Getting kicked back into the Pre-History of SVU could have been jarring for the Munchie Boys, but Nocturne had them speculating that it might have served as a blueprint of sorts for the Neal Baer years. Despite not having guest stars who Adam or Josh knew, this episode really landed a tragic story of long-term abuse begetting another cycle of abuse. We were also thrown into a somewhat lengthy discussion of the McMartin preschool trial fed by the Satanic panic of the mid-'80s (and prosecutorial misconduct, overzealous investigators, bunk leading interviewing of hundreds of children, and wildly unprofessional behavior of people in the media who were literally in bed with the prosecution) thanks to a throwaway line from Cragen.

After three straight episodes spent in Season 24, the Munchie Boys get weird with the prehistoric SECOND EPISODE of Law & Order: Sex Crimes--er, Special Victims Unit. Adhering to the old TV trope that the second episode is basically a second pass at a pilot, this one hits a lot of the same beats that we saw all the way back in Episode 1. Just like the rest of the first season, the salacious and disgusting is cranked up, the darkness is unavoidable, and the Stabler family is prominently featured, though this one prominently features Elliot and Kathy in their underwear, selling sex marital-style.

Alt-title: Dickie’s Turtle Getting Cannibal Holocausted.

This week, we watched a Season 1 gem which, in spite of several characters not having names or jobs, was uncharacteristically grounded in the real world. SVU investigates a brutal home invasion rape where the victim is unable to correctly identify her assailant. Along the way, we see the genesis of Cassidenson, meet the wettest peeper in lower Manhattan, and learn about some brutal turn-of-the-century muffin murders. This one was so well received when it first aired that it earned its leading guest star, Tracy Pollan, an Emmy nomination, and led to an out of order Part 2, which we'll cover next week.

In a first for Munch My Benson, we are rewatching an episode of SVU we covered in the first 10 episodes of the show. How will the intervening years have affected our opinion of this classic, Munch meets girl-who-is-also-victim, Munch falls for girl, girl gets blown up by a psychotic fan who just wanted to see her happy face? We also get deep into 1999's East Timor news and wonder whether the mafia has fallen so low that they're pumping gas along the NJ Turnpike.

This week the Munchie Boys travel back into the Pre-History of SVU, before it knew what it was but when it definitely knew what it wanted to be: salacious, outrageous, and just a little bit pervy. "Stocks & Bondage" marked the show's first dalliances into the world of BDSM, and it wastes little time getting weird as hell. So come along for the ride, and get familiar with The Human Ashtray, comely leather salespeople who seem to have an interest in Cassidy (and who Cassidy is decidedly into), and Tennesseans who should never have been let out of the state. And if we're talking finance, as the episode's title implies, you know things are going to get pretty dark in this one, so strap on--I mean, strap in.

SVU takes on Big Realty this week, so Adam and Josh strapped in for a wild ride from pre-historical Season 1, where reason--and any future plotting with a big, bad bogeyman--goes to die. Liv ends up in the perp's crosshairs for the first of so, so, so many times, but not until a child and his grandfather are scared away from frisbee in the park forever, a corpse with a shocking hole in the middle of its head is shown to the delicate sensibilities of network TV viewers, and Munch idly wonders if it actually wasn't a coincidence that the (faked?) moon landing was scheduled to distract the public from Chappaquiddick. Season 1 eps can be quite the fever dream, and "Stalked" is no exception.

In a return to randomness after last week's Munchies' Choice, the Munchie Boys were thrown back into the pre-historical realm of Season 1, where SVU was still trying to figure out what it was. "Hysteria" was the franchise's first foray into the world of serial rapists/killers and sex workers, and given what we've seen thus far in Season 1, it's fair to assume that these subjects are handled, ummm, indelicately.

Don’t worry, there’s also tons of weird stuff like improbable shoe detective work, random doctors prescribing self-administered hot meat injections, the trans/cis sex workers’ turf wars of this universe leading Adam to look into the history of Times Square, both the Def-Leppard-related and non-Dep Leppard-related past of the diagnosis of hysteria, and real-life Vice cops going down in brothel busts. This one is wild in the ways you want an SVU to be.

Well, if you've ever seen a Season 1 SVU, you'll know that the show worked a little differently back then. If you see this episode from Season 1, you'll gain entrance to a world where things are fully upside down. Here we see tan lines in wildly improbably places, sex-positive waitstaff, disgraced pedophiles who blossom as well-intentioned tailors, train-obsessed teens, and, quite possibly, a travel writer with an unspeakably bizarre kink. As if that's not enough weird, we Munchers go even further off script and dive deep into tainted muskrats, Le Corbu furniture, impossible addresses, and the origins of the Garifuna people. Yeah, we go hard in this one people.

The most beautiful thing about Law & Order: Special Victims Unit is that it’s provided a truly insane platform for some of the most inspired stunt-casting in television history. Not only is “Slaves” (Season 1, Episode 22) a sterling example of what SVU can do in this arena; it’s the first foray into that arena for the show and blazed a helluva trail for any who followed this ‘80s Brat Packer. If you didn’t know you needed to see your beloved star of Mannequin and Weekend at Bernie’s Andrew McCarthy portray an exacting maniacal sadistic sexual psychopath, take our word for it, you need to see it here. Come and check out Andy Mac’s Crash-parry in the McCarthy/Spader kink-off because this is some next level insanity. This is MUST-WATCH SVU.

Look, we don't expect Season 1 episodes of SVU to get all the details exactly right, but in "Chat Room" (S1E18) the show gets the basics of the internet so gloriously wrong that it actually conjures many, many things into existence that didn't exist yet. Catfishing? Yeah, SVU invented that. Revenge porn? That too, sadly. Bitcoin, ffs?! Yes, Dickwolf is/was/will be Satoshi Nakamoto. Along the way to all these discoveries, we learn that SVU is a baseball show, that there is no wiggle room on chicken, and discerning listeners will be enchanted by Josh's deliriously deep dive on celebrity ocelots. Folks, we always recommend that you watch the episode in question before you listen, but this time we mean it. Enjoy!

This week, Adam and Josh tackle a bonafide Munchisode (Law & Order: SVU Season 1, Episode 20, "Remorse"), one where John Boy's feelings are on full display and directed at the victim, a local news anchor played by Jennifer Esposito. Wrestling with emotions and contending with delightfully tactless bomb squad techs, the ground between bizarre Czech-to-English guidebooks and the proper way to puke in a toilet that's not your own is covered. 

Despite the world being on fire, Adam and Josh are back this week to talk about Episode 7 from Season 1 of Law & Order: SVU called "Uncivilized," probably the wildest episode we've done yet. Leopold and Loeb? More like the Bestie Boys. Covering the bases on the most deliciously problematic episode we've covered yet, we go down a DOM rabbit hole, marvel at the words the writing staff puts into the mouths of its main cast and Canadian indie rock front men, determine the perviest drink you can order at a bar, and talk fellately--er, philately, before reckoning with some fatally shoddy police work. The pictured children will never play touch again.

Come along as Adam Schwitters and Josh Duggan start things off at the beginning with Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. Season 1, Episode 1 - Payback, the only episode penned by the one and only Dickwolf in the 21 seasons of SVU. Let them guide you through the rough-and-tumble world of architecture, Bosnian cuisine, tawdry art galleries, cabbie culture, genital mutilation, Serbian war criminals, and Dickwolf’s career.