Helen of Troy might have had the face that launched a thousand ships, but this gem of a Season 12 SVU is the problematic hellscape that launched the Munch My Benson ranking system. Kids are never safe in SVU, and in this episode we see kids casually listing their prostitution fees, kids getting Meet-Joe-Blacked outside of a farmers' market, kids getting chained up and forced to drink cyanide, and kids destroying a bespoke, heirloom blueberry compote. This is one hell of a ride. Enjoy!

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 our first brush with Season 23, the Randomizer (episode.lol) gifted us with the sight of that precious little Baby Boy Doe himself locked in a cage being forced to eat dog food by one of his friends. This kind of depravity only happens on SVU, folks. Of course, the madness only begins there as we are treated to a truly bonkers world where no child is ever, EVER safe. Along the way, the Munchie Boys go way off the rails with loads of esoteric content. Fans of that stuff will really enjoy the unedited Patreon edition which features an additional 40 minutes of fun.

Josh and Adam--both of whom are pretty big fans of Cutty in The Wire--are forced to watch an episode this week where Chad L. Coleman is seen Ray Rice-ing his special lady friend, played by the wonderful Meagan Good. That's not fun to watch, but it's also not fun to watch the SVUs acting against the victim's vehement wishes. It's even less fun to watch after Amaro (who is just back from beating a perp to within an inch of his life) blows up in the opening scene of "Spousal Privilege" (Season 16, Episode 8), making the audience wonder just what qualities in outburst-prone people determine that they get a second chance.

Don't worry, the Munchie Boys also use this episode to revel in RedChanIt, take notice of how many of the SVUs were abused as children, and dive deep into the life of NYC’s first black mayor, David Dinkins, who randomly had two lines in this episode.

The Munchie Boys are dealt an SVU episode with super-AIDS and methed-out party boys running roughshod all over the gay party scene. This one is chock-full of problems, in all the best ways. How far does it go? Well, let's just say that if you have to wonder whether you're seeing hand or dong on a posed nude corpse, you found yourself in a pretty wild place.

Have you ever heard the old joke about the longest-running scripted drama in television history doing a bizarre ripped-from-the-headlines episode about two aging, hoarder brothers as a convoluted excuse to say nasty slurs on primetime TV? Oh, you haven't? Well, after you've seen "Alta Kockers," you will have. Oh, and one of these brothers, who hasn't left his mother's house since 1976, somehow becomes the literary voice of the present generation via his anonymously published novel. Sure.

This one is about as absurd as SVU gets, but thankfully wonderful moments from legends Judd Hirsch and Wallace Shawn, and some truly standout background acting prevent this from being an all-time stinker.

Plus: Special Contibutor Natalie graciously joined Josh with a dissenting opinion to tell us why our ranking of 'Service" (S19E18) which we covered in MMB 119 - No, Rollins Is A Tactile Detective was unfair.

To say Law & Order: SVU's historic treatment of the transgender community is fraught with problems is an understatement of epic proportions, and this week's episode--S17E13 Transgender Bridge--makes, ummm, progress? Of course, it's incremental at best, and much of the ground gained is immediately lost by jamming the episode full of racial stereotyping that plays rough.

This week's episode pushed the Munchie Boys so far out of their comfort zone that they brought in reinforcements in the form of a guest segment (for Munchies, this will be as an entirely separate Bonus Episode) with gracious trans listener Summer, who hopefully makes up for the two cishet honkies who host this weekly show and is more qualified to speak on how this episode still had a lot of work to do to get things right.

Hold onto your butts. This is a long one.

When a sting to catch a groomer pedo goes sideways in a New Jersey train station, Alexandra Cabot disregards due process, civil rights, and decades of precedents in the pursuit of a conviction. We see the SVU debut of everyone's favorite legal hard ass, Elizabeth Donnelly, we learn about a particularly outlandish purchase that Josh is contemplating, and we definitively answer that age old question: Who's the boss? Those wanting Adam's airport rankings or our views on the relegation system in world football are encouraged to sign up for the Munchies tier on our Patreon. Enjoy!

The Munchie Boys tackled a tough one this week, as Stabler is forced to investigate the murder of an admittedly odious perp he'd locked up previously. If ever there were an episode that wallowed in the "you can't choose your victims" edict, it's this one. "Victims" also has some pretty big names in it to go along with some pretty rough pre-9/11 fashion and a Guardian Angels storyline that gives Adam a bit to talk about.

This week we meet a pair of new detectives, a new showrunner, and a perfect family from Ohio who have the worst possible trip to the Harry Potter store in Union Square. We have way too much stuff to talk about, including Josh's various brushes with death and Pavement, Adam's exotic transit options, why you wouldn't want John Edwards summoning your dead family members, Fin's rapidly expanding consciousness, and, of course, how to wear a fanny pack without becoming a mark for ne'er-do-wells. We also meet a minor character who expands the greater Munchiverse exponentially. Until we rolled this one, we weren't even sure our Randomizer could pick from the latest season, so here's a big plug for the best episode spinner on the web: episode.lol

Why do any non-New Yorkers even bother coming to the big city? They're just gonna get turned out within minutes. Of course, that might give them the chance to service a john of Broadway Joe's caliber. This one does quite the about-face halfway through, making the wild left turn from teens being forced into prostitution fresh off the bus at the Port Authority into a dive into the unending effects of Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE) and how it’s downing our sports idols. Obviously it was going to end up there, right? This is SVU, after all.

This episode of SVU is so goddamn fun, guys. Rebecca De Mornay (no, not from the homeless shelter) hatches possibly the most outlandish plot ever devised on network television involving implanted mouth semen and Special Forces assassins, all to ensure that her milquetoast husband only ever has eyes for her. Wild stuff. Obviously there is a TON of stuff to talk about including the 1951 Academy Awards, the unionization of Strip Clubs, Lethal Weapon, the greater Shermerverse, the Bronx Zoo, and the future of this podcast. This is an episode to enjoy with your entire family--provided, of course, that they are down to listen to detailed discussions of the half-life of jizz loads. Special thanks go out to my other favorite Rebecca De Mornay, Sonya Eddy, who has sadly never performed in a Law & Order franchise.

What happens when a super rich girl gets cut off after her umpteenth parentally funded business venture fails? Well, since this is SVU, a grisly double homicide hastily staged to look like a murder-suicide, followed in short order by a slew of hits taken out on the Unit after they ignore Sarah Paulson/Anne Gillette's extreme white privilege, and an off-the-books massive undercover fake jailbreak operation against Cragen's explicit orders that they were all off the case.

There's also plenty of class warfare, crapping on abstract art, and multiple undercover ops, one of which includes Liv domming out on a bootlicking blue blood. And don’t worry, this still opens plenty of doors to vanish through, so if you want to know how abstract art got funded, and what nefarious organization was doing it, look no further than this episode of Munch My Benson.

Sure, this SVU spends a lot of time presupposing that we are heavily invested in the lives of minor recurring characters, but it also introduces us to a delightfully crass BBQ slinger with a penchant for lewd double entendres and forces us to go down all kinds of wild Munchian rabbit holes. Does Rollins have a separate person for her vacations at clothing-optional, adult-only all-inclusives? What scandals have engulfed the world of professional canoeing? Is Adam capable of surviving as a single parent for more than a week? Did we just watch an extra torpedo a "career" in background acting for the chance at one pay bump? This is definitely one for the Munchie-curious as a full 45 minutes of banter about Josh's concert going, Lucas Duda, and the Yiddish language (among many, many other things) had to be left on the cutting room floor. Enjoy!

What happens when SVU drops a fading Norman Mailer analog into a Ripped-from-the-Headlines family drama with his daughters pitted against his new wife, who the daughters think is sending dear ol' dad to an early grave by way of force-fed Viagra? Rectal probe electroejaculation and lewd talk of stiff, varnished eels, obviously.

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.

When we asked our Patrons to select an episode for us to watch, we were asking for a choice as depraved and cruel as this, the episode that see beloved ADA Rafael Barba exit the show in ridiculous (and frankly, insulting) fashion. This episode has everything--if by 'everything' you mean bad acting, nonsensical writing, bizarre plot holes, and Phillip Winchester attempting to cry. Bad though this episode might be, we have so much to talk about including whether or not it's a good idea to rear a spite child, Adam's day at the museum, and the importance of a showrunner. Fans of our digressions should head over to Patreon to hear extensive deep dives into Japanese Onsen culture and minor league baseball.

Why does Rollins hate sex workers? Why is Wayne Knight only in this episode for two minutes? Why did they commit zero screen time to showing why the perp did what he did? Why did they rip this story from the headlines to inelegantly wedge trans rights into the final third of the show? We watched "Service" from Season 19, and ideally there would be answers to all of those questions, but the Season 19 qualifier is all you actually need to know. There may not be answers to your questions. Such is life in Season 19 of SVU.

Sometimes an SVU really does the racism. Then there's S7E6 Raw, which for an unfathomable 20:51 unfurls bigotry at an astonishing rate--an average of once every 23 seconds. And it doesn't even start until past the 16-minute mark. They pack so much hate into this episode that it left Adam and Josh dumbfounded.

If one were to carve a Mount Rushmore of bad moms out of someone's holy mountain, Diane Venora's character from this SVU would certainly be on it. This lady sucks a lot. While we get deep into her antics, we also talk about Adam's sickness (spoiler alert: he shouldn't have gone to that Yankees game), Belizean airports, nonsexual hygge snuggling, trashcan chicken, and Kenny Rogers.