The season finale of HBO's Task finally aired Sunday. And what a finale! Any lingering questions about where the series was going, or whether it deserved its critical acclaim, or whether it was equal to Brad Inglesby's previous HBO hit, Mare of Easttown, have all been answered. The title of the series finale, A Still Small Voice, evokes Isaiah 19-11-12, where God speaks to the prophet not in dramatic and powerful manifestations but in "a still small voice" which evokes immediate recognition and reverence.
Like Mare, Task has unfolded over seven episodes, which seems about right for a series this ambitious. Although there were moments earlier on when I wondered whether the series had enough to fill seven episodes, it certainly did in the end. And, despite the many minor (and not so minor) characters, and the tangle of interrelated sub-plots, in the end it was essentially about Tom (Mark Ruffalo), whose journey of faith through private and public tragedy underlies the trajectory of the entire series.
In both Task and Mare, the hero/heroine was a flawed detective struggling to emerge from a deeply tragic personal and familial history (his wife's murder by their adopted son, her son's suicide), having all the while to renegotiate family dynamics with what is left of the family, as well as having to resolve the publicly presenting crime situation. Mare was more like a classical whodunnit in that the crime was not solved until the final episode (although in a way which maximized rather than alleviated the series' sorrows). In contrast, in Task the perpetrators of the primary presenting crimes were immediately identified, although the subsequent need to identify the agent who was leaking information to the Dark Hearts supplied some similar suspense.
Both series, as I wrote earlier, are set in a similar Delaware County "working class" environment of natural beauty, old-fashioned homes, which house struggling, dysfunctional in at times unrelenting bleakness and grief, pulling the audience into a real empathy with many of the complex characters struggling to find a way in their very unfair world. I also noted that, while both series are set in the same gritty, depressing, small-town world, Mare and her world were definitely a bit brighter, their lives seemingly being held together in what was still a genuine local community, however wounded, which provided its members with real mutual support. The relative absence of a comparable quality of community in Task seems to add to the show's intended bleakness. (Mare herself was something of a local hero because of her role on a championship basketball game decades earlier. Tom, although presumably he was not always so self-isolated, seems to have nothing like that in terms of a comparable degree of rootedness in any local community apart from the FBI itself and his occasional interactions with a visiting priest from his past.)
Perhaps that is why, while Mare was set mainly in town, so much of the action in Task occurs in the woods. We get a lot more nature - trees, water (lake, river, quarry), and birds - in Task, which, while highlighting the natural beauty to be found in rural America (even in poor, depressed rural America), also somehow highlights the relative aloneness of the characters, whose community supports seem so few and often forlorn.
Before watching the final episode, i had wondered whether Inglesby would allow any of his characters to experience real final happiness. He does. The need for reconciliation between Tom and his adopted son which has been a leitmotif of the entire series (although often barely visible in some episodes) is addressed in a powerful courtroom scene, which holds out hope for levels of reconciliation - between Tom and his daughters, between Tom and his work, maybe even between Tom and God.
The secondary character whom one could not help but be rooting for, Maeve, also gets a much deserved happy ending. She escapes the violence that has hitherto enveloped her, gets to keep the money her uncle had left for her (thanks to Tom's moral judgment that "wisdom is knowing what to overlook"), and gets to move away and restart her life elsewhere (an even more liberating scene than Mare's daughter's escape to Berkeley).
Then there is Anthony Grasso, in some ways the most morally conflicted character and someone whose final redemption not only leaves the audience feeling better about liking him, but highlights the series' search for salvation. At first Grasso's religious questions seemed secondary, just playing on Tom's previous identity as a priest, but, as we get to appreciate Grasso better, we recognize the centrality of his moral struggle, his own search for absolution, accessible through his heroic efforts of personal final atonement. (It would have been nice to have had more of Grasso and his family earlier, not only to "humanize" him more but also to give greater context to his overall story.)
Through it all, Tom remains a priest (as indeed he does remain in a sacramental and theological sense). While often behaving stupidly (as in rushing into dangerous situations without backup), Tom also often displays a quiet charisma, responding to problematic people and difficult situations in a compassionate priest-like manner. In Mare, a personal religious reconciliation is implied by her presence at Mass in the final episode. There is nothing quite comparable in Task, but there is a clear sense at the end that Tom's struggle has become more peaceful and that he has gotten on track with the next phase of his life.
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