When In Doubt, Pivot.

The Observer susses out worrisome problems and offers kindly advice, plus takes some of its own.

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The Observer is a spoiler-free curated collection of television series and films.

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Not everything will go according to plan. You should write that down.

“The Last Frontier,” AppleTV.

Take a look at that subhead. Note that AppleTV does not have a + next to it. The tech company turned content provider is calling that a rebrand. I’m calling it using an eraser to fix a simple issue that needed fixing.

Which is probably why AppleTV isn’t talking much about it. “The plus sign? What plus sign? You’ll need to contact the Genius Bar.”

Look, it’s fine by me. Long overdue.

Now, onto its latest series, “The Last Frontier,” which was a two-episode drop on Oct. 10, with the third episode set for October 17 as it rolls out weekly.

Premise: A group of inmates is dropped into Alaska where they have to deal with an excellently cast Jason Clarke as U.S. Marshall Frank Remnick. I would watch Clarke in pretty much anything, so there’s that. Plus, you can’t say “The Last Frontier” starts slow, since there’s a plan crash, escaped convicts on the loose and a whole other way of life that will need to be addressed up in Alaska, which doesn’t mess with the weak. All of that works.

At least in the beginning.

But “The Last Frontier” has a crushing casting problem in one of the lead roles — I’m pretty sure you’ve spotted it already if you watched or will immediately when you do — and that can not be undone. And it will prove more of a problem. But not bigger than the fact the astute among you should pretty easily figure out the very first twist, which is usually a bright red flag.

And yet, there’s some merit in the early going. On the downside, AppleTV — with a + or otherwise — has a weakness for series that seem like old school network fare.

Jason Clarke is good in everything. Even if…

For a series where there’s been diminishing returns and the regretful lowering of expectations with almost every episode, I find myself curiously having a lot of ongoing thoughts about:

“Task,” HBO.

In the penultimate episode of the limited series on Sunday, with the strangely long title of, “Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a river,” the best episode was delivered to us (despite the cloying title). The only problem with the episode is that it continued to expose “Task” as less than what was hoped for.

The episode killed off a major character, killed off another incompetent character and moved “the rat” story from obvious to, oh, you’re going to drag it into the light and let it play out like a legal battle or gunfight? I mean, that’s a choice, sure.

I’m clearly avoiding spoilers here for those who are already engaged or thinking about watching, but I would like to use Incompetent Character to make a small point: Last week I suggested that if Incompetent Character killed the Rat then, well, it would be pretty obvious, as the set-up for such an action was laid out in an earlier episode.

But in the episode delivered, Incompetent Character stayed incompetent and died from it. I can think of very few directions where I would have absolutely preferred the more obvious “kills the rat” storyline, but this is one of those.

There was never a real twist in the Rat storyline. And I’m beginning to think the big picture point of “Task” is to show us that the decisions we make lead to obvious conclusions. As in, if you’re ill-equipped to be in a dangerous situation, e.g. an FBI task force, you might get killed. If you’re a Rat, you’ll get found out. If you make spectacularly bad plans in life that are dangerous, things will end badly for you. If you have a super soft heart, you’ll probably adopt another kid into your already falling-apart family, etc.

I’m still watching, with one to go, and maybe that’s some genius at work from “Task” that should be noted? How do you make a series fairly compelling when it’s this ram-rod straightforward? Unless there’s an enormous two or three six twists coming in the finale, that’s the gist of this limited series.

It doesn’t seem like enough, even though I stayed.

(Clearly we need to find out why the Rat is acting like a rat and how important the Rat’s boss — heretofore not even seen enough to be a minor character — will end up being. Deus ex machina alert.)

But mostly I want to know who trained these FBI agents to shoot, particularly the Martha Plimpton character. Luckily they have Aleah (Thuso Mbedu) to mop up their incompetence. But wow, that doesn’t instill confidence in the agency.

Let’s see how “Task” goes out on Sunday.

Onward to more Observations: