When we think about what SVU is "about," things like advocating for victims of sexual abuse or normalizing coming forward about abuse or copaganda generally come to mind. This episode, however, is about something entirely different. It postulates that the entire state of New Jersey is irredeemably corrupt and downright evil. From the seagulling scumbags of the cold open to the heights of political and judicial power, the Garden State would appear to have no good side. Did onerous bridge tolls, overpriced beach towns, and the inability to pump ones own gas so poison the Season 15 Writers Room as to turn them this decisively against Jersey?

Sit back, and try to imagine an episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit where Olivia Benson, be she Detective or Sergeant or Lieutenant or Captain, finds herself held captive in a hostage situation. Go ahead. Any scenario that could land her in the middle of a standoff with just her wits (and SWAT standing by) to get her out of the situation.

Now, in that hypothetical situation you concocted in your head, things happened to get her there, right? Well, "Townhouse Incident" presupposes a scenario wherein Liv finds herself in a hostage situation in MINUTE TWO.

Yes, you read that right. The 2:12 mark, in fact. In a show where the first 0:21 is taken up by the intro and title card.

This was our Vietnam.

A high-period Neal Baer episode which careens wildly from squabbling cub scouts to open-relationship-having MMA legends to racist frat houses and finally to Riker's Island prison gangs educated by one of the absolute legends of alt-country with a healthy dose of our favorite single season star, Chester Lake, thrown in. This SVU goes places none of us could have expected, including having one of the most recognizable guest actors in the episode die in the most disrespectful way possible after a single line of dialogue. It's really something.

Responding to a grisly crime scene, the Unit are called upon to investigate the murders of a father, daughter, and son, who were stabbed a bunch of times while they slept in their Upper West Side brownstone. As the case unfolds, a team of SVUs who've literally seen every horrible thing known to humankind, act shocked that a mother could murder her whole damn family to protect them from descending into the middle class.

Along the way, the Munchie Boys encounter characters who've been established for many years acting in ways that they wouldn't, fake NASCAR fandom, and a very bad mom/lawyer. Oh, and the episode forces one of them to do a particularly disturbing Google search for the umpteenth time in the history of this podcast.

A series of seemingly unconnected rapes forces Fin Tutuola to join forces with a man who never sleeps. A man who knows the precise tenor and pitch of every recycling center's lunch whistle in the city limits. A man who walks. A man named Chester Lake. We also meet our first perpetrator who staffed the Obama White House, and one of the vics totally isn’t Amanda Rollins—she just looks like her, right?

In Season 15, the SVU writers room decided to revisit the subject matter of the Season 12 All-Timer "Possessed," wondering what it would be like without a Bud the Ninja Pedo gleefully pawing at pics of younger incarnations of their vics or other pedos defending themselves at trial by using the "of course my ejack was all over this pornographic physical media" defense. Well, the result here is harrowing. And, like, obviously, it probably should be. Yeah, it should be. But when it's played this straight, uhhhh, it's tough. It's also a pretty good platform for eventual White Lotus guest Meghann Fahy to strut her stuff.

It's Velasco's first official day on the unit, which means that Fin, Rollins, and Benson will all be adjusting to almost having a reasonable number of investigators. Of course, it also means that Chief McGrath now has eyes inside the unit. While season-long arcs are all well and good, we Munchers are after the good stuff, which in this episode means pondering the physics of rooftop coitus and digging deep into the unintentional racism in which certain iterations of this show sometimes traffic.

NYPD officers who've been serving in Afghanistan are getting pretty violent, domestically, and the Unit has to race against a *gasp* journalist to get to the bottom of what's going on in this week's Ripped from the Headlines edition of SVU. The Army are very bad, doctors are huge cowards, and journalists may or may not be bottom feeders in this screed where no cows are sacred and no army wife is safe.

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.