statements likewise introduces a new problem. Years ago, Tom's son did something awful, though he did it under the influence. The world of the father was rocked by the actions of his son, who ended up in prison for manslaughter. Now, the boy's sentence is about to end. I can't imagine dinner table conversations will be comfortable anytime soon.

Tom misses what, who was taken from him, but he also misses his son. It's an emotional dilemma, one that was deep enough to make me stop and consider its weighty ramifications. As for Robbie, his well-intentioned lies about the child he took from the trap house are starting to fall apart, and because Task emphasizes character development above all else, both his and everyone else's problems feel so depressingly believable. This show is very good at getting the people in it into trouble, and it relies on their naivete, weaknesses, goodwill, and even their entertainingly bad luck to do it. It stays entertaining both because its characters are always in trouble and because it never seems like it's forcing them into it.

The name of the game for the sophomore episode of Task is "bigger," but so far, it hasn't lost its soul or its intimacy in this wider world. This show has a big heart, big enough to justify some of its more blatant heartstring-pulling. It's about people, people that may seem different from us on paper but who are actually fundamentally the same as we are. There have been TV dramas like this one before, but both the genre and format are promising wells of inspiration, and it's evident that Task did its homework.

James 1:27