TL;DR: Task Episode 4 (“All Roads”) is HBO’s crime drama at its sharpest and most suffocating. Betrayals mount, Cliff meets a tragic fate, and every alliance feels one step from collapse. A tense, heartbreaking.

I don’t think I’ve ever had a show take over my evenings the way HBO’s Task has. By week four, it feels less like I’m watching a TV drama and more like I’ve been forcibly recruited into this FBI task force that can’t keep its own house clean. Every time an agent says “we’ve got it under control,” I want to throw popcorn at my screen, because if there’s one thing this episode proves, it’s that no one has a damn thing under control. Not the Bureau, not Robbie, not the Dark Hearts, and certainly not poor Cliff, who winds up with the kind of fate you’d expect from a late-season climax rather than an early-game skirmish.

This is the kind of television that lives in your bones after you watch it — sweaty palms, tight jaw, the whole thing. And it’s not just the violence or the betrayals; it’s the way the show keeps circling back to loyalty, trust, and the corrosive cost of vengeance. Episode 4, aptly titled “All Roads,” isn’t just tense. It’s suffocating. And honestly? That’s what makes it great.

Watching the Quarry Darken

I’ve been fascinated by how Task uses the quarry. It’s not just a location; it’s a metaphor with mud on its boots. When we flash back to Billy and Robbie swimming there, it feels like the American dream in miniature: a couple of brothers, families nearby, sunlight hitting the water just right. You can almost smell the charcoal and sunscreen. But the shadow creeps in fast, because we already know Billy’s fate, and Robbie’s attempt at advice feels like a man trying to shout over a hurricane.

Then we cut back to the present, where Robbie, Cliff, and Sam hang out in the same quarry, only now it’s cold, damp, and full of foreboding. Even the fish feels symbolic. Poor Sam catches it, hesitates, and then sets it free — because unlike the adults around him, the kid still believes in mercy. That tiny gesture says more about the rot in Robbie’s plan than any monologue ever could. Robbie thinks he’s orchestrating a clean escape north, but really, he’s just dragging a boy deeper into the muck.

This duality — past warmth versus present ruin — is the heartbeat of the show. Ingelsby keeps asking whether any of these people could have chosen differently, or whether they were always bound to end up here.

Perry, Ice Cream, and the Knife’s Edge of Tension

Jamie McShane’s Perry is maybe the scariest character I’ve seen on television this year. Not because he’s the loudest or the bloodiest — he’s not. He’s terrifying because he can show up at your door with sundaes for the kids and then wrap his hand around your throat five minutes later, all while keeping that same dead-eyed calm. The scene with Eryn was brutal not just because of the physical threat, but because of the psychological warfare.

And yet, there’s a bitter irony to Perry: he’s the only Dark Hearts member who seems remotely interested in the truth. He wants to know what really happened with Billy. He wants to understand why these robberies feel so damn personal. And when Vincent tells him the mother club wants Jayson gone, Perry reacts with something close to heartbreak. For all his brutality, he’s clinging to an idea of family that’s already gone rotten.

Watching him comb through photo albums — a biker gang enforcer flipping pages like a grieving parent — is one of those tonal swings Task does so well. It dares to put sentimentality right next to savagery, reminding us that even villains carry ghosts.

The FBI’s Leaky Ship

Mark Ruffalo’s Tom Brandis has the face of a man who hasn’t slept since 2008, and Episode 4 doesn’t give him a single reason to start now. The sting operation at Bailey Park is pure procedural textbook — multiple agencies, radios buzzing, everyone tense. But the moment the car turns out to be nothing more than a couple searching for their dog, I felt my stomach drop. Not because it was a twist (we all knew something was going to go wrong), but because the way it went wrong felt humiliating.

The FBI isn’t just failing — they’re being toyed with. Someone inside the house is feeding intel to the Dark Hearts, and Tom knows it. Ruffalo sells that dawning realization not with fireworks but with exhaustion, scanning his team’s faces like a man trying to find the leak in a sinking ship while already waist-deep in water.

The show is brilliant at making betrayal feel inevitable. It doesn’t hit you with a single big reveal; it drips it out slowly, letting you feel the paranoia fester alongside the characters. By the end of the sting, Tom isn’t just worried about Robbie or the gang. He’s worried about the person sitting across the briefing table from him.

Cliff’s Last Stand

I didn’t expect Cliff to be the moral core of this story, but here we are. He’s rough, he’s reckless, he’s criminal — but when the Dark Hearts put him through hell and demand Robbie’s name, he spits blood in their faces instead. That choice, that refusal, gives him a tragic dignity the others can’t match.

His death is ugly. Plastic wrap, suffocation, the kind of slow violence that feels crueler than a gunshot. But the cruelty is the point. Cliff dies protecting someone who may not deserve it, and in doing so, he becomes the show’s most haunting casualty yet.

Robbie’s grief when he returns home says it all. He knows, even without seeing the body, that his world just lost its last shred of loyalty. Watching him stand in that emptiness, shoulders sagging, I thought: this is the real curse. Not Billy’s death. Not the robberies. The curse is that these men keep loving each other in ways their world will never allow them to sustain.

The Episode as a Whole

“All Roads” is Task at its most suffocating — betrayal layered on betrayal, families unraveling, trust corroding faster than the FBI can file their paperwork. And yet, amid all the grit and doom, the show keeps giving us moments of startling humanity. Sam freeing a fish. Perry flipping through photos. Maeve snapping at Robbie with the blunt wisdom only a fed-up family member can deliver.

The balance between procedural tension and character-driven tragedy is what makes Task more than just another crime show. It’s a slow-motion car crash where every shard of glass has a name, a history, a wound. By Episode 4, I’m not just watching to see who lives or dies — I’m watching to see who still manages to feel human in the wreckage.

Verdict

Episode 4 of Task is a brutal, heartbreaking midpoint that leaves no character unscarred. With betrayals on both sides and the FBI stumbling toward collapse, the show delivers its tensest, most devastating hour yet. It’s not flawless — some of the sting operation beats feel predictable — but the emotional weight more than makes up for it. This is prestige crime drama firing on all cylinders.