We're back with the third and final installment of the Season 24 BX9/Oscar Papa epic which began with Benson nearly getting hacked to death on the street outside her apartment. This time we get a lovely little diversion in the form of a Fin and Terry Bruno side quest in the Bronx. Before SVU can finally turn the screws on super criminal Oscar Papa, we witness the shocking end of a recurring character, and we end with a famous case of fan service blue balls.

Still in Three-Parter Land, the Munchie Boys tackle the middle chapter of the BX9 saga that sends our intrepid SVUs north to the Bronx, where they have to continue fixing Bronx SVU while Liv chases down the gang that took a run at her with machetes last week. This means Liv has to trust Captain Mike Duarte (a tall order for her), and this means that Duarte has to trust that Liv can relearn how to police without getting waylaid by tunnel vision, the thing that led to this situation in the first place but which Liv won't accede to being the case. Fortunately, we continue to get new blood working cases, which actually makes for some SVU that's probably more interesting than any 24th-season episode of a television show should be.

In the first episode of a sweeping, mega, three-parter, Benson and Noah are nearly hacked to death by a crew of gangsters with a deep grudge. This sparks SVU to head north to the Bronx, meet some new and old friends, attempt to fix a massive NYPD screwup, and solve the rapes of 6, or maybe 12, young deaf girls. Get comfortable because we are going to be in this case for a while.

If Popular is any indication, being a kid actor on SVU in the early days was not for the faint of heart. They’ll either have you playing a scumbag turning out your girlfriend for whichever old reason, or they’ll have you perping on your best friend’s girl who isn’t into you but who he instructed to bone you anyway despite the fact that you can’t stand him, or they’ll have you get turned out, contract gonorrhea, have your parents find out you’ve become ensnared in a beej-for-beer barter middle-school party scene, and have everyone say you are not attractive. No complexes developed here…

This week, we meet an Irish-American father-of-daughters who is even angrier than our own, beloved, Stabler. However, instead of 'swinging from a pole,' said daughter is possessed of superhuman hearing and a charming inability to be "normal" due to her Williams Syndrome. Thankfully, our super daughter is able to help the SVUs get to the bottom of just how many dudes were in mom's bedroom the night she was attacked, and exactly which noises they were loudly producing.

In this week's episode Florida, the Munchie Boys are dragged into the Simon Marsden Saga, leaving them wishing they'd had been sent to Florida on a pointless side mission like Dean Porter was in this one. Alas, they're fully immersed in this Liv-servicing backstory, one which errs into some pretty painful narrative territory and squanders a golden opportunity to dive into what should be rich and interesting waters. There's a lot of next-level bad policework being done, and we're subjected to Olivia Benson channeling the worst impulses of Elliot Stabler, Amanda Rollins, and Nick Amaro in an episode in which nearly every action she takes is anathema to the character we’ve all known for 25 years.

Things get spicy when Benson, Rollins, and Tamin go to a convention hosted by a hot women's wellness brand and leave with more than just a treasure trove of impossible vibrildos and yoni eggs. Adam's middle school trumpet rival leads an ensemble cast that some how adds up to less than the sum of its parts in this "bad boss is raped by worse employees in a ludicrous scheme to kick her out of the business" caper.

The first installment of the Neal Baer era is a doozy, pitting our intrepid SVUs against the defense-industrial complex. In a momentary distraction from family time, which became all too common during his time on the Unit, Elliot Stabler is pulled away from his family--in this case Maureen, a daughter who follows instructions POORLY--for a case in which he literally cannot help but become embroiled. Sure, jurisdiction and the vic's very speculative status as a special victim as it burned to a crisp are real-life hurdles that are completely ignored as Stabler and the Unit dig into the vic's eventually uncovered extremely terrible past.

Along the way, we find out that the US government paved the way for an especially odious pedo to victimize innocent youths without any roadblocks or pushback. We also get a Stabler traumatized for the first time and the introduction of one of the most beloved characters in the entire L&O universe. Fun is had amidst the tragic but fairly realistic world in which our victims live.

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.