Yes, we’re aware that this piece’s title is a little overloaded, I guess you could call it.
But that’s because there’s so much to say about HBO’s Task, a drama about an FBI task force (with Mark Ruffalo never better as FBI lead Mark Brandis) investigating a crew of thieves who are targeting a drug dealing motorcycle gang outside of Philadelphia.
If you’re a hardcore TV fan, that description right there will immediately call to mind a number of different shows:
- Mare of Easttown – The clearest connection to Task, as Brad Ingelsby created both shows about cops and criminals outside of Philly. If you haven’t seen Mare, do so for the local Delco accents and Wawa references alone. Oh, and also: Kate Winslet.
- The Wire – There’s the cops and drug dealers part of course, but the iconic Omar Little (Michael K. Williams) going after drug dealers more closely ties these shows together.
- Sons of Anarchy – Motorcycle gang doings are always going to bring up SAMCRO.
- Criminal Minds or CSI or FBI or… – Then there’s just a deep lineage of FBI or federal cops-related shows (most of which are not that good, frankly).
Okay, that brings up The Sopranos.
On the surface, there’s not a ton that ties the two shows together, save that they’re both HBO prestige crime dramas.
The first indication that something… interesting might be going on is when Detective Anthony Grasso (Fabien Frankel a.k.a. Ser Criston Cole from House of the Dragon!) is introduced. Sharp-eared Sopranos superfans will instantly connect the dots on “Grasso + cop” here, as we know well that the already volatile Tony Soprano (the late, great James Gandolfini) went thermonuclear when we learned that an agent named “Grasso,” or an Italian American with “a vowel at the end of his name” in his estimation, would deem to be part of a task force investigating him, let alone searching his home.
That alone isn’t that big a deal though, right? The two shows have a Grasso, so what?
Ah, but then we get an even juicier Easter egg when it’s revealed that The Vipers, a rival motorcycle gang to the Dark Hearts – the latter the target of the Halloween-masked thieves that Brandis and crew are going after – were involved in a gun battle with the Dark Hearts in the past.
Now we know for sure that there’s no way that “The Vipers + Pennsylvania” isn’t at least a clear shoutout to The Sopranos, as a Pennsylvania-based motorcycle gang of the same name plays a small but important role in perhaps one of the funniest scenes in the entire show’s run.
We know you want to see where The Sopranos landed on Pop Thruster’s Best 100 TV Shows Ever.
In “The Ride” from Season 6, Tony and Christopher (Michael Imperioli) stumble into a fun little heist of their own when they discover some Vipers ripping off some kind of restaurant or storefront in the middle of the night. It becomes hilarious as the New Jersey mafiosi are not intimidated in the slightest when the motorcycle dudes try to intimidate them with ooh we’re The Vipers talk.
After that incident, Tony and Chris share this fun – for hardcore sociopathic criminals, mind – little memory later on, though of course it becomes tinged with the knowledge that their relationship is fraying in all kinds of ways.
So after four episodes of Task, we have two clear clues that there’s some kind of tangible or at least spiritual tie to the universe of The Sopranos out in Philly’s collar counties. In terms of what could be next, the mind reels at the possibilities.
Maybe AJ Soprano (Robert Iler) or Little Carmine (Ray Abruzzo) show up as the mafia boss from north Jersey that everyone has to kowtow to at some point?
Probably not, but it’s super fun to think about.
On a final note: Task is really good, much better than I expected. I didn’t think it would be bad necessarily, but I had the sense that it might be an overly grim cops-and-bad guys retread that would maybe be decent but not great.
Instead, it’s super compelling and highly watchable. The magic going on is how three-dimensional all of the characters are across the board – cops and drug dealers and desperate thieves and their families alike – and especially how messy and human it all feels.
The stuff of great storytelling.