‘Task’ Episode 6 With Creator Brad Ingelsby

Speaker 1 Long day.

Speaker 2 Late night?

Speaker 1 Love putting on your makeup, but hate taking it off? There's really no better feeling than coming home, getting comfy, and removing your makeup with Garnier Waterproof Micellar Water.

Speaker 4 It easily removes even stubborn waterproof mascara.

Speaker 1 None of that harsh rubbing needed, and you don't even have to rinse afterwards.

Speaker 3 It leaves skin cleansed, refreshed, and never dry.

Speaker 1 Head to Amazon to shop Garnier Waterproof Micellar Water Now.

Speaker 2 This episode is brought to you by Whole Foods Market. You'll find everything you need for the holidays at Whole Foods Market.

Speaker 2 If you're entertaining, explore limited-time seasonal desserts like the holiday rum cake and much more.

Speaker 2 And for the main event, serve show-stopping centerpiece mains like Bone-In Spiral Cut Ham and their Bone-In Rib Roast, succulent and special.

Speaker 2 They've even got great gifts like seasonal candles from 365 branded Everyday Low Prices. In a hurry, skip the crowds and order online for pickup and delivery and select zip codes.

Speaker 2 Shop for everything you need at Whole Foods Market, your holiday headquarters.

Speaker 2 Prestige TV podcast, episode six, Task. Rob Mahoney.

Speaker 2 He died in episode six. No, he didn't die.
Other people did die. Rob Mahoney sadly.

Speaker 4 Sad before the opening credits of episode six of Task.

Speaker 2 Rob Mahoney is sadly ill.

Speaker 2 He'll be fine, he's but ill enough that he couldn't be on uh an unbelievable episode so i would no shout out to him we miss rob we'll have him for the finale though well all that happened this episode was robbie died lizzie died um tom confronted grasso about being the mall and robbie double crossed everybody and pulled it off yeah just that just just like we just only pulled that stuff out just like a nothing out there

Speaker 2 yeah um where do you want to start uh

Speaker 4 Let's start. Well, should we say that we've got Brad Englesby on this episode as well?

Speaker 2 Oh, we have Brad Englesby, the showrunner creator of this thing at the end. And you could hear him dive into some of the decisions and why he did this show in the first place.
So we were all leading.

Speaker 2 This is kind of this new trend of the second to last episode being the biggest episode, which I don't know when that started, but it was 20, 25 years ago. This was the action episode.

Speaker 4 What was the first one you remember?

Speaker 4 Thrones really popularized it.

Speaker 2 I felt like Sopranos

Speaker 2 initially would do it. But then, yeah, Thrones probably, Thrones was when I think people were aware of like, oh, the ninth episode is the

Speaker 2 that's the episode. And now it feels like pretty standard.
Although in this case, it's sixth episode.

Speaker 4 I was a little surprised about how much happened in this episode. And then the question we have to ask ourselves is like,

Speaker 4 now what do we do with the, I mean, there's still things to do, but there's so much.

Speaker 4 episode like the finale there's so much

Speaker 2 we still have 60 minutes left yeah well so when we we did the episode five recap, we were wondering how they were going to get out of this shootout and still have two episodes left.

Speaker 2 Because in the shootout, it felt like we had these three groups, we had the Tarantino triangle happening, and it was just like, well,

Speaker 2 is everybody going to die? Is it like, how are we going to get out of this? And we figured out a way to get out of it somehow.

Speaker 2 I'm still not sure why Robbie didn't get shot immediately with all these people coming in on him.

Speaker 2 But we had.

Speaker 4 Because Tom had no ammunition, I guess.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Well, that might have been part of it.

Speaker 2 But we end up with a double fight.

Speaker 2 We're splitting between.

Speaker 2 Were you surprised that Tom was able to hold his own with Perry?

Speaker 2 I mean, we saw Tom like creaking around and barely able to go up and downstairs.

Speaker 2 All of a sudden, he's Muhammad Ali.

Speaker 4 Pulled all of his Hulk energy out for that.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 4 Yeah. I mean, it helps that I guess that Perry is an older guy.
But we did just, we've watched Perry like punch people, drown people, like do a bunch of stuff this season.

Speaker 4 So yeah, that, and also it was taking me away from the jason robbie showdown which i was so captivated by i thought that was the single best moment of the season when

Speaker 2 he's killing jason

Speaker 2 and he's like

Speaker 2 and then all of a sudden his eyes go up yeah and when i was watching it live i thought oh he he killed him this is like his reaction But then you realize something happened.

Speaker 2 He rolls over and you just see the knife sticking up. I thought that was such a cool shot shot how they did that.

Speaker 4 I thought that was so good. I was almost wondering when I watched it live, I was almost wondering,

Speaker 4 is he going to kill him or is he going to decide like, I'm better than this? I'm not going to kill a guy, you know, even though we watched a shootout at the beginning of the season.

Speaker 4 Like, is his moral fiber going to prevent him from doing this? And so that I was like trying to parse what was going on on his face.

Speaker 4 And what was going on on his face is he had a knife stuck in his ribs. And yeah, I like that you didn't, they didn't show us the knife until the roll-off and all that sort of stuff.

Speaker 4 But that's a, I mean, it's a classic move.

Speaker 2 It is. We've seen it many times.

Speaker 4 But it still works. It works.

Speaker 2 It juked me in this one. Yeah, it really.
Yeah, I didn't see it. I just thought he was going to kill him.
Yeah. Get away.

Speaker 4 And Tom Pelfrey is such a like surprising performer. Like, you never kind of know what he's going to do.
So I was like, maybe that's just the face that Robbie makes when he's about to kill a guy.

Speaker 4 But it's actually the face he makes when he's about to die.

Speaker 2 Well, he doesn't die right away because we get the car ride. And

Speaker 2 yet again, hearkening back to heat.

Speaker 2 We get the one guy cradling the other guy. And

Speaker 2 yeah, and we get to him looking in the trees.

Speaker 4 I thought his death was really good. Like the music was really good.
He flashes to the kids. He flashes to Maeve.

Speaker 4 We hear him tell that story about, you know, that we've heard him tell before about how he and Billy hop on a dragon and fly away. And then he's like in the quarry, his happy place.

Speaker 4 I thought that was a great death scene. Really, really good.

Speaker 2 Big.

Speaker 2 I've learned not to guess awards anymore because every time I think somebody has something locked down,

Speaker 2 someone comes in and surprises me and other stuff happens. And then by the end of the year, when they're doing the list, they don't make it.

Speaker 2 But I find it hard to believe he's not going to be in the conversation.

Speaker 4 It's really interesting. Have you heard anything from HBO about why they decided this should be a fall show? Because this is like not primo Emmy qualification time.

Speaker 4 Usually you would hold something that you really think is going to go.

Speaker 2 I think they needed it.

Speaker 4 Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2 I think post-COVID when they're making less shows.

Speaker 4 Because there's a lot between this and the Emmys. There's like the pit season two, you know, a bunch of other stuff that's coming.

Speaker 4 So, but I think Pelfree should, you know, Mayor won a ton of Emmys for people, right? Yeah.

Speaker 4 And so I would love to see Pelfree win for this. I think he's so good in the show.

Speaker 2 So we think,

Speaker 2 and I think Ruffalo was really good too, but I think, I think Pelfree is the one, the first character you remember from this show would be my guess. I think so.

Speaker 4 Though it depends what they do with Grasso in the finale, because all of this is now coalescing around Grasso's character, right? In a major major way. So that's interesting.

Speaker 2 Hold that thought. We'll get to Grasso

Speaker 2 because

Speaker 2 the other person that died is Lizzie.

Speaker 4 Were you surprised that Lizzie and Robbie died so early in the episode? Because they die before.

Speaker 2 I was shocked by the Lizzie death. I don't know why I didn't see it coming, but

Speaker 2 they set it up perfectly with the hearing thing. That's always a great gimmick in.
in movies or shows like this when somebody gets shot too close to the ear. Yeah, it's raining.

Speaker 2 Copland did it really well with Stallone.

Speaker 4 And the sound design on it was really good.

Speaker 2 And then you just kind of lose your bearings and you can't hear anything anymore. And you're just,

Speaker 4 I thought it was wild that so Robbie and Lizzie die in the first 15 minutes and then they put the title up task. So it's essentially like the cold open for the episode.
Yeah. Are these two big deaths?

Speaker 2 And we had been worried about well, there were other deaths too. I mean, I mean, there was like, what, five? Yeah.
The three other ones, too. Yeah.
Yeah. But like

Speaker 4 we've been worried about Lizzie and Garasso sort of coming to a head. If one of them's a mole, what's going to happen? They've been setting this up.

Speaker 4 The running worry about Lizzie freezing or not, or what's she going to do?

Speaker 4 This is

Speaker 4 to me almost worse than Grasso killing her because that's something we worried might happen that he would shoot her. This is almost worse, or at least juicier dramatically.

Speaker 2 He basically did kill her. He just didn't kill her.
Right. Yeah.
And so

Speaker 4 he's, he can't take ownership of it.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 4 But he's still still responsible for it.

Speaker 2 The car thing was abrupt and brutal. Yeah.

Speaker 2 And then, of course, everybody gets to see it too. But tough one, there's no death scene for Lizzie.
She's just dead.

Speaker 4 Well, he's holding her.

Speaker 2 But it wasn't like

Speaker 2 what happened. She's just fucking gone.

Speaker 4 I think that I love that shot, too. She turns to camera and then she's hit by the car.
Yeah. Aaliyah and Grosso running towards her, but neither of them make it in time.

Speaker 4 I thought all of that was really good. And I think what's even sadder, you know, because they set it up last episode, right?

Speaker 4 Someone's going to have to call out from the radio from the car with no reception.

Speaker 4 So we were wondering about that. But she's calling for backup.
But what's so tragic is backup's already there, right?

Speaker 4 Like that guy goes to pick up Tom, and he's like, oh, my deputies are right behind me. So she did all of that for nothing because they were coming anyway.

Speaker 2 Sad. Tough one.
Big winner, though.

Speaker 4 Who is the actress? Allison Oliver.

Speaker 2 Yeah, big winner. She's really good in this.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 And Grasso now is just

Speaker 4 evil.

Speaker 2 I hate Grasso now.

Speaker 4 Okay, interesting. I loved this episode for Grasso because

Speaker 4 the scene that he has with Michael Dorsey and that actor whose name I didn't write down, we did get an email about it a couple of weeks ago.

Speaker 4 Someone was surprised that we didn't call out that he's one of the guys in risky business, like one of Cruz's friends in risky business.

Speaker 2 That's Cruz's friend who has sex with the hooker on the upstairs. That's the same guy.
So they were like, Gabriel Sabarge.

Speaker 4 You know, my favorite like casting spoiler thing, yeah, someone's like, That guy's coming back, he's the guy from Risky Business. And so, oh, that's good, him showing up with an all-time

Speaker 4 like corrupt cop, like, movie name, Michael Dorsey, right? Michael Dorsey, great corrupt cop name. I love that scene with the two of them in the kitchen, right?

Speaker 4 When he puts his head under the water, Gross is like, Did you tell him I was a good boy? And Gross is grappling with all of this, and then the scene with Grasso and Tom.

Speaker 4 Like, this was such a good Grasso episode. And I'm so

Speaker 4 you missed.

Speaker 2 I thought he was good in the extended shootout with

Speaker 2 trying to navigate the bad guys and doing that stuff and being sneaky, but also being locked into what was happening. And I also didn't know if he was going to turn on Lizzie at any point.

Speaker 2 Like when he's behind her. when she has that guy lined up was he just going to shoot her from behind like everything was in play it was good very tense

Speaker 4 so you just hate him you're You don't feel sorry for him. I don't know.

Speaker 2 I love the character.

Speaker 4 You don't feel sorry for him at all.

Speaker 2 Why would I feel sorry for him?

Speaker 4 I don't know. I think there's something like really.

Speaker 2 You just like him. You're like, no, Crasso's misunderstood.

Speaker 4 I don't think he's misunderstood. Obviously, he is responsible for all of this.
But there's all season, he's been asking about,

Speaker 4 asking Tom about God and faith and all this sort of stuff like that. And so he's,

Speaker 4 it's the kind of guy where like, I don't want him to get away with it. I'm not rooting for him that way.
He needs to be punished for what happened or has a bad thing.

Speaker 2 It's like a damaged bird.

Speaker 2 But like

Speaker 4 he feels like a guy who made a mistake and

Speaker 4 then kept making those mistakes. And the way that his boss like holds his head under the tap like he's his abusive dad.
Like it was really

Speaker 4 twisted, like what's revealed about the nature of their relationship. That was really interesting to me.

Speaker 2 Well, let's do this now. I was going to do it later, but let's do it now.
So what do we think Grasso's backstory backstory is?

Speaker 2 And maybe we're going to find out in this last episode a little bit, but we already, the stuff we learned in episode six about that, he was being looked at suspiciously for some dark arts intelligence.

Speaker 2 So, obviously, he has a history of that. By the way, I mean, major nitpick,

Speaker 2 how does that not come up?

Speaker 4 How do you get on the task force in the beginning? Yeah, because there were no charges

Speaker 2 in his file. Of all the people to put on, and we're putting this guy in the task.

Speaker 4 I mean, a thought I had is that, you know, if his his boss, Michael Dorsey, is

Speaker 4 also corrupt, which he is,

Speaker 4 if they say, Hey, do you have someone for the task force? He's like, I'm going to put my guy Grasso on there because we want our own, you know, mole in there. Yeah.

Speaker 4 So he's got those connections because, like, he's, he's not a one-man corrupt job, right? It's a corrupt department.

Speaker 2 So is Michael Dorsey part of the dark hearts or just getting paid off by them? Do you think he actually belongs?

Speaker 4 I don't think he's like patched in or anything like that, but I think he has a long history of passing them information and grasso

Speaker 4 it's like grasso feels newer to it and dorsey's like don't this up we've got a good thing going with but he still has to have some sort of incredibly important thing hanging over graso like why he like what did he need them this can't just be about like we're funneling you a little extra money to do this like he's this guy's i feel like once you do it you have to keep doing it because then they have leverage on you right once you start how do you stop if your boss knows and is in on it too?

Speaker 4 How do you say no the next time?

Speaker 2 But I still don't, you don't think that this all starts because Grasso made some mistake that they covered up for, and they're like, this will never

Speaker 2 mistake. Oh, okay.
I think there was a bad cop situation decision, something

Speaker 4 bad cop mistake, yeah.

Speaker 2 Something,

Speaker 2 sorry, excessive use of force, somebody took care of some mistake that he he made.

Speaker 2 And they're like,

Speaker 2 it's basically like, I own you now. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Do this. And then it's like, well, you did that.
Now I really own you now. And now Grasso can't get out.

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Because we haven't seen Grasso, even though he's basically evil for setting up people and putting people in danger that he was working with all that stuff.

Speaker 2 But he also, we never actually saw him do anything evil.

Speaker 4 That's why I object to the word evil, I guess, because I think what they keep trying to show us is him trying to save Tom or him trying, trying, you know, he's just sort of like, he's caught in the middle and he's done something to get himself in that position, but I don't think he's like a bad half evil.

Speaker 4 Like, maybe, but like, he's consumed by guilt. She was a good person.
Like, this happened. This is horrible.
Like,

Speaker 4 if he's evil, he doesn't give a shit that Lizzie died. If he's evil, he would have just like fucked her in that bed and not worried about it.
You know what I mean?

Speaker 4 I think he's like, I think it's more interesting for him to be a guy who you're still kind of rooting for even though he did this thing i'm not rooting for him anymore okay lizzie's dead and it's his fault okay

Speaker 2 grasshoped i think aalia agrees with you i think aaliy agrees with you um yeah wellia who i think was our number one suspect for being the mall I don't think number one.

Speaker 4 I think we were bouncing around, but she was at one episode.

Speaker 2 We were like, she was the one.

Speaker 4 She's on, she was on the board.

Speaker 2 And now it's like, she's, she killed two people in the shootout um that her like her being a crack shot her being a crack shot comes back uh

Speaker 4 to serve her she figures out they're looking at the task group all that stuff i do like how they set up so they gave us enough lizzie and grasso scenes so that we would understand the tragedy of i would have had more you would have more lizzy i would have more lizzy grasso less the the ruffalo daughter family stuff and then we've got uh lizzie and aaliyah have like a couple scenes together so that we understand that Aaliyah, you know, when Aaliyah finds that passion

Speaker 4 on her desk. So like they really try to establish Lizzie as someone that multiple people would care that she's dead, even though one of them is responsible for it.

Speaker 2 Interesting, not Tom, not really a Bon Ma Tom. No, Lizzie Tom.
Tom's like, I have enough damage.

Speaker 2 He's got a bunch of daughters. Yeah, I got a bunch of damage already.
No, thanks. Let's take a break and we got to talk about the May part of this.
This episode is brought to you by Rocket Money.

Speaker 2 Ever feel like your money just disappears each month?

Speaker 2 It's easier than ever to overspend from subscriptions piling up to impulse buys after seeing an ad on your phone to ordering takeout a few times a month.

Speaker 2 Rocket Money helps you rein it in by showing you where your money is going and helping you make better decisions so you can keep more money in your pocket.

Speaker 2 Rocket Money is a personal finance app that helps find and cancel your unwanted subscriptions, monitors your spending, and helps lower your bills so you can grow your savings.

Speaker 2 Their dashboard lays out your total financial picture, including bill due dates and paydays, in a way that's easy to digest.

Speaker 2 You can even automatically create custom budgets based on your past spending.

Speaker 2 If you've got a goal you'd like to save for, Rocket Money can analyze your accounts to find the best time each month to put extra money aside.

Speaker 2 Rocket Money has saved users over 2.5 billion, including over 880 million in canceled subscriptions alone.

Speaker 2 Their 10 million members save up to 740 a year when they use all of the app's premium features. Cancel your unwanted subscriptions.
Reach your financial goals faster with Rocket Money.

Speaker 2 Go to rocketmoney.com slash the ringer. That is rocketmoney.com slash the ringer.
Rocketmoney.com slash the ringer. All right, so Tom goes to see Maeve.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 And he reminds her we've met before. Yeah.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 something really interesting happens with this. Tom,

Speaker 2 they go through all of it

Speaker 2 and Tom pushes to let her go. Yeah.

Speaker 2 It's like, what are we doing her trial for? What the fuck was this girl supposed to do? Like, what law did she break? And now we're going to make her life worse. And these other two kids.

Speaker 2 I just, I liked how they handled all that because I thought in my head, it's a pretty dark show. Let's be honest.
Not a comedy.

Speaker 4 You thought for several episodes that they were going to kill Sammy.

Speaker 4 They still might.

Speaker 2 Am I?

Speaker 2 Am I writing that off yet? I'm not.

Speaker 2 It's a dark show.

Speaker 4 He's safe going with Tommy.

Speaker 2 you don't think he's safe but i thought maeve going to jail for the sins of the pendergrass family was in play i was like really now we're gonna her life up too it's already up yeah but uh but it actually worked out for her but what did you think of all that whole interplay i love that because you know robbie made tom promise that he would protect maeve well turns out it wasn't the only person he made a promise with.

Speaker 4 That's true. And then also,

Speaker 4 I like this idea, because we've been asking this question all season, like, why is it interesting to have an FBI agent who was a priest? Like, what's interesting about that?

Speaker 4 And there's this idea of Tom as someone who believes in like a different kind of justice. Like, you know, what is the law? And then what is just?

Speaker 4 And Tom is in here arguing with, you know, the lawyer, you know, the district attorney being like, is that? Well, he wasn't even doing that. He wasn't even appealing to her better angels.

Speaker 4 He's just like, I don't think you'll get a jury on your side. You know, he was just like nagging her case, essentially.

Speaker 4 But his idea is like, in my sense of justice, which is a sort of divine, you know,

Speaker 4 given what I believe in justice, this isn't right. This isn't fair was happening to Maeve.
And so the idea of someone like Tom being in this system

Speaker 4 and, you know, a system where this, this DA was excited to like throw the book at Maeve. And he's like,

Speaker 4 what purpose could that possibly serve? What are we doing here?

Speaker 2 I think in real life, that doesn't happen all the time, would be my guess.

Speaker 4 Tom gets away with a lot of stuff. Tom just takes Sammy home with him.

Speaker 2 Like, that's well, that was the next thing. He adopted Sam, the bird-watching, animal-loving Simpleton kid.

Speaker 2 Just brings him in. He's a simpleton.

Speaker 2 By the way, no easier kid to adopt than Sam. It's like, just get, get him a couple Legos.
He's good for like a week and a half.

Speaker 4 He's got a Batman Lego set. Yeah.

Speaker 4 So, um,

Speaker 4 you call him a simpleton. Where are you in like liking Sammy and wanting good things for him?

Speaker 2 I mean, I definitely feel definitely feel terrible for sam

Speaker 2 right

Speaker 2 for him he made a little

Speaker 4 easy life he made a little lego chicken named gurdy and he's like she's my friend is that not tugging at the old heartstrings bill simmons i would have liked a couple scenes with sam wondering what the philly score was or just a couple extra

Speaker 2 couple extra things for him uh tom's kids were confused this seems highly i understand that he's like like technically a foster,

Speaker 4 you know, in the foster system or something like that, but this seemed highly.

Speaker 2 It's like me and Pharaoh. He's just collecting kids in his house.
I was like, you can't just take him home.

Speaker 2 Is this leading to the last scene of the show, episode seven, which neither of us have watched yet?

Speaker 2 Of a big dinner table scene with the two daughters

Speaker 2 with the kid who's in jail, whatever,

Speaker 2 who's going to get out. Yeah, Ethan.
That's probably happening with Ethan in episode seven

Speaker 2 sam

Speaker 2 and maeve and the two kids they were all at the table i don't think the two kids are invited it's probably a table for six oh it's just okay um

Speaker 2 big dinner scene and it's like tom is a collector i'm gonna try

Speaker 4 i'm gonna try to apply some newly earned knowledge Are you just applying Soprano's rules? Because don't Soprano seasons end with like a big family meal? Isn't that like a classic?

Speaker 2 I was just trying to figure out, like, the end game of this is Tom, tom

Speaker 2 who we see in the first episode is just like a broken alcoholic right like just so he's so he's drunker than anyone's ever been on hbo and by the end of this he is now a little bit more sober and and he's added a person to the family simpleton emily's calling him out simpleton sam simpleton sam's now at the table traumatized job

Speaker 2 And he's just, he's got his family back.

Speaker 4 Something that that Rob and I were saying last week is that we felt a little uncomfortable with this idea that, like, he hasn't gone to visit his son.

Speaker 2 But how about that? That plot was abandoned.

Speaker 4 But he's just brought a replacement son into the home.

Speaker 2 Right.

Speaker 4 We were like, that feels a little dicey to us.

Speaker 2 Yeah, tough one. Well, I mean,

Speaker 2 we, we, you predicted this, I think, in the first episode that Sam was going to end up at Tom's House.

Speaker 4 One of our listeners did

Speaker 4 because they pointed out that, you know, they both like birds. Right.
How did you feel about Ruffalo's chicken impression?

Speaker 2 It was bad.

Speaker 2 I thought it was a strong episode for him. Yeah, well, he has a bad for Sam because his uh other adopted son is still in the slammer.

Speaker 4 I don't think it's abandoned, that's got to be finale stuff, right?

Speaker 2 Well,

Speaker 2 why would they spend all that time with the hearing? Are you going to go, we're going to do all that for three episodes and then not have the hearing?

Speaker 4 I have to, I'm going to look down the camera as I say this. I now know, we now know exactly when

Speaker 4 this show is taking place. This has been an ongoing debate with us, but our listeners have had it with our debate about this.
The trial date is June 12th. So we are in early June.

Speaker 4 I have some questions about tomatoes being ready in early June. That's not how gardens work, but that's okay.
We're in early June.

Speaker 2 Probably getting pretty hot there in Pennsylvania.

Speaker 4 Emily's still in school. So school's not out for us.

Speaker 2 Makes sense. Phillies are playing.
Yeah. The Sixers aren't in the finals because they never are.

Speaker 4 So do you think we're getting, do you think we're getting the hearing in the finale?

Speaker 4 If we don't, like, what was the point of the first three episodes you have to tom says in this episode you know when he's talking about his his sins things he feels guilty about or whatever he admits like my son's been in prison all yeah and i haven't seen him at all well that i mean what's left so the plots that are left

Speaker 2 martha plimpton's character she's gonna be in the i think we're probably done with her

Speaker 2 and she's not the mall and she's just gonna be recovering hospital so she's over there yeah she's working on her fiber intake we have perry and Jason found the fentanyl bag at the end of this episode, but got ropodoped because it wasn't fentanyl.

Speaker 2 Yeah, it was just a bag of bullshit. Maeve got the bag

Speaker 2 of a lot of money thanks to Scary Face Ray because

Speaker 2 embattled extra thanks to Ray.

Speaker 2 Oh, embattled wife Shelly. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Who turned out, she said, I'm a good person. Yeah.

Speaker 4 And she came through.

Speaker 2 So then, scaling back to the previous episode. Yeah.

Speaker 2 So it started out. This is episode five.

Speaker 2 Robbie goes to see, he's going to go like kill Scary Face.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Then has that interaction and he just leaves and it seems like they're done and we're never going to see her again.
So he obviously went back. He goes to see Freddie Freas later in the episode.

Speaker 2 And that's kind of an abrupt, a scene that ended abruptly.

Speaker 4 Well, that's a setup.

Speaker 2 It's a setup scene. And we think Freddie Freas is giving him to the biker gang.

Speaker 2 But now I'm actually thinking it was a long con.

Speaker 4 right partially a long con like i don't think i don't think freddie freas is in on it

Speaker 4 oh interesting because i think he is i think they didn't show us the end of that scene with shelly or he goes back and robbie makes a steal with shelly but he goes to freddie freas knowing that freddie's going to tip off jason and he's like this is where i'll meet you i'll meet you at this cabin and he has this plan this whole time to draw Jason out there and to kill Jason, that that's what he wants to do, right?

Speaker 2 So you think Freddie Freashm? Where did he get all the money for the fentanyl?

Speaker 4 Then, Shelly sold it.

Speaker 2 But to who?

Speaker 4 To the contact that Ray had. Ray had a guy they were going to sell that had nothing to do with Freddie Freas.

Speaker 2 So, you don't think she just sold it to Freddie Freas, and this is Freddie Freas' revenge against the biker game?

Speaker 4 I think I think I think because Freddie Freas hated the biker game, but I think so.

Speaker 2 That's why I thought that was why he did that.

Speaker 4 I think it's just that Tom knew that Freddie would tip him off to the dark hearts.

Speaker 4 Or did Tom go, you hated his you hate you hate the dark hearts i hate the dark hearts what if we did this okay that's a vast conspiracy i i'm i'm willing to consider it knowing this i keep calling him tom because the actor robbie like knowing that robbie had this plan this whole time re-watching episode five yeah when he's like asking tom about an afterlife and all these other stuff like he's going to die like he knows he's going he figures there's going to be a shootout and he might lose he wants to kill jason and he doesn't care if he dies doing it.

Speaker 4 And he has no plan after this. And he's left the money behind for Maeve.

Speaker 2 So we're going to find out what happened. Who gave them the money? Right.
Was Freddy either involved. Right.

Speaker 2 Is Freddy trying to double cross the

Speaker 4 how many counties

Speaker 4 in Pennsylvania are involved in this?

Speaker 2 And then

Speaker 2 the other thing that's still up in the air. Well, there's two things.
One is Grasso. How are they going to.

Speaker 2 solve that one. And then Perry murdering Jason's wife.
Aaron.

Speaker 4 where's Aaron?

Speaker 4 He just left her in the water. Is that the idea? That's what you were saying last week.

Speaker 2 When I kill people in a quarry, I like to put a string and a rock on their legs to kind of keep them down toward the bottom. Yeah, I think that's a necessity.

Speaker 4 Is it just one rock will do it, or do you need multiple rocks?

Speaker 2 You want nice big 20-pound rock and maybe some rope, maybe even a second rock just to make sure. Yeah, I would double rock it.
He just seemed like he's like, I'm good. That's what's going to happen.

Speaker 2 Yeah. She's going to float around for a while.
Yeah.

Speaker 4 It doesn't seem.

Speaker 4 This is the the thing that's actually really bothering me about uh Task. His name's Perry, yeah,

Speaker 4 his nickname is Purr,

Speaker 4 and that really bothers me because, like, Purr is a nickname for Percy, makes sense, but his name is Perry, and they call him Purr.

Speaker 4 It's very, it's very confusing.

Speaker 2 That is weird, but you can't call him Pear because then he sounds like a fruit, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 4 I would just name him.

Speaker 2 How about just Perry? Yeah, or P. P.
Big P.

Speaker 4 Anyway, Big P used zero rocks to weigh Aaron down the quarry. If he did, we didn't see it.
So I don't know what's going on.

Speaker 2 I'm guessing as an experienced murderer, he probably was like, okay. I hope so.
Let me drag this body over.

Speaker 4 So what happens if Jason finds out that Perry killed Aaron?

Speaker 2 Well, I think the three predictions we can safely make here are Perry and Jason are going to have Jason's going to put two and two together and they're going to fight to the death or something will happen.

Speaker 2 So there's one. Two is Tom and Grasso are going to have to have a moment.

Speaker 2 Right.

Speaker 2 And then the third one, I think we can safely predict is the hearing will happen at some point in the show.

Speaker 4 It would be very weird if it didn't.

Speaker 4 Is Maeve okay?

Speaker 4 That's my main concern.

Speaker 4 She is a bag of money that the most.

Speaker 2 So that would be the fourth prediction then. Well, when do they put two and two together and realize that Maeve might have profited from all of this?

Speaker 4 I don't know. Does she start spending it or does she hide it?

Speaker 2 Maeve buys a Lambo? Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 4 Maeve rolls up in a Lambo.

Speaker 2 My guess is she's been impressed by her smarts for most of this, although

Speaker 2 her biggest fail was probably the

Speaker 2 Mingo Mae. Drop-off plan.
Payphone call. I'll leave the kid in the car.

Speaker 2 This will all work. Not her best move.
But my guess is she's going to get out of Dodge now with that money. Take the two kids and they're going to go to probably Canada.

Speaker 4 I'm just worried. about Maeve perpetually.
Because like, it's like with the Lizzie thing.

Speaker 4 We were worried all season that Lizzie was going to freeze yeah and then she didn't she did and she didn't and then she died anyway yeah so we're like we i've been so worried about maeve you were like i'm worried maeve's gonna go to jail so then there's this idea okay she's home she's safe she's with the kids

Speaker 4 robbie thinks he's done something good for her by providing for her with this bag of money but that's just putting a target on her back right as soon as they put three and three together right yeah where would the money be yeah so you think she'll be the one that there's the the shotgun in the woods with the crows scattering up?

Speaker 4 You still want that shotgun?

Speaker 2 It's not going to be

Speaker 2 in that moment.

Speaker 4 Can I go back to like the

Speaker 4 how do you feel in stories and film or television when they leave things out?

Speaker 4 And then, so like with Robbie's playing with Shelly, they left it out. We didn't get to see it.
So then it's like a

Speaker 4 little twist, a little turn.

Speaker 2 Yeah, because I only like it if in retrospect you're like, oh, that's why he left, but they left it open-ended. That's why he went to sit down with Freddie Frias, but we never heard the combo.
Right.

Speaker 2 The clues were all there. Yeah.
That's why I think Freddie Freas is in on this. Okay.

Speaker 4 Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Interesting. Because I think they would have showed the combo otherwise.

Speaker 4 That's a fair point.

Speaker 2 That's great. So it's like, how about if we fuck over the Spiker gang in the best possible way? We'll make it seem like you're turning me in, but you're not.

Speaker 4 I have a bag of some money for you, but other money's going to.

Speaker 2 The case against that theory is, would Freddie Frius have had people in the the woods to try to kill these guys?

Speaker 2 Freddy Frius wants all the money.

Speaker 4 You know what I mean? He wouldn't settle for some of the money.

Speaker 2 Like he's going to have all these people in a good spot.

Speaker 2 Could you just take all of them out?

Speaker 4 I think I agree with you that I don't mind them not showing us like certain things or ends of scenes or something like that if the payoff is pretty soon.

Speaker 4 Like it's the next episode we find out what actually happened.

Speaker 4 It's when it happens, you know, a whole season later and you're like, I don't remember. What are you talking about? You know what I mean?

Speaker 2 Well, I didn't remember. I mean, we've watched six of these.
I didn't remember that we saw Gabriel Sabarge

Speaker 2 in episode one or what that scene was, even though we've watched all these episodes carefully.

Speaker 4 But it wasn't episode one. It was like episode two.
It was episode, I think it was episode four.

Speaker 4 They like, it was when they're going to the park, and that whole team that's with them in the park, he's running that team. That's like Grosso's department.

Speaker 2 Right. Okay.
I remember that now. Yeah.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 I do have one more nitpick retroactive after watching episode six. Okay.

Speaker 2 So they leave with all the drugs in episode one, big shootout. Yeah.
And they're stuck with this kid.

Speaker 4 Simpleton Sammy, I believe you're saying that. Simpleton Sammy.

Speaker 2 Why not go to this room? Cutest child. Why not go to the remote cabin with Sam?

Speaker 2 Great question. Why not use the remote cabin? Great question.
Right there. Nobody knows you have it.

Speaker 4 Well, then you don't have Maeve as a babysitter, built-in babysitter.

Speaker 2 But do I even want Maeve to know I have this kid or that I did all this stuff?

Speaker 4 I did ask Brad about,

Speaker 4 and people can tune in for that, but like

Speaker 4 Tom being a pretty bad cop and Robbie being a pretty bad criminal and what's interesting about that to him. Do you know what I mean? Because people have been complaining about that.

Speaker 4 They're like, Robbie's not very good at this. And I actually think that's kind of interesting.
That's kind of how you become a criminal.

Speaker 2 That's just a guy. Yeah.
You know, that's what I feel about Garasso.

Speaker 4 He's just a guy.

Speaker 2 Well, the thing with Sam, if you're doing this over again from Robbie's standpoint. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Sam, not exactly a rocket rocket scientist. Maybe just drop him off at the mall and he's not going to be like, here's what my two kidnappers look like.

Speaker 2 The more we learn about Sam, he's probably not going to divulge a lot of info about the people that briefly took him after his parents were murdered. Yeah.
Yeah. Simpleton.
That was the mistake.

Speaker 4 He might have been able to describe like an animal he saw, right?

Speaker 2 True. Yeah.
They had a house with three chickens.

Speaker 4 One was named Gurdy. Can I ask? Yeah.
As like a lover of action movies,

Speaker 4 when Tom Pelfrey as Robbie Pendergrass says in the forest, is this what you came for? Like, what did that do for you?

Speaker 2 And Through the Bag. It's great.
I mean, they're playing some karaoke with some of the action stuff.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Yeah.
I like that. I really,

Speaker 2 I thought the bridge.

Speaker 2 And whatever symbolism you want to take out of that and people going different directions and then things finally ending on the bridge again. I liked all that stuff.

Speaker 2 Like the, you know, I'm not, I normally don't like,

Speaker 2 normally I'll think stuff like that's corny, but I actually thought it worked with this.

Speaker 4 With the like crossing the bridge and the choices.

Speaker 2 It's like the symbolism of oh, there are two sides and you're gonna go left to right. And oh, now we're together on our bridge of choices.
Like, I do, I did enjoy all that.

Speaker 4 Sunday Night HBO has brought up the poet.

Speaker 2 I love it.

Speaker 4 I love it. Um, we didn't, I know you, they're not your favorite plotline, but we didn't talk about Sarah and Emily at all.

Speaker 4 Do you want to like mention that they're reconciled, they're sticking up for each other?

Speaker 2 Sure. Okay.

Speaker 4 Are you on Tenterhooks to find out if Emily's actually going to go to that magic show with that kid? She does, she scoops worldwide.

Speaker 2 That was a get up and go to the bathroom scene.

Speaker 4 Okay, you left during the close-up magic.

Speaker 2 Here's the thing with TV shows.

Speaker 4 He wears a jaunty vest, though.

Speaker 4 It's not for you.

Speaker 2 Okay. It's like, yes, I got my date.
Cool.

Speaker 2 Here's the thing with these. Yeah.
Albums have this too. Sometimes every hit.

Speaker 4 Skippable track.

Speaker 2 Yeah, sometimes every song in the album can't be great tv shows

Speaker 2 you know you still haven't watched the sopranos but some people love the dr melfie scenes i personally do not like them i have watched some sopranos yeah

Speaker 4 let's be so clear about that trying to think thrones Oh, yeah. You're like, oh, God, we're back in Marine.
I don't care. Like, what is Daenerys doing again this week?

Speaker 2 I know. It's tough to bat a thousand with plots.
Sure. And I get why they have to have this.

Speaker 4 You didn't like when Sarah's interrogating him in the kitchen and she's like, what is this kid? What's happening here?

Speaker 4 And he's like, he's like, now does anyone want a peanut butter and jelly sandwich? I didn't mind that part. Is there something good like dad moment for you?

Speaker 2 So I don't know. Maybe it's just because what my family situation is like, but I just feel like there would be like slightly more humor.

Speaker 2 I get it that there's completely humorless houses, but

Speaker 2 I feel like somebody needed to be sarcastic in this house and it's neither daughter. And then Ethan's obviously not a bare laugh.

Speaker 4 Maybe Ethan's really fun when he's well-mediated.

Speaker 2 Maybe the mom was the funny one. I don't know.

Speaker 4 She's keeping on.

Speaker 2 It'd be like, dad, dude, it's like you went to eBay and found another kid. Like, there just should have been some joke.

Speaker 4 Well, now Sammy's here to really bring up the level.

Speaker 2 Sammy's just excited. He has a bed.

Speaker 2 He's like, do you think? He's like, is that other kid going to come and take the bed from me?

Speaker 4 Poor Sammy.

Speaker 2 Predictions. Is Grasso alive at the end of this season?

Speaker 4 How can he be if he's responsible for Lizzie's death?

Speaker 2 Is he dead by his own hands or by somebody else?

Speaker 4 Is he? Well, here's my question: Is he dead because he does something heroic, or is he dead because he just is deeper and deeper into the plot? You know what I mean?

Speaker 2 Is there a chance for like redemption for him? He's killed. He's killed saving somebody, kills himself.
Yeah. Those are our three things left.

Speaker 4 And do a flock of birds go up in the forest for any of those moments?

Speaker 2 No flock of birds for him. Wow.
No flock of birds. Door number four for Grasso is gets away, and that's season two.

Speaker 4 Season two, the Grasso season?

Speaker 2 Which my

Speaker 2 run? My sources have told me season two of Task is

Speaker 2 in play in a real way.

Speaker 4 Stay tuned. We did ask Brad about it.
Okay.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 So that season two could be built around Grasso, or we could just be in a completely

Speaker 2 different task in other some part of Pennsylvania. That's a new task.
Because Inglesby has a Pennsylvania hard-on.

Speaker 4 Yeah, we can't leave the Wooderers where we're going to be able to do that.

Speaker 2 Maybe he goes into the Lehigh Lafayette territory, like Patriot League murder.

Speaker 4 Do you think he's actually going to pay Ciara this time to co-write season two?

Speaker 2 Or I mean, it was already insulting that he didn't involve him as a consultant for the last one. Yeah.

Speaker 2 But if it was a fictional show, he should have had the 76ers in the finals because it would have been their only chance.

Speaker 4 Just a dream, a fictional dream.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Joelle Embiid. He's played every game this season.
What America? We could have an announcer. Yeah.

Speaker 4 Do you wish Rob were here for this joke?

Speaker 2 Yes. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Predictions.

Speaker 4 I'm worried about Maeve.

Speaker 4 I'm hopeful for Grasso redemption.

Speaker 2 Is there a chance Grasso lives and Maeve dies?

Speaker 4 Since we started this season with you predicting a child getting shot in the woods, I feel like everything's on the table.

Speaker 2 Maeve could die. I still might not be out of that one.

Speaker 4 I want to ask you: okay, you like the symbolism of the bridge. I know we're wrapping up.
We're not going to take much longer. And the trees and the leaves.

Speaker 4 What do you think of the final shot of Robbie in the water? Like, Robbie's long dead, and then Maeve gets the bag of money and then Robbie's in the water.

Speaker 2 It's a rare flashback of something that I thought really worked.

Speaker 4 You're like, give me more of that.

Speaker 2 Like, it was like, Robbie finally got a win. It was like this guy had a lot of wins in life.
Yeah. You know? Yeah.

Speaker 2 All right.

Speaker 4 So what are your predictions?

Speaker 2 I think a lot of it depends on whether task season two. is the same crew or people or different people.

Speaker 4 Because is Ruffalo safe?

Speaker 2 I think think Ruffalo's safe. Because you need him for season two in some form if he wants to.

Speaker 4 If you're going to do task season two, you have to have Ruffalo anchoring it is what you're saying. I think so.

Speaker 2 But could season two be Grasso on the loose? It just becomes a different show.

Speaker 2 Now we're doing the fugitive, basically.

Speaker 2 So I think Grasso dies would be my thing. Bill, to be clear, I would not say no to Grasso is the Fugitive.

Speaker 4 Grasso is the Fugitive. Yeah.
Well, we talked about this. I'm just being like, I don't care.

Speaker 2 We talked about this in another episode. I think that guy's been excellent.
Yeah. David Frankel.
Yeah. And in terms of people from England impersonating American actors,

Speaker 2 he should be casting

Speaker 4 every like East Coast Crime stuff going forward.

Speaker 2 I can't wait to see him on a Netflix rom-com in a year that my wife's watching that's terrible, but she loves it.

Speaker 4 Is this happened to all the actors you like?

Speaker 2 No, it'll just be like him with,

Speaker 2 I don't know, Millie Bobby Brown or somebody who's like, whoa, she's in a rom-com now? Yeah. And we're just like, oh, Grasso needed the paycheck.

Speaker 4 We got to expand. You got to expand the portfolio.
You know what I mean?

Speaker 4 Here's what I want to say about Mark Ruffalo in the show.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 4 I think he needs something really big in the finale. Because I think to a certain degree, Tom Pelfrey has kind of stolen the show.
Ruffalo's the star. He's the big star of the show.

Speaker 2 You want his Emmy Thunder back. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Right?

Speaker 4 Pelfree is doing a lot of work.

Speaker 2 Could that be a hearing? Miriam Frankl is doing a lot of work.

Speaker 4 We talked about Allison Oliver and stuff like that. Yeah.
I mean, something we need to give Ruffalo.

Speaker 2 Monologue to the judge in the hearing. Ruffalo, big moment in the finale.
He needs it. Paul Newman at the end of the verdict, kind of

Speaker 2 big speech. Yes.
Where so, like, one of his daughters puts their arm around him after and be like, dad, great job.

Speaker 4 And you're like,

Speaker 4 I love these daughter scenes. They're my favorite.

Speaker 2 And then they all make food.

Speaker 4 They all have peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. And Sammy is fine.

Speaker 2 Sam goes outside to look at the chickens in there. That's it.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I don't know what we have an hour left and I don't know where it goes.

Speaker 2 But I assume. you've got a mole, like a rat hunt.

Speaker 4 Like, we know, I really loved that the exchange between Tom and Grasso, which I thought was all-timer. Like, I thought it was so good.
And that's the thing is, like,

Speaker 2 we should have talked about that. That was such a good scene.

Speaker 4 Buffalo has been the best at these, like, like, he was so good in that car scene with Tom Pelfree, so good at this kitchen table scene with Fabian Frankel. And, like,

Speaker 4 talking about confession, talking about

Speaker 4 Tom, Tom doing what Tom does best, right? Like, like, like, Grasso's like, oh, you're good, Tom. Like, I see what you're doing.
I see what you're trying for here. Right.
But him saying, like,

Speaker 4 there's a difference between what you believe and what you can prove. And this is what I'm saying.

Speaker 2 That's the thing between believing something and proving it. Yeah.
It's such a good

Speaker 2 line. I'm coming for you, Grasso.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 4 Really good stuff. I'm coming for you, Grasso, up with, is this what you came for? It's like killer stuff.

Speaker 4 But all season, Grasso has been in this crisis of faith, asking, you know, he grew up, he didn't believe,

Speaker 4 you know, asking Tom why he believes essentially.

Speaker 2 Why didn't his DJ career work out? Right.

Speaker 4 Yeah. If there's a God, wouldn't I be the most famous DJ in a Biza?

Speaker 2 But he's

Speaker 4 cradling Lizzie and later he's like, she was gone. There was something about her that was gone.
He's like discovered what a soul is. You know what I mean? He's in this like real cool

Speaker 4 crisis of faith. Yeah, purgatory.

Speaker 4 You want Grasso to have her redemption.

Speaker 4 You want Grasso season two.

Speaker 2 I'm glad you reminded me to bring up that scene because I meant to and I forgot. I thought that was a great cat and mouse scene.
Yeah, really.

Speaker 2 I also liked when Grasso slowly figured out what was going on. He's like, can I have a cigarette, Tom? Oh, no, this is my house.
I guess I can have one. But it was just clear.

Speaker 2 It's like, oh, shit, this guy's on to me. Now, why didn't Tom

Speaker 2 just bring the cops over and like arrest Grasso?

Speaker 4 He's not supposed to be on the case at all anymore. I know, but it's...
They took his gun. He's supposed to be at home.
He's not even supposed to be there. But the guy real clerk's entered.

Speaker 2 He clearly broke the law. Like, did he need more evidence?

Speaker 4 Yeah, they have to prove it. They don't have proof on him yet.
So that's what the finale is about is getting proof on Grasso, right?

Speaker 2 Now it's, now we're in wire season two.

Speaker 4 Love that for us. I also think that like

Speaker 4 before Tom does the kitchen table scene, when they're still in the hospital, before he knows that Grasso, before Martha Plimpton tells him about the file, which would have been nice to know before they went into the woods.

Speaker 4 Why did they go into the woods with him when she knew that? I don't know. Um, great point.

Speaker 2 But when uh, Tom goes, Are you sure she knew before?

Speaker 2 Well,

Speaker 4 she said we have a problem, and like the guy who works in her office, you know what I mean? Like, she was sort of looking into it.

Speaker 4 So, I don't know if she didn't have that file before they went in, but

Speaker 4 when they're in the hospital, before Tom knows that Grasso is, has his file on him, he gives them the old

Speaker 4 Robin Williams, Goodwill Hunting, it's not your fault. Like, you know, he gives him like a full, it's not your fault

Speaker 2 when

Speaker 4 Grasso fucking knows it's his fault. Right.
And to have that at the beginning of the episode and then the kitchen table of like, I'm coming for you, Grasso.

Speaker 4 This is an incredible episode of television.

Speaker 2 Any stuff from the readers before we go that jumped out? I think we did it. Do people feel like this is in the top shelf HBO limited series pantheon or like one level below?

Speaker 4 I think it's, I think they have an opportunity in the finale to bump it up into mayor. It's not quite mayor territory.

Speaker 4 It hasn't become, I think, everyone's watching it, everyone's talking about it yet. So the finale is a banger.
I think it has the opportunity to get there. But like, don't you have that sense?

Speaker 4 It's not where White Lotus was early this year. You know, it's not.

Speaker 2 I think you made the point earlier, like when they released it, which I know they've had success other times in the calendar, but there's just a lot going on in September. Yeah.

Speaker 2 From a sports standpoint, from an everything standpoint, September, October, people are going back to school. Like,

Speaker 2 I think this would have crushed in the summer, like in a crazy way.

Speaker 4 Yeah, all that quarry action.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 they just don't think of the summer this way for shows like this. And I think they feel like they need something to stay in the conversation when there's so much conversation about everything.

Speaker 4 And that's a very, you know, that's.

Speaker 4 You and I are old enough to remember when September and October is when all the shows came out.

Speaker 2 The famous Breaking Bad Game of Thrones, same time

Speaker 2 against football. Yeah.
In like 2013, that was the all-timer.

Speaker 4 So, uh,

Speaker 2 oh, and Mad Men. I think there might have been three.
Were there three at the same time one time? It was

Speaker 4 definitely Mad Men was definitely on at the same time as Thrones at one season.

Speaker 2 We had at least two going constantly. Yeah.
Yeah.

Speaker 4 That was really tough.

Speaker 4 It was great, but it was horrible if you were running.

Speaker 2 It wasn't horrible if you were running a content site.

Speaker 4 No, no, I mean, as someone who was trying to cover it, yeah.

Speaker 2 It was tough. Do you think I felt bad for the people covering it?

Speaker 2 We needed the content. No, those were the glory days.

Speaker 4 Yeah, it was great stuff. But I think that Task has an opportunity if the finale is a banger to

Speaker 4 jump up into that level. But I don't think it's quite there yet.

Speaker 2 Would you agree?

Speaker 2 I think it has a chance.

Speaker 2 It's all about how you land there.

Speaker 4 And I think it'll have, I think it'll have long legs. I think it is a good word of mouth.
I think people who watched it will tell people to watch it.

Speaker 4 I don't think anyone's walking out of the season saying, don't bother with Task.

Speaker 4 I think it's going to like, people are gonna catch on, and I think it's gonna be one of those things where season one is a little quieter, and then a lot of people will have caught up for season two.

Speaker 4 That seems like

Speaker 2 that's the HBO sweet spot, that's what they love the most. Gotta love it.
All right, we're gonna take a break, and then we're gonna throw to your interview with Brad

Speaker 5 Sparkle throughout the night with Born in Roma fragrances by Valentino Beauty. Each bottle holds the energy of Rome after dark.

Speaker 5 Donna, Born in Roma, blends luxurious jasmine with rich, creamy vanilla, creating a sensual and vibrant signature scent.

Speaker 5 Uoma Born in Roma fuses aromatic sage and smoked vetiver, leaving a lasting impression that lingers well into the early hours. Shop Born in Roma by Valentino Beauty, now at Ulta.

Speaker 2 This episode is brought to you by Viore.

Speaker 2 Look, I'm not a big, let's hype up workout clothes guy, but Viore, I gotta say, total game changer. Been wearing a lot.

Speaker 2 If you see me power walking around Los Angeles, probably going to see me wearing some Viore.

Speaker 2 Sunday performance performance joggers that they have it's made with four-way performance stretch fabric one of the most comfortable things you own you will wear them everywhere i promise all you have to do is go to viore.com slash simmons and you get 20 off your first purchase with viore v-u-o-r-i.com slash simmons enjoy free shipping on all u.s orders over 75 plus free returns exclusions apply visit the website for full terms and conditions so the episode six title out behind Ideas of Wrong Doing and Right Doing, There is a River, is a tweak on a line from a Roomie poem.

Speaker 4 Yep. So, I was wondering, sort of, what about that Rumi poem spoke to you, and why are we tweaking it from field to river inside of this title?

Speaker 6 Yeah, that's a good question, Joanna. I think what it always, I think what always resonated about the quote was

Speaker 6 this idea of right and wrong, and go past that and look deeper. And that to me was

Speaker 6 so much about

Speaker 6 about the show that really was what excited me about the show was to dive into a group of characters that we aren't able to put in a box that we're constantly trying to

Speaker 6 um have an audience accept the inconsistencies you know within each of these characters and the quote spoke to that i think it was you know i always I always read it as asking, asking the reader to look past that, to go deeper.

Speaker 6 And I think if you look at the show and all the characters, we're trying to do that with each of them. We always said on set,

Speaker 6 we don't have to like all the decisions they make, but we have to understand them. And that's what we were always trying to do with each of the characters in the show was understand the why.

Speaker 6 And I think, you know, and listen, it helps to work with such incredible actors. These guys were just amazing guys and girls.
It was such a wonderful cast.

Speaker 6 So they made a big difference in achieving that.

Speaker 4 Throughout the season, we've had this great motif of the quarry and the anointing of the water on the on the shoulders.

Speaker 4 And we get this final shot of this episode of Robbie having pulled one over, at least for now, on Jason,

Speaker 4 but

Speaker 4 happy and light in the water.

Speaker 4 Is this

Speaker 4 an afterlife? Is this the moment Robbie thought of this idea? Is this just you wanted to show him in

Speaker 4 a better time and a place? What do you think?

Speaker 6 Yeah, I think, you you know,

Speaker 6 it was so, you know what? It wasn't in the script, Joanna. It was not in the script.

Speaker 6 It ended, actually, the script ended with, it ended with Maeve.

Speaker 6 And it's one of those things, like I had a very distinct experience with this in Mayer, with Evan Peters' character, where I felt like I,

Speaker 6 in a way, I underestimated the impact that character would, I didn't.

Speaker 6 In the script, he wasn't that good. I'll be honest.

Speaker 6 Evan elevated that character in ways I couldn't imagine. And I remember getting to the fifth episode of Mayor and being like, oh my God, we're really in trouble because people love him so much.

Speaker 6 And I mean, I'm not just saying that. It wasn't that he was fine in the script.
I thought he was a good character, but I think Evan elevated him.

Speaker 6 And I felt so, I had the same reaction to Pelfree in this show where

Speaker 6 I liked Robbie as a character in the scripts, but when I was editing the show,

Speaker 6 his performance just was so incredible. And I remember getting to the end of the episode and going,

Speaker 6 God, we have to give Robbie his a moment of triumph here. He's he's owed that moment.
And I went back into the dailies

Speaker 6 and

Speaker 6 Jeremiah had shot a couple jumps into the quarry. And there was this beautiful moment that we found by just going back into the dailies where,

Speaker 6 you know, I don't even know what Tom was reacting to in the moment, but he was laughing.

Speaker 6 And then the camera sort of, in a, just a moment of luck, Joanne, it went underwater and captured his legs swimming in a way. And when I saw that, I just felt like it served a few purposes.

Speaker 6 One is it allowed the audience to see him again and to give him this win we so desperately want him to have. And also, I think the quarry to me was always his version of heaven.

Speaker 6 Again, he's not a believer in the traditional sense of, you know, where I'm going in this life. He says it in the back of the cart with Tom.

Speaker 6 I never, you know, I forget the exact quote, but he mentions it when he's talking to Tom in the car. And so to me, the quarry represented his heaven here.
And

Speaker 6 as soon as we put it in, at first I was like, I don't know if it's going to work. And then we watched it a few times, Joanne.

Speaker 6 I felt like I can't imagine the episode without it now in a funny way, you know?

Speaker 4 I did have a question about Pelfree because I... I find him so watchable and everything.

Speaker 4 This is a really great marriage of material and actor, but he always has this thing that is just completely, compulsively watchable and empathetic and odd, like offbeat, a lot of his choices.

Speaker 4 What do you think is at the heart of why Tom Pelfrey connects with audiences the way that he does?

Speaker 6 You know, it's, I don't know what it is. It's, it's, it's, I guess I can, I guess I can speak to why I cast him as Robbie, though.
And, and I think it was an accessibility.

Speaker 6 I think I've told this story before.

Speaker 6 I was on set

Speaker 6 of another project, and we would get casting tapes sent to us.

Speaker 6 And Tom was one of the very,

Speaker 6 I mean, really early in the process, maybe the first like two or three of the tapes we got from A.V. Kaufman, our casting director.

Speaker 6 And he put himself on tape, and it was the, it was the scene in episode one where he's talking to Cliff about

Speaker 6 he wants someone in his life and his wife has left. And

Speaker 6 I got about half a minute into the audition and he laughs. And he has an iconic laugh, Tom.
It is incredible. He has an incredible laugh.
And I heard him laugh and I paused the audition tape.

Speaker 6 And I distinctly remember this and thinking, wow, this guy has something. And then my phone rang and it was Jeremiah, our director.
He's like, dude, I've just watched this guy's tape. Perfect.

Speaker 6 And it was Tom Pelfrey he was talking about. And I went back and finished the audition and we didn't read anybody after that.
And I think it was a mixture of a couple of things.

Speaker 6 It was, I felt Robbie's childlike sense of wonder in Tom. He has this incredible laugh.

Speaker 6 He does something incredible with his eyes, especially in the fifth episode. There's a lot of amazing eye acting,

Speaker 6 I would call it. Like there's a sadness, a heartbreak, a glow, a gleam.
He has all these different shades of acting in his eyes. But I felt like he possessed the childlike

Speaker 6 wonder of Robbie. And I also felt like there was a,

Speaker 6 he has the physicality that I wanted Robbie to have, that, that,

Speaker 6 you know that you could believe him in bed with his kids and you could believe him in a drug house smashing his pistol against someone's nose and i i felt like we had to believe both those sides completely and uh and tom is just he's just so accessible and also i think in this case joanna he grew up around here i think tom

Speaker 6 And he'll tell you this, I think he knew Robbies. I think he really understood this world, the friendship between him and Cliff, the banter between guys, the sports talk.

Speaker 6 He really understands this world.

Speaker 6 And I think he connected with it on that level, too.

Speaker 4 I was reading a different interview where you were talking about, you're like, you know, Tom's not a very good cop, like, not a very good cop.

Speaker 4 And, you know, Robbie's not a very good

Speaker 4 robber, not a very good criminal.

Speaker 4 What is more interesting to you about a story of a not very good cop and a not very good criminal sort of barreling towards each other?

Speaker 6 Yeah, I mean, I think we really leaned into that. I think that, you know, that was something we wanted to wrap our arms around.

Speaker 6 Cause I, I, I felt like we had seen, and we always reference Heat as a structural sort of, uh, as a paradigm, you know, because it was a collision course.

Speaker 6 But if you look at Heat, it was a very high-end detective and a high-line robbery crew. And

Speaker 6 I felt like, or I feel like

Speaker 6 I'm, I'm not, I'm not that smart of a writer when it comes to characters at the top of their game. I feel like my

Speaker 6 stronger abilities as a writer are to lean into the flaws and the weaknesses and the vulnerabilities of characters. And also, I like to tap into that type of character.

Speaker 6 And I just find it more interesting. I found it to be more sympathetic that Robbie was trying to be something he really wasn't and Tom was trying to be something he wasn't.
And I felt that Tom

Speaker 6 had lived a life of service as a parish priest, and he felt that there was something that he could connect that to the FBI, even though it was wildly different.

Speaker 6 And Robbie was driven by vengeance, but he didn't quite know how to be a criminal. He's quite,

Speaker 6 he's strong, he has the physicality, he has the team, but he's not that smart. And I wanted to lean into that.

Speaker 6 I felt like we wanted them to make mistakes and miss clues because

Speaker 6 I would always say to Ruffalo once that you're not a guy that's good with a gun. You're not going to see the clues other people miss.

Speaker 6 What is interesting to me about your character is that you're approaching the job with a lot of compassion and empathy.

Speaker 6 And for Pelfree, it's not that you're an amazing criminal, but it's that you're driven by

Speaker 6 a perhaps misguided love of your brother

Speaker 6 and a desire to help your children. And I don't know, as soon as we kind of wrapped our arms around that joy, it just felt way more interesting to me.
And I loved how sloppy it was. And

Speaker 6 I love that they would make these like mistakes that, you know, that we wouldn't expect them to make.

Speaker 6 And I felt like in some way, all those little mistakes and errors and flaws make them more real than if they were extremely perceptive and

Speaker 6 extremely smart about robbing houses. I felt like it actually, as I started to write it, all the flaws actually drew me closer and I felt more connected to them as people.

Speaker 4 I like that you invoked heat. Heat is obviously like one of the

Speaker 4 blueprints for this kind of story. And since we are huge heat fans here at The Ringer from episode one, we were like, okay, here's, here's,

Speaker 4 here's a cop and here's a criminal. They're on a collision course.
So when are we getting our diner scene? Like, when are we getting this diner scene? And, you know, what episode is it going to be?

Speaker 4 What is it going to be like? You know, sort of thing? And we get it

Speaker 4 of a sort in this car.

Speaker 4 And something that, uh, you know, one of my co-hosts brought up was this idea of like, how interesting to have them facing the same direction instead of like, you know, classically De Niro Pacino facing each other across a table, you've got them both facing front in this car, looking at each other through the rearview mirror, sort of thing.

Speaker 4 Was that an intentional way to sort of like, let's take three steps away from that iconic thing so we can own it it and make it our own thing.

Speaker 6 Yes, yes, exactly. I think we knew we had to have that moment and just felt like the story demanded that moment.
And

Speaker 6 I loved the idea of that scene. And, you know, again, we got that idea from Heat where you're waiting that whole time and then those two characters come together.
But you're right.

Speaker 6 We go, okay, how do we take that idea and do something adjacent? How do we subvert it in some way?

Speaker 6 And in talking to Jeremiah about it, we loved the idea of them being in a car and driving.

Speaker 6 And I always had the idea that, you know, that Robbie would, he'd be backed into a corner and he would have to kidnap Tom. And

Speaker 6 I just love the idea that, you know, and it's played so beautifully in this scene by both of them, but especially Mark in that he feels, you know, there's a sense, there's a sensation at his back for every second of the drive, like a bonfire at his back.

Speaker 6 He's feeling

Speaker 6 and he's looking up. And I just felt like it added,

Speaker 6 especially to Mark's character, a tension there of

Speaker 6 kind of, you know, not being able to face this guy, not knowing what he's doing back there, trying to check the mirrors and get a sense for it.

Speaker 6 And it just added a layer of tension that we felt was really great. And all the driving scenes were done practically, which I felt was such a

Speaker 6 beautiful choice that Jeremiah made early in the process because we've, I don't know, every time I watch a show and you see the green screen, I just, I always feel it.

Speaker 6 And we made a real effort to shoot all the driving stuff practically. There's a couple shots in there where we just, you know, we were up against it with time and we had to, but not many.

Speaker 6 And that scene especially, we wanted to shoot on

Speaker 6 an open road.

Speaker 6 And anyway, I just felt like as soon as we got in the car and as soon as I saw it on the monitor, it just felt right. And those guys brought it on the day.
And it was.

Speaker 6 It's one of the strongest sequences in the series, I think. I'm really, I'm really happy with how that one ended up.

Speaker 4 Yeah, and then I love the mirror of, you know, them back in the car together in this time, sort of Tom holding him.

Speaker 6 Yes, yes.

Speaker 4 Ruffalo is, of course, bringing this very paternal, despite his own dysfunctions as a father, like this very paternal energy here, leader of a team, obviously a spiritual leader.

Speaker 4 But you've got these other sort of adoptive parent-child relationships going throughout. You've got Perry and Jason.

Speaker 4 And then this episode, I thought the sort of Michael Dorsey, Anthony Anthony Grasso scene was so incredible. This idea that, you know, Grasso's like,

Speaker 4 did you tell him I was a good boy? Right. And then, and then the way that Michael sort of like shoved, you know, the way that they react

Speaker 4 is so

Speaker 4 such a twisted sort of father-son dynamic.

Speaker 4 So I'm wondering if you could talk about sort of the way that echoes across sort of all the different corners of this story and if Tom exists as if like, don't we wish Grasso had met Tom earlier in his life?

Speaker 6 I know.

Speaker 6 It's so true, Joe. I felt like Mare was,

Speaker 6 it was really a story about mothers. That's what I was really exploring there, and especially Mare

Speaker 6 as a mother. And I felt like this was a story about fathers, very much about fathers.
And I feel like the Perry-Jason relationship is very, very much father-son. And we leaned into that.

Speaker 6 And the same with Dorsey. and Grasso.

Speaker 6 And I think it's, you know, I think it probably stems from, you know, me being a father and my own sort of anxieties and fears and, and, and always wondering what are the, are the good things about myself that my kids are, are taking away and what are the bad things.

Speaker 6 And I love that you, I love that you say that about Grasso because I always said to Fab, and he agreed, like,

Speaker 6 Grasso is a good guy. He, he was failed in his mind by the, you know, by some of the institutions.
The church, I think he feels has failed him. That's why he's constantly asking Tom.

Speaker 6 Like, he wants Tom to convince him that

Speaker 6 God is there, that God is good, that God is

Speaker 6 able to redeem him in some way.

Speaker 6 He wants to be convinced of that. And unfortunately, he's asking the wrong guy at the wrong time, which is like, you know, this is the absolute wrong guy at the wrong time.

Speaker 6 There's nothing that Tom is going to say in this moment that's going to help you, Grasso. But I feel like

Speaker 6 that's why there is a father-son relationship with tom and groso is that he almost he wishes he had met someone like tom earlier in his life instead he's gotten so far down this path and it's why i really love the scene i won't spoil it but there's there's a great scene in the seventh episode that i really um

Speaker 6 i really love with him and his sister that i feel like is so moving about um how he's kind of lost his way. And,

Speaker 6 but I think that's a, that's a relationship that echoes echoes in all of the families. And

Speaker 6 this really is a story about families, the biker family, the Tass family, Tom's family, and Robbie's family. And

Speaker 6 one of the relationships that we always were trying to lean into was the father-son dynamic. And I think that's very

Speaker 6 That's really perceptive to think that if he had met Tom instead of Michael Dorsey, he would be fine instead.

Speaker 6 And I think so much of this show is about the choices you make and how they reverberate and

Speaker 6 the ripple effect of these small choices. Because in my mind, what I always thought about Grasso is he did one thing and he thought, I'll do it this one time.

Speaker 6 And instead it was, well, now you did it one time.

Speaker 6 Like there's no getting out of it. And he's been able to maintain this house of cards, Joanna.

Speaker 6 And only when he comes onto this task force, it's like someone threw the windows open, all the winds coming in and he's trying to, he's trying to defend it until he can't, you know?

Speaker 4 It's funny. I misremembered

Speaker 4 the rhythms of Mare because I went back and double-checked, and my memory was that there was so much more of Mare after the revelation of

Speaker 4 who done it inside of Mare.

Speaker 4 There is emotionally, you know, Julianne Nicholson is and Kate are just sort of like absolutely devastating us, but it's really only sort of like the back 20 of the

Speaker 4 finale. Here we've got Robbie has died and Lizzie has died sort of 20 minutes into this episode.

Speaker 4 And so we've got the rest of this episode and then a whole finale of just sort of cleanup and emotionally sorting through.

Speaker 4 And all of a sudden, because of Grasso's enormous guilt around Lynn, like I had my eye on him because I'm a, I cover House of the Dragon religiously. So I love this actor.

Speaker 4 So I had my eye on Grasso this whole time.

Speaker 4 But he sort of emerges as this other sort of, you know, stealth surprise central figure of his moral conundrum, him saying in the kitchen, you know, she was a good person.

Speaker 4 Obviously, you set up this ultimate pain of

Speaker 4 this flirtation romance with Lizzie and Grasso, but how are you envisioning the rhythms of the season, this sort of like early climax in one sense, and then

Speaker 4 not just a denouement, but like almost another story here at the end?

Speaker 6 You know, a couple of things stood out to me that were...

Speaker 6 structural, I would say worries. But one was I just didn't know how long we could keep Sam in the house.
And I felt like eventually the audience would get get a little bored with it. Like,

Speaker 6 you know, he's playing with the chicken again. He, you know, like, you know, I was, I was worried, like, what are we doing with Sam?

Speaker 6 And so when, and so every time I tried to write a scene, I felt like we are really spinning our wheels. And instead of trying to jam that through, well, well, let's look at the note.

Speaker 6 What's the note behind the note? Well, maybe let's try to subvert expectations. Even with the Tom

Speaker 6 and Robbie scene, you know, audiences probably would have expected that, as you said, to be the next episode or a little bit further into the story.

Speaker 6 So I was looking at ways to kind of, you know, subvert the expectations of the audience and do something unexpected.

Speaker 6 And it felt like, and I also felt like, well, again, this was, this was, this was the discovery of Pelfree's, like, he's so good, he's so captivated that you go, okay, wow, he's, he's out of the show.

Speaker 6 Like, how do we sustain the story? And

Speaker 6 so it became clear that Grasso's storyline and Tom's all his stuff in his personal life and the dark arts had to carry this,

Speaker 6 had to carry us unto the end of the show. And

Speaker 6 so we really, really leaned in into the Grasso angle, have a great conversation with him and Tom at the end of episode six.

Speaker 6 That kind of sets up a confrontation that's going to happen in episode seven, or it's going to lead to something that has to be paid off at least.

Speaker 6 And and i felt like you know i was also hopeful that maeve amelia is so moving as a character the audience she's so great she's so great and so i felt like um

Speaker 6 you know i'm hopeful we have enough on the bone at the end of six where an audience wants to see what's going to happen to all these characters who remain and um and i hope they feel satisfied with you know, all the all the arcs ending in a way.

Speaker 6 And I think

Speaker 6 it was tough to bring it all together, but I think we, I hope we did it in a a way that feels hopeful.

Speaker 4 Robbie not making it to me felt like a foregone conclusion.

Speaker 4 So I wasn't really sort of like wondering if he was going to get away or wondering, but I was just sort of like, but is Maeve going to be okay?

Speaker 2 Very much on my mind.

Speaker 4 So that's so fun.

Speaker 6 It's so funny. My sisters are always, always texting me about Maeve.
And it's a testament to Amelia, who's just absolutely incredible in the show. And I think.

Speaker 6 I was so moved by her character because I felt like she had made all these things were happening to her. She had done nothing wrong.

Speaker 6 She was constantly just trying to stay afloat and get herself out of these situations. And

Speaker 6 she's definitely a character that I love. And Amelia is just so wonderful.

Speaker 4 Can I ask you, this is a personal fascination of mine.

Speaker 4 You have so many UK actors in this cast. And a question I had was, Is it easier for a UK actor to access the Delco accent than it is for an American actor actor in a weird way.

Speaker 6 I think it, I think it's something to do with the training, Joanna. I don't know what it is.
I mean, we had Kate who could snap into Delco, and then immediately after cut, it was back to the British.

Speaker 6 It was incredible. And the same with Amelia.
I don't know if it's something with the training, but my experience is

Speaker 6 that they have an easier time accessing the accent. And I don't know if it's because they they train in,

Speaker 6 if they have to practice that in their training more but but it is it's amazing uh and also they're not scared by it a lot of the american actors come and they go listen man this is going to be really tough you got to get

Speaker 6 but the british but you know they they wrap their arms around it and they're they're up for the challenge and they actually kind of

Speaker 4 uh you know they dig in and allison oliver who's irish you know is right amazing at it too i think she's she's got a great accent and she's a trip i think she's the best okay so i want to talk about allison and lizzie um yes one of our listeners actually sort of completely blew me away i think a week or two weeks ago by identifying lizzie as the deer that sammy was talking about earlier in the season you know she was she was like you know lizzie's the one who freezes lizzie like lizzy in foot chases is the one who's sort of like in an ungainly way sort of like leaping over things and so like

Speaker 4 will she be because we were like is sammy the deer or something like that will she be the deer and then she got hit by a car i was like i can't believe our listener called that like two weeks ago um

Speaker 4 But can you talk about that sort of motif that like Sammy talking about deer and looking both ways and then culminating in how it is that Lizzie sort of freezes and then doesn't inside of this showdown, which is what we were hoping for her, that she wouldn't freeze when her life is in danger and then she gets hit by a car and dies.

Speaker 6 I know, I know, I know. Well, it's funny.
I always, I, I love Sam. I loved him.

Speaker 6 I love that dialogue in the kitchen with Robbie because I think it kind of,

Speaker 6 it kind of, you know, it was very innocent, and I believed a kid would say it. And it also spoke to what a

Speaker 6 sweet, innocent kid he is in the show. And

Speaker 6 yeah, the story I always felt was

Speaker 6 it sort of spoke to so many characters, Mr. Hey, you know, who were kind of rushing into these things without a ton of thought, right? That was Robbie, you know, perhaps Lizzie at times too.

Speaker 6 So I never quite connected the deer to Lizzie. I will say that.
I wish I was smarter than that. But I think

Speaker 6 there's, I love Lizzie as a character. And I think Allison

Speaker 6 is just so dang good. Like I can't really like, again, a character that on the page was fine, Joanna, but Allison is just.

Speaker 6 so good. And, you know, one of the lines that's always resonated with me, and we fought to keep it in the show because we were up against time, but

Speaker 6 is when she's in the in the woods and they're hiding out in the stakeout and she says, you know, I don't know what my one, you know, my one quality is in life. I don't know what it is.

Speaker 6 And, and that to me just,

Speaker 6 it really resonated because I know so many people, I'm lucky to have, have landed on something that I really love to do.

Speaker 6 But so many people I know are out there working jobs that they're not passionate about or don't know what it is they're passionate about.

Speaker 6 And I know so many people in life who are like that that are looking to, you know, land on the one thing that gets them out of bed, that gets them passionate.

Speaker 6 And I just loved that line because it felt like she hadn't quite, she hadn't quite been able to find herself in life yet. She was on the path.

Speaker 6 And then as you said, she has this great moment of heroism in the woods where she's scared, scared, and then she gets the courage to do this one thing.

Speaker 6 And you feel like, oh, wow, she's going to take this and she's going to carry it with her into this other part of life that after this sequence.

Speaker 6 And then bang, everything that Garrasso has set up, the chickens have come to roost in his life in a way.

Speaker 6 And yeah, it was a heartbreaker because Allison, you know, again, another one of those things where you get to the edit and you go, oh my God, people are going to hate us because Allison is so, so lovable as a character, you know?

Speaker 4 Can I tell you a weird side story is that when

Speaker 4 I was covering Mayor of East Town at a different outlet,

Speaker 4 and it was the kind of place where like I was watching this, this in this coverage, I'm watching week to week because we're podcasting about it. We're theorizing.
I don't want to get ahead.

Speaker 4 But in the, in that other outlet, I was, I watched all the screeners that were sent out. And I don't know if you remember this, but when Evan Peters' character died, the VFX weren't done.

Speaker 4 And so the blood spatter that hit the wall was not there. And so I was like, maybe he'll be okay.

Speaker 2 I was like, maybe that wasn't a fatal shot.

Speaker 2 And then I saw it for real.

Speaker 4 I was like, oh, no.

Speaker 2 Okay. All right.
All right. I see.
I see. Oh, my God.

Speaker 6 I think people still hate me about that. And again,

Speaker 6 a testament to Evan, you know, for being so incredibly lovable and charming because he just, he, there's so many, so many people who still come up to me about that scene.

Speaker 4 Well, I wanted to ask you, because I, I think you undersell yourself, but I've heard you say that you don't think that you're really like a big picture plot guy, but you like these little interaction, these little interpersonal interaction scenes are your favorite sort of to write.

Speaker 4 And sometimes you sort of think of those and then think of the plot as a shell around it.

Speaker 4 And of course, like one of the reasons why Zabel's death means so much in Mary is that barroom scene that Evan has to do earlier.

Speaker 4 And you mentioned Tom's audition being this Robbie Cliff conversation scene, which was my favorite scene of the premiere.

Speaker 4 And so I was wondering if you had a favorite either small ball interaction or monologue of this season that you got to write that you were most, you were just like, this is it. This is the juice.

Speaker 4 Oh, yeah.

Speaker 6 I mean, it's so funny because that, you know, all the scenes you just talked about, those are the ones that get me out of bed. Like, I love those scenes.

Speaker 6 Like, you know, the Grasso and Lizzie at the bar and getting to pick the specific music and getting to,

Speaker 6 you know, to find those moments where Allison, you know, her eyes light up and she, like, I love those scenes. Those are the ones that.

Speaker 6 You know, I hate editing procedural stuff. I'm always like, God, get me through this.
Just like move the ball down the field five yards.

Speaker 6 Let's just get the clue and go to the next scene but i would say a couple come to mind like you scenes that i'm really proud of in the show um

Speaker 6 the dinner table scene i think is an episode two i thought we did a really

Speaker 6 really good job with that scene and that to me was good because it was moving the plot ahead in that oh now tom is stuck between his two daughters but also it i felt like it revealed a lot of hurt a lot of emotional baggage that everyone was so i felt like if a scene was working on two levels emotionally and then also moving the plot um

Speaker 6 i

Speaker 6 i love aalia you know confessing to shelly that she was abused and that and that she's stuck i love that scene um

Speaker 6 um

Speaker 6 i really like

Speaker 6 you know, the bedroom scene where Allison's offering KY2.

Speaker 2 Yeah, that one gets me.

Speaker 6 Like, I thought that was really funny.

Speaker 6 Obviously, Tom and Robbie in the car was a really fun sequence.

Speaker 6 A scene I really like in the show is when

Speaker 6 Tom comes home with Sam and his daughters come in the kitchen. They're like, why is this kid here? And he's like, oh, I didn't know what to do with him.
And does anyone want

Speaker 6 a peanut butter and jelly sandwich?

Speaker 6 I love to find the moments of humor, Joanna, because if you take an aerial view of the show,

Speaker 6 it's quite heavy. And so I'm always

Speaker 6 most excited about the character beats. And

Speaker 6 honestly, those are the moments that get me the most excited. The procedural stuff, I feel, is

Speaker 6 I have to write it. And we have great advisors who help with those scenes, but they don't get me very excited, I have to be honest.
And I, it's all the little kind of weird character moments.

Speaker 6 Like, I, like on Mayor, I loved writing Gene Smart getting hitting by the door, and like

Speaker 6 all the goofiness that happened in the family. Those are my favorite scenes.

Speaker 6 Um, and I, but I really do feel like the plot is just an excuse, you know, where I get to spend time with all these characters that I really, really love. And I truly feel that way.

Speaker 6 And again, I, I know we, I know we have to have a plot and people have to click to the next episode, but

Speaker 6 I love those little moments most. I think they are what, you know, as a writer, gets me excited about writing those, all those characters as moments of connection and humor, you know?

Speaker 4 I could watch Lizzie and Anthony talk about his DJ career forever, you know?

Speaker 6 I could too, by the way.

Speaker 6 I hope there's a spin-off eventually where I get to write those scenes and because I love to write them and it's so funny. And anyway, and those two together are just so good, you know?

Speaker 4 Okay, so this is my last question.

Speaker 4 You mentioned spin-off. I've seen...
A million people ask you about sort of a task season two, and your answer is sort of changing as the season goes on.

Speaker 4 You were like sort of at the beginning, you were like, let's see if people even like this. People obviously like it.
But what I'm curious about, I've heard you talk about

Speaker 4 this place

Speaker 4 as like a place you're interested in. And so I'm curious if, if you wanted to continue more task,

Speaker 4 is it the place that you're interested in following? Or is it sort of like, I would still want Ruffalo at the center of it or some or more character following? Do you know what I mean?

Speaker 6 Yeah, I think if we did another, it's a great question. I think if we did another task, it would, I think there would have to be some,

Speaker 6 you know i i would want to explore this uh at least some of the same characters i you know i i i would want to bring them back in a way and take them i i think a part of the fun of task and again i

Speaker 6 i'm this is probably a selfish thing here joanna is like i do think a part of the fun of task is that again i get to i get to write another group of of of people on a task force like for me that is the joy like to wait i get to create a couple new characters to put on a task force and explore their, you know, dynamic over the course of a, of a case.

Speaker 6 And so, but having said that, I do think that if we did another task, I would like to ground it in Mark's character in some way and bring him back.

Speaker 6 Because I do feel like, and I felt this way very much about Mayer is like, I feel like there's an interesting, like, there's still more to his journey here. I just find Mark's life situation so

Speaker 6 in the best possible way as a writer, so messy and complicated. And

Speaker 6 that's always really, I would say, good soil. You know, when something's really messy and complicated, it's good to start from there.
People are always like, why do you write such dark things?

Speaker 6 And I'm going, well, if people were happy, I wouldn't have a story, you know?

Speaker 6 So like, I feel like they have to move away from something or they're, or either they're stuck or they're trapped, or there's a, in Mayor's case, she wouldn't confront the death of her son.

Speaker 6 In Tom's case, he wasn't going to have forgiveness in his heart. I would love to bring him back.
And I love the idea of like,

Speaker 6 who are, you know, who are the characters he has to work with? That was such a joy to write the Grasso's and Lizzy's and Aaliyah's.

Speaker 6 And I love the idea of, again, I really see myself as a character, right? So the more characters I get to create, the happier I'll be, Joanna.

Speaker 4 Excellent. Well, I look forward to whatever that looks like.
Oh, okay. However long I have to wait for it.
And thanks so much for the chat. I really appreciate it.

Speaker 6 Of course. Thanks, Joanna.
I really appreciate you guys talking about the show.

Speaker 2 Thanks to Brad Inglesby for joining us. Thanks to Joanna.
Sorry, Rob couldn't make it this time around. Thanks to Chris for helping out as well.
Who else helped us out? Justin?

Speaker 2 Probably Kai, who's probably helping out somewhere in the background. So, thanks to everybody.
We'll be back for episode seven, Season Finale in one week. Thanks.