Special Guest Star(?) Erika Christensen swoops in from outer spa—er, the FBI to help the Unit find a gruesome serial killer and his likely next victim. Of course, nothing is as it seems and Lake and Benson have to try to figure out what all is amiss in an effort to find said victim. And obviously, the entire time you watch this episode, you wish that this Special Agent Cooper was a better-known Special Agent Cooper and that this one was not making mistakes that Dale Cooper would never make. The weirdness of this SVU also forces Josh and Adam to reckon with what might be the darkest Second Unit shoot in this show’s illustrious history, gets Adam looking into his urban foraging options in Central Park, and diving into the case of The Toy-Box Killer.

We watched the impromptu finale of Season 21, which lost four episodes due to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. While that might not have mattered in most seasons of SVU, Season 21 was trying to do some things which definitely demanded resolution. Of course we talk about a whole range of ridiculous topics including early attempts at adding serialization to weekly procedurals, post-modern philosophy, and the Borg. Apologies for weird sound, particularly on Adam's track. He was having some software issues which hopefully have been resolved.