What happens when a new showrunner takes over Law & Order: Special Victims Unit and doesn’t understand the characters at all? Or how SVU tells stories? Well, the Randomizer selected “Gone Fishin’” (Season 19, Episode 1), so the Munchie Boys found out the hard way. Fin kidnaps a perp who absconded to Cuba? Dean Winters and Peter Jacobson coexist in an episode where Jacobson isn’t Bart Ganzel, Cassidy’s pimp employer from the Cragen waking up with a corpse in his bed three-part saga, challenging the strength of the space-time continuum? How ridiculous can a soundstage set that’s supposed to pass for Cuba get? The answers to these and so many other befuddling questions lie within the confines of this installment of Munch My Benson.

This week the Munchie boys watched "Counselor, It's Chinatown" (S21E7) a wildly inappropriate Law and Order: SVU, which has Josh and Adam careen from such wildly disparate topics as: Is noted scumbag Chris D'Elia is a cardigan guy? Which professions suffered most during the Chinese Cultural Revolution? And, does the NYPD have an undercover dog requisition service? We'll rub and tug our way to the bottom of these and many, many more questions. Sadly, due to climate change, there is a lot of Max on this one.

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.

When proceedings kick off with a pooch gleefully dragging discarded afterbirth down the sidewalk, you know you’re in for something special. “Taboo” (S7E14) delivers on that opening promise, proffering some of the wildest, most disgusting things seen in the Munchie annals. As Adam and Josh frolic through the filth, they talk pseudocyesis, the history of Bellevue, bus fight Twitter, and the epidemic of incest in the U.S. And speaking of incest, wow, does this installment of SVU find a way to make something already SUPER disturbing mindblowingly revolting. This episode is so nuts, you’ll feel the Unit needs to interview you afterwards. Hold onto your butts coz this one is BONKERS.

Strap in for a wild ride, Munchies. This episode of SVU—”Ritual” (S5E14), featuring Emmy-winner Michael Emerson—starts in a park with an apparent ritual sacrifice and dives head first into the world of child slavery, complete with a Fin undercover op and possible Upper East Side blue-hair slave auctions. Along the way, Adam and Josh practice Santeria, lament the stolen Elgin Marbles, assess what jewelry screams slave owner, and wonder what Adam’s glasses being donned by a gruesome murderer means for him. They also finally chat about the 1980 exploitation chase flick, Night of the Juggler.

After Adam tells of his travails in the recent Texas winter storm and ensuing power outages, the Munchie Boys get down to business, reckoning with the ghosts of series past while persevering through an episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit featuring a robot child mimicking human emotion stuck in the strangest of custody battles in “Stolen” (S3E3). While dealing with a bonafide Cragenisode courtesy of his former partner Max Greevey’s cold case getting tossed in the microwave, Adam and Josh also dive into post-9/11 SVU credits, do some height detective work, walk the Appalachian Trail with Mark Sanford, and unearth a fictional Juris Doctor degree. They also follow up on last week’s promise to watch and talk about the late ‘90s truckin’ Swayze gem, Black Dog.

Sometimes the Randomizer giveth; sometimes it taketh away. It’s sort of like SVU that way. This week it gave an episode that takes us all on a wild ride from a stairwell in Chelsea to the grim realities of life in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Along the way, jealousy abounds, Benbot enjoy a romantic candlelit dinner, Adam breaks down the past 150 years of strife in the Congo, Amazing Grace and Chuck is deduced to have done some ripping from the headlines, no one wants to believe our victim—Lainie McCallum, played by Diora Baird—and a cut hand yields some unexpected outcomes. The Munchie Boys tackled “Witness” (S11E16), so hold on to your butts.

Though "Turmoil" (S11E8) was not the best SVU in the series, this slapped together melange of homoerotic fan service, intra-Stabler household drama, impossible travel times, and substandard professional ethics does provide the Munch My Benson boys with plenty of food for thought: Did Dickie Stabler kill Bin Laden? Just how many bodies did Elliot drop this episode? And, of course, is redemption even possible in this economy?

Where to begin? Benson isn’t Stabler’s partner and is working in Computer Crimes. You’ve got the most aggressive sexualizing of a minor yet covered in the annals of Munch My Benson with Connor Paolo returning in one of the most insane episodes of SVU imaginable. There’s a shocking bout of TARU brutality. Kids are making mid-six-figures on their tween twink porn sites. Pedos are catfished. And the cold open's got the Molesto Muppets. This very episode was one of the handful Adam had in mind when the pod was a zygote in our hive-womb, and it DOES. NOT. DISAPPOINT.

Utter insanity abounds. Hold onto your butts, kiddos.

What do Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, Knicks' great Allan Houston, and legendary Austin corpse defiler Laura Hall have in common? Well, they are but a small taste of the wild series of digressions the Munchie Boys take as they review "Choice" (S5E7), an episode of SVU that features a host of recognizable actresses from the past. Small business owners and customer service professionals will be especially interested in Josh's excellent advice on how not to talk to your customers.

Well, kids, we’ve got ourselves a very special Barbasode, complete with a super fun headline rip. This week’s episode of SVU? Season 15, Episode 8, “October Surprise.” The inspiration? Anthony Damn Weiner. Needless to say, there is TONS to talk about, like how likely is it that a mayoral candidate’s foot-jobbing side-piece would get shipped off to work for the Israeli Labor Party and how likely is it that said side-piece killed said political party? What would your Anthony Weiner alter ego name be? The answers to these and so many more burning questions can be had within the run of this installment.

In a true gem of an episode of SVU, The Randomizer spat out “Prodigy” (Season 3, Episode 13), which took Adam and Josh on quite the journey. Michael Pitt playing an apparent future serial killer and doing it spectacularly? Check. Continuing disparagement of van owners that cuts Adam to the bone? Check. Add the brainmelting first appearance of Mike Doyle as Not O’Halloran, staging victims in weird sexual poses so the perp can write about it for his prison masturbating buddies, the hazards of huffing Pam, and problematic content for days, and you’ve got the recipe for a truly special journey through the twisted darkness of the Dickwolf Universe.

Praise be to the SVU Gods and the Randomizer because this week's Munchstallment “Russian Brides” has it all. The seventh ep from season 13 not only thrusts a rusty Captain Cragen into undercover duty for the first time since before Cabot and Amaro were born, but it also traumatizes you with way-too-specific details as to what our vic went through before perishing. Add to that the unrealized prospect of high-end koozies, the irony of nicknaming a neighborhood Odessa by the Sea when the O.G. Odessa is in fact by the sea, a journey into the daunting world of the vory v zakone, and the fact this this episode feeds directly into the huge three-parter we just spent the past three weeks poring over, and you've got the recipe for a very tasty Cragenisode with a blini and a heaping portion of Captain Don's bottomless pit of sorrow.

In Part 2 of our deconstruction of the epic two-parter, "Lost Reputation/Above Suspicion" (s14e01), Josh and Adam get deep into the nitty gritty of the pressing questions that energize Munchheads the world over: Which French noir director had a better grasp of mise en scene, Jean-Pierre Melville or Henri-Georges Clouzot? Is consensual knife play more GGG than paying escorts to talk to pathetic old men? Is Dean Winters actually, after all these years, a good actor? Find out the answers to these important questions plus a breakdown of the massive amount of plot in this mega episode of Law & Order: SVU.

If you thought that Munch My Benson would approach the hour-and-a-half-long Season 14 premiere mega-sode "Lost Reputation/Above Suspicion" with a pithy plot reconstruction and a few succinct comments, you were sorely mistaken. This televised love song to Dann Florek provided so much material for Josh and Adam that it had to be broken up into roughly equal parts. This week's topics include GamerGate, a Meadow Soprano drinking game, obscure Haitian rums, tulpas, Henry Winkler, and, of course, an in-depth history of the wizened, hairline-challenged, not-quite-leading men of television. Prepare for a wild ride.

The cliffhanging Season 13 Finale “Rhodium Nights” is an episode that belongs in the pantheon of SVU entries, featuring what has to be the most memorable ending in the entire series. This wild ride takes us down a slew of odd paths, including discoveries of Rollins’s economic beliefs, explorations into load volume, lamenting meddlesome US foreign policy, and travel recommendations for border towns. There’s TONS to talk about in this one, which is a truly shocking installment of television.

The Randomizer doled out an episode well-suited for the pandemic in which we find ourselves with this week’s installment, “Retro” (S10E5). Martin Mull guest stars as a quack doc who pied pipes his followers to their AIDS-denying deaths. Along their dimwitted death march, we learn about a Gambian dictator who “cured” HIV/AIDS with a secret blend of herbs, revel in dunking on Christian Scientists, and explore how to avoid getting toxoplasmosis, all while dodging the cries of infants contained both within this episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit and in real life.

Contrary to Freud, sometimes a sandwich is just a sandwich. The sandwich that Olivia Benson eats at the denouement of "Risk" (Season 4 Episode 12), a rollicking tale a of yuppie coke king who improbably turns to wholesale mom slaughter, however, carries a heaping pile of lost innocence and love turned sour within its soggy buns. Join the Munch crew as we break down this truly bizarre gem. If you are curious about fall foliage, the John Cusack classic One Crazy Summer, or Tutuola scion Ken Randle's ability to drive the basketball, you have found the correct Law & Order: SVU podcast. 

The Randomizer thrust Shiri Appleby back into Munchstory for the second time in three months in "Dearly Beloved," Episode 19 of Season 20. If you want an SVU where the entire field of psychotherapy called into question by a perpetrator/victim combination for whom the concept of truth is akin to cheap toilet paper you stole from your job, then this is the episode for you. Do good therapists tell their patients/victims that they suffer from erotic rape fantasy disorder? Short answer: no. Long answer: well, how's about you take a listen?

With a ripped-from-the-headlines story owing to none other than serial dosing rapist Bill Cosby, Adam and Josh covered the disgusting territory laid out in Episode 9 from Season 18, “Decline and Fall.” If you’re wanting to hear the most repugnant filth spewing forth from the septuagenarian warden from The Shawshank Redemption, being repeatedly forced to envision him engaging in coitus, while having Prezbo’s biography recontextualized by an episode of Law & Order: SVU, this is the episode for you.