It wouldn't be a peak-era SVU episode if we weren't treated to an investigative red herring that eats up an entire act of television only to be discarded unceremoniously, forever forgotten and treated as though it never have happened. That misdirect usually isn't a NINE MINUTE NECROPHILIA KICK that plays as exploitative and shocking, leaving the audience's collective jaws on the floor, all while having the perp in question just brush up against the periphery of the Unit's case. It's a real shocker, and "Waste" provides it. It also has nothing to do with the pregnant woman in a permanent vegetative state who was knocked up while in the hospital.

***MUNCHIES' CHOICE***

When an older gentleman with a knife sticking out of his junk slumps against a Lexus belonging to the worst parker in Lower Manhattan, the unit embarks on an investigation which leads them into a delightfully well-run swingers club. Liv and Stabler go, possibly, a little too undercover and find themselves at the mercy of a legion of pawing hedonists. This being a Season Twelver, the plot careens wildly from red herring to red herring, but it's fun and saucy throughout. Thanks to our splendid Munchies for picking this as our Munchies' Choice episode this week!

Some very questionable stuntcasting forces the Munchie Boys to wrestle (box?) with Mike Tyson's checkered past while reluctantly acknowledging that he's actually pretty good in this SVU. He's no Andre Braugher--WHO IS ONCE AGAIN INCREDIBLE--but he was pretty effective. Ed Asner's really good at playing a real monster, too. Kind of burying the lede there though because Peter Scanavino pops up in Monster's Legacy, and it's not as Domenick Carisi, so this ep is one helluva brainmelter.

As we race towards the thrilling conclusion of this two-parter, we ponder important questions such as: did SVU throw the Catholic church under the bus in order to curry favor with the location-rich Episcopalians; and, would we watch a Mike Dodds-i-series? We also get to the (power?) bottom of the spicy, ripped-from-the-headlines drama that underpins our favorite interlude from this episode.

The power brokers in New York Law Enforcement and the Catholic Church seem to be in cahoots as they end up in SVU's crosshairs. Why might these powerful men be under investigation? Oh, they just appear to be trafficking teen girls from St. Fabiola's to their closed-door sex parties featuring a slew of city employees who will gladly abuse their power to turn the tables and go after Tucker and the SVUs hot on their trail. By the end of the first part of this compelling two-parter, bodies have dropped, careers are in jeopardy, and acting and accent choices put an otherwise high-quality episode in dire straits.

Obviously, when you have one of the most decorated actresses in European film history (Isabelle Huppert) acting across from a legendary American actress (Sharon Stone) in the Season 11 finale, you're going to expect an episode to remember. Well, the minds behind SVU might have forgotten to write or fully fund this episode. Seriously.

Munchies, however, will be treated to LOTS of tangents about Adam's travels, Friday Night Lights, and Heaven's Gate.

For the second time, the Munchie Boys go back to the well from the earliest episodes of the podcast to reevaluate (with the benefit of having now seen and rated more than 170 episodes of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit) the truly brainmelting Season 3 banger, Ridicule, which gives us Casey Novak's very disturbing origin story before she changed her name from Amelia Chase. The world of SVU is upside-down in this one as women sexually assault men, tumescence exams are discussed, and autoerotic asphyxiation is de rigueur. And… Casey Novak—er, “Amelia Chase” is involved in almost all of that.

A dead, naked male prostitute is found in a cemetery which leads SVU from hell house to Long Island proto-mega church to the responsible brother from Wings to his accountant over the course of the investigation. Hilarity ensues assuredly.

Young Hayden Panettiere melted our brains this week, as we were forced to watch the origin story of the teenage girl we saw doing some pretty, pretty, pretty bad things back in MMB 16, where we watched the Season 6 all-timer "Hooked." After seeing how bad her parents are in this week's episode, it's not hard to see why the Birmingham call-back might end up being too mundane for this deeply damaged girl. There’s quite a bit of disturbing child acting and costume choices to unpack, along with a wild scene for a 10-year-old’s birthday party that left Adam and Josh breathlessly pinballing between the psychedelically mismatched celebrants and odd art department choices.

Deep Velasco backstories! Lorraine Maxwell smokes a dude! Terry Bruno! Churlish eats nothing but smooth white foods! Poor Adam has basically no idea who any of these people are, but we tighten our belts and do our best to break down this radically new SVU. Oh, and we're making Churlasco a thing.

What happens when you thrust SVU and The Mighty Ducks together? We found out, and it's NOT pretty. Along the way, The Great One is possibly impugned, Carisi outs himself as a Ducks stan with little understanding of causation, and open shots are grossly misrepresented.

A certain 1992 Documentas winner can't stop sexually assaulting young actresses which leads to one of their coats getting humped which leads inevitably to Liv getting into yet another hostage situation. Why, SVU, why? At least we'll always have the coat humper. This episode also feature the one and only acting credit in country star Miranda Lambert's résumé.

Strange things are afoot this week, as this SVU starts with an ex stalking his former flame from Rhode Island to the Big City and catfishes a rando into raping her via a rape fantasy website and then takes a wild left turn when the judge presiding over the case becomes convinced the perp is his son who was kidnapped when he was three years old. To make things even weirder, he enlists none other than Elliot Stabler to handle the investigation into this cold case. There are huge leaps and ghost babies in the concrete in this one. Prepare yourself.

In a conclusion to last week's installment of Law & Order: SVU following nearly a full year later, another rape victim turns up describing an attack an awful lot like our vics described in Part 1. This means Tracy Pollan is back, picking up where she left off, which was getting an Emmy nomination for playing this role. This doesn't yield a second one, but she still rocks in "Closure (Part 2)" and helps give this episode the titular want that last week's left us all wanting.

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.

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.

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.

Recovery is not going smoothly for Rollins this week, as she is unwittingly dragged into an all-caps MESSY ménage à quatre that ends up making her look like a dupe. Could be worse, though, she could be the guy who does a post-head header off a rooftop. Things get messy, but this is a Rollinsisode, so that should be expected. Does that excuse her going for Nate with that awful hat, though. That's a hard no.

This week, SVU investigates the coldest of cold cases while dishing out hot servings of delicious Amanda Rollins fan-service content and heaping portions of Staten Island food. Rollisi come clean, Rolldhun never happens, and Benson meets two-time National League Cy Young Award winner, Jacob DeGrom.

Luscious Grape Distributors--yup, that's the name--seems like a truly awful place to work, if its depiction in SVU's Season 12 gem "Bully" is any indication. As a harrowing journey into abusive workplaces for the first two-thirds of its runtime, the ep succeeds on its own. Then? Well, then there's a turn so shocking, so inventive, and so ingenious that it had Adam and Josh wanting to do a five-season oral history on the making of this single episode of television. This one's got bad bosses, bad moms, and bad coworkers all packed into one delightfully disgusting package.