I have been thinking a lot about an HBO series available on Crave called Task. It stars Mark Ruffalo, an actor whose work I have appreciated for decades, as Tom, an aging desk-job FBI agent "voluntold" to head up a task group looking at a series of robberies of biker drug dealers by persons unknown. Even as their work gets underway one of these thefts goes gruesomely wrong and several people die.
This investigation is a task no one really wants -- who cares about serving and protecting drug dealers? -- but the investigation proceeds with plenty of psychological twists and turns. This aspect of Task is impressive in that there is moral ambivalence about loyalties, love, and grief even amongst those we would consider low-life figures.
This story would be worthwhile in itself and it is often suspenseful and certainly dark. There is also an intriguing parallel narrative related to Tom's previous life as a Roman Catholic priest, leaving the priesthood to be married and to start a family He finds his way into this improbable new career because of his work as a chaplain with the FBI prior to his departure.
The ways in which spiritual themes are explored in Task are nuanced and thought-provoking. Tom's life was shattered by the death of his wife and the collapse of his family, robbing him of happiness. He finds a certain solace in watching birds -- they are everywhere in the seven-part series, including the final scene. But Tom has lost his faith and drowns his sorrows in the drink he thinks he's hiding from his teen daughter.
Again and again, in the midst of the mayhem and brutality, spiritual and religious conversations arise with the good guys, the bad guys who aren't always so bad, and with a supposed good guy who turns out to be a bad guy. While characters dismiss organized religion they are also haunted by it. It's obvious that the writer has done some serious soul-searching of his own along the way.
The other task in the series is Tom's wrestling with forgiveness akin to Jacob wrestling with the angel in Genesis. I don't want to give too much away but there is a compelling forgiveness scene near the conclusion that we both found deeply moving.
Here is an excerpt from a review by John Dougherty in America: The Jesuit Review
Now, decades later, Tom’s life has gone terribly wrong and he has lost his faith. Talking to a friend from seminary, he says he can’t even stomach reading the Catholic theology that was once the center of his life: “No more Rohr, or Rahner, or Merton, or Augustine. I ain’t buying any of this s*** they’re selling, anyway.” He doesn’t seem offended by the idea of God (in fact, one of the first things we see Tom do in the series is— semi-begrudgingly—get on his knees and pray), but by the church’s claim to provide answers to life’s existential mysteries.
There’s a lot of that going around. Anthony Grasso (Fabien Frankel), a detective on the task force, admits to Tom that despite being dragged to Mass every Sunday by his mother growing up (and a past working as a D.J. at Catholic girls’ school dances) that Catholicism “never made an ounce of sense to me.” (Still, when he asks Tom about his life as a priest, you sense that he wishes he could understand it; Grasso also probably has the most developed case of Catholic guilt in the series.) Robbie is even more blunt when the topic of faith arises: “I never once felt God in my life,” he says, opining that people only cling to faith to stave off the existential fear that “there’s nothing after this.”
Or is there? I may be pondering Task for a while.
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