“So yeah, I’m gonna take their money. Yeah, I’m gonna take their money.”

“That ain’t my legacy, nah. Nah, that ain’t my legacy, nah.”

“Let him come. Let him fuckin’ come.”

“I’m fuckin’ tired of that life. I’m fuckin’ tired of that life.”

When Robbie Prendergast explains why he’s been doing what he’s been doing to his niece Maeve, he repeats himself. A lot.

Perhaps it’s for emphasis. In this episode of Task, we learn that Robbie’s biker brother Billy was beaten to death by local Dark Hearts lieutenant Jayson, who then had the balls to come to the guy’s funeral, shake Robbie’s hand with the same hands he and Billy’s daughter Maeve knew had killed their loved one, and say sorry for your loss. 

The source of the dispute is clear enough. Eryn (Margarita Levieva), Jayson’s girlfriend, was secretly Billy’s lover, and now she’s the rat inside the Dark Hearts who’s tipping Robbie and Cliff off about trap houses that are cash-rich. In other words, this isn’t business, or not only business — obviously Robbie and Cliff could use the money — it’s personal. By making Jayson look weak, they can finally be his undoing, together.

But all of this sounds pretty lame when you’re trying to explain to the niece you’ve forced into raising not only your children but the son of a couple you recently murdered why you’ve basically strapped the whole family into a suicide run. So yeah, maybe he’s repeating himself for emphasis. Or maybe he’s doing it because the person who really needs convincing of the rectitude of his actions is Robbie himself.

If you know actor Tom Pelphrey at all, it’s likely because of a single scene: a monologue he delivers in the back of an Uber on Ozark, desperately explaining to a person who doesn’t care why he’s almost certainly crossed the wrong person and gotten himself and, possibly, his sister and her family killed. But of course there’s hope around the corner, a light at the end of the tunnel, if he can just…keep…going. Despite the scene’s almost unwatchably painful naturalism, Pelphrey has said he didn’t improvise a word. 

But he’s such a good actor that it feels like he’s making it up as he goes along, even as he sticks to the script’s chapter and verse. His dialogue seems to come from within his body, not his head. So when Robbie repeated himself during this pivotal scene, over and over and over, my first instinct was to give Pelphrey the credit. But if his process remains the same as it once was, writer-creator Brad Ingelsby is responsible for this revealing detail. If you’ve ever wondered why I like Task so much better than Mare of Easttown, this kind of thing is why. 

I started things off with that lengthy appreciation of Pelphrey’s work here because, well, I had to start somewhere, and on this show I’m spoiled for choice. I could just as easily have led with the lovely scene in which Maeve teaches Sam, the boy Robbie and Cliff kidnapped from the home of his slain parents, how to float in the water. I could have gone with the painful scene in which Tom Brandis and his daughter Sara hash out their ugliest feelings about Ethan, the adopted son who killed Tom’s wife, unknowingly within earshot of Ethan’s sister and fellow adoptive child, Emily. 

I could have went with the fascinating sit-down between Dark Hearts leaders Perry and Jayson on one side and Dominican drug kingpin Freddy Frias (Elvis Nolasco) on the other, a group of gentlemen who are perfectly collegial with one another, right up until they aren’t. I could have talked with the immensely romantic early drunken flirtations between Grasso and Stover from Tom’s task force, established as Grasso gives a rousing speech on her behalf at a cop bar to the tune of “Chloe Dancer” by Mother Love Bone, an amazing deep cut needledrop that made me fall in love with both of them.

But the pivotal pairing is that of ex-con Ray Lyman (Peter Patrikios) and his abused, dead-eyed wife, Shelley (Mickey Sumner). They’re the definition of minor characters, a guy Cliff and Robbie approach about helping them move their unexpected windfall of fentanyl, and the wife he coerces into trying to rob Cliff’s house to beat them to the punch.

Look at all the ways the use of these characters pays off. For one, both actors do memorable work in their small roles. Even though Ray is written to be too scummy to sympathize with, his energetic, streetwise demeanor and his incongruous day job — he’s a rec-league referee! — liven him up. Shelley’s plight, meanwhile, gives Grasso, Stover, and Brandis’s teammate Clinton a chance to deliver a powerful speech of her own, about the abusive relationship that nearly killed her and the random moment she simply decided she’d had enough. That moment comes for Shelley and smashes Ray’s hopes of getting away scot free.

So Tom and Grasso get Ray to tell them all about Cliff and what little the man can remember about his accomplice. Then they screw him over, allowing him to get his parole violated for assaulting Tom during the fracas at Cliff’s place. (The task force was tipped off by a coworker of the slain robber Peaches, who doesn’t really care of the missing child involved is alive or dead as long as he gets his cash reward. Lovely.)

Now, again, Ray is not the kind of person you sympathize with. He’s a domestic abuser who heavily hints he may be into even worse shit as well. At the same time, Tom and Grasso were pretty goddamn deceptive with him. I get that that’s how cops do their jobs, but it just seems to me lying for a living is corrosive to the soul, no matter why you do it, or why you convince yourself you’re doing it. You can only imagine how many similar interactions with police have jammed up Ray and his relatives going back to time immemorial. (At least Shelley’s out for good now, though.)

Finally, the raid on Cliff’s house and the rumble with Ray (who nearly kills both Tom and Stover before Grasso gets the jump on him) expose a new wrinkle to the story. We already know that the Dark Hearts have a rat in the crew, Eryn, feeding Robbie and Cliff their intel. But surveillance photos reveal an unknown car parked outside Cliff’s house, watching and waiting for the guy even while the FBI and cops conduct their business there.

That means the Dark Hearts were there. That means they knew to be there. And unless they’ve got their own crack investigative team working 24/7 and running down the same leads as the task force, that means they’ve got a leak inside the task force, feeding them information. Clinton? Stover? Grasso? After this episode you hope it’s none of them, since each has done something to endear you to them. But Tom’s cop buddy’s advice is unequivocal: “Suspect everyone.” With its clever writing and precise performances, plus a score and a soundtrack that engage the emotions, Task has now made this our challenge, too.

Sean T. Collins (@theseantcollins) writes about TV for Rolling Stone, Vulture, The New York Times, and anyplace that will have him, really. He and his family live on Long Island.