Quote of the day:
What have future generations ever done for us?
—Groucho Marx
About a year and a half ago I wrote about the TV miniseries called Task that was being filmed in my neighborhood.
Or more accurately the show was spending a day filming on a section of Ninth Street, although the entire series was being shot on location in the Philadelphia area.
Well, the show finally made it onto HBO here in the States (it might be on other services in other areas), and all but the final episode have already aired and I have yet to see that section of Ninth Street in any scenes. I’ve recognized lots of other Philadelphia locations, especially the Wissahickon Creek and environs as I used to live near there, but no Ninth Street.
The way these things go, it’s entirely possible that although they were filming there for a whole day, they only used a few seconds of that footage and I either missed it because I blinked or they somehow made it unrecognizable, as television and the movies have a tendency to do. It’s also possible that it got lost on the cutting room floor and never made it into the final edit.
But there’s still one episode to go so maybe it will be in there.
I figure they were probably shooting at Angelo’s Pizza, so maybe when the case gets wrapped up someone will go get a pizza at Angelo’s to celebrate.
As far as the show itself, I have mixed feelings.
They stuck Mark Ruffalo in a fat suit to play an ex-priest who is not an FBI agent. He didn’t leave the the church for any high minded reason like he wanted to be on the right side of law and order rather than working for the largest criminal organization in the world, nor did he come to the realization that the church is a huge fraud being perpetrated on the most vulnerable people. Nope. He just wanted to have sex. At least he wanted to have sex without it being on the down low. In other words he got married. To an atheist.
Anyway he’s assigned to set up a Task (hence the name of the series) to track down some folks who are stealing from some drug dealers. Three people not of his choosing are assigned to him. Meanwhile, he has some problems on the home front which are causing him to drink himself senseless every night.
The series alternates among the drug dealers, the people who are robbing them, and Mark Ruffalo’s Task.
I have found the series to be strangely compelling viewing, despite the fact that there’s hardly a single person to sympathize with. The folks on Ruffalo’s Task and Ruffalo’s character are just as unsympathetic as the hoodlums.
Plus, it seems every time the FBI gets a lead, they blow it by making a bone-headed move rather than thinking things through.
One of the points of the show seems to be to show the parallels between the hoodlums and the agents who are chasing them. Hidden among the drug dealers is someone leaking information to the thugs who are robbing from them, and several episodes in we find that one of the members of Task is leaking back to the drug dealers. Of course it turns out to be the most obvious person. As soon as there was an indication that Task had sprung a leak, I guessed the identity of the leaker immediately.
The one area that I find least interesting is Ruffalo’s home life and his problems there.
Except—
Ruffalo’s wife, the atheist, has been dead for about a year when the show opens, and apparently she had a stronger moral compass than Ruffalo, the ex-priest, had, because Ruffalo struggles to live up to her memory. So there is that.
Still, as I said, I find it strangely compelling viewing, even if I don’t entirely embrace the characters.
And maybe in the upcoming episode I’ll finally get to see Ninth Street. Unless I’ve already missed it.