This week's installment really takes the Munchie Boys on a wild ride, starting with a working boy stumble-crashing a wedding in his boxers, dipping its toes in the water with Finnish furniture design and Altoona-style pizza, and finishing with a perp stroking Elliot's hand asking if he's going to protect them. Along the way, we take a voyage through high-end gigolo culture, the world of political donors and ambassadorial appointments, and one of the most extreme instances of folie à deux imaginable for a married couple. This is a classic early season journey where we're a pinball flicked between weird plot points in a way that's truly refreshing after spending so much time in late-season SVU.

When an overprotective mom has a second daughter disappear, only to be accused of smothering the second daughter and murdering the first, you know SVU is going to be involved. This one features an aggressively weepy Joan Cusack and some seriously sassy kid work from Bailee Madison. Watch as the entire world gaslights this mom into insanity while she's right about what happened all along. Oh, Liv also turns down a date for no good reason.

Cold Case comes in with a cold case, and Olivia's ancient history comes screaming into this week's big-round-numbered installment of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. The old friends who join us this week are a welcome sight. Olivia's personal relationship with an older man alluded to in prior episodes, however, was much less welcome, as everyone around her tells her what she needs to hear while she bafflingly ignores their advice and is a real jerk to an old partner in the process.

The Randomizer finally gifted the Munchies with a Season 11 Stablersode, and in classic fashion, our beloved, bechiseled-butt-cheeks boy takes an already convoluted mess of a case, and thoroughly Fs it in the B. Here we see a karate-loving ponzi schemer get off on rubbing out his accountants whenever the market takes a downturn, before passing the episode's baton to his attorney who might have protected her client's confidentiality but certainly did not protect his person.

SVU takes on the tony world of upper-crust prep schools, which would often be quite the turn-off for the Munchie Boys, but an episode that could otherwise have fallen into any number of traps is buoyed by fantastic performances from some heavy hitters. The gloves come off and whoever had it in for prep schools in the Season 14 writers room lucked out and got Charles Grodin, Elliott Gould, Anthony Rapp, and Buck Henry to come in and knock it out of the park in a story focused on an institution that didn't just fail its charges--it serially and systemically sexually abused them.

When the Randomizer chose an SVU featuring one of the Munchie Boys' all-time favorite actors (Ian McShane) as the Harvey-Weinstein-esque heel in Warren Leight's triumphant return to showrunnerdom, we were understandably excited. While McShane shines, certain choices by said showrunner leave the boys baffled and wishing for what might (should?) have been.

A shock jock cut from the same cloth as any number of high-profile sexual predators (be they Hollywood execs, former Presidents, or unassuming television hosts) enters the world of SVU, and everyone loses their minds. Or at least forgets how things like logic, character motivations, or professional storytelling would dictate where the episode should go. With plot holes as gaping as the Grand Canyon, this exasperating journey into the world of the undercover triple-crossing faux private eye crime genre will try one's patience while still approaching being fun.

A DIY renovation leads to a kidnapped daughter which leads to yet another case referencing the Ariel Castro and Josef Fritzl kidnapping cases. This one introduces us to notorious welder, Elias Olsen, who we at Munch My Benson first met in his final appearance in "Bad Things" (S24E21). Can Grace Muncy's colorblindness and Fin's Eric Adams impression save us from Graziano fatigue?

Getting kicked back into the Pre-History of SVU could have been jarring for the Munchie Boys, but Nocturne had them speculating that it might have served as a blueprint of sorts for the Neal Baer years. Despite not having guest stars who Adam or Josh knew, this episode really landed a tragic story of long-term abuse begetting another cycle of abuse. We were also thrown into a somewhat lengthy discussion of the McMartin preschool trial fed by the Satanic panic of the mid-'80s (and prosecutorial misconduct, overzealous investigators, bunk leading interviewing of hundreds of children, and wildly unprofessional behavior of people in the media who were literally in bed with the prosecution) thanks to a throwaway line from Cragen.

Saddle up as we discuss the fourth part of a five-part mega-crossover event between Laws & Orders Organized Crime and SVU. This week, we wonder if part-time adjunct professorship confers magical powers, while Josh becomes CBS-show curious. We also see Chief McGrath turn the flummoxed dial up to 11, and we see the last time SVU is graced with the presence of Detective Muncy as she's poochied off to the DEA, or DAs office, or something.

The Randomizer (episode.lol--use it!) decided that we didn't have enough on our plate already and gave us a FIVE-PART ORGANIZED CRIME CROSSOVER EVENT to unpack, starting with the second of the five installments (and first of the SVUs), S24E21 Bad Things. Often these unwieldy offerings aren't particularly fun, but despite the fact that a dark story arc keeps getting darker and darker, there's a lot of fun to be had throughout this sprawling ep of SVU.

The discovery of a raped and battered woman in a rowboat next to the Mayor's mansion leads SVU on a wild adventure through the strange and spicy world of world music festival groupies. We meet bawdy bouzouki players, peek behind the curtains of a legendary Midtown motor lodge, contemplate the economics of the Canadian podcast ecosystem, and learn, conclusively, that Warren Leight's New York is no place for prairie provincers.

If there's one thing that SVU does consistently, it's dealing with trans issues indelicately, and this week's installment--the first under Rick Eid's guidance--is no exception. Season 18's Broken Rhymes has the unit dealing with trans bathroom usage in a way that isn't even remotely close to the law being discussed. Of course, this one also sets our trans victim--who is on life support by the cold open and not given much in the way of agency or depth--against the world of hip-hop, bringing in Wyclef Jean to, well, not do much. This wouldn't be a trans-focused SVU ep without homophobic and transphobic epithets being slung or the paint-by-numbers conversation amongst the members of the unit explaining trans people to Middle America, so steel yourself for that.

For our 200th episode, the Munchies let the sword of Damo-Kim drop. That's right folks, this week we watched the episode that introduced the most dysfunctional sibling in the entire SVU universe, Kim Rollins. We are also treated to a "never let your teen daughters go to New York" A-plot, which postulates that there are hordes of child pornographers hanging out in hotel lobbies across the city, ready to pounce on unsuspecting teens who are sick of museums. This was much more fun than expected, enjoy!

After three straight episodes spent in Season 24, the Munchie Boys get weird with the prehistoric SECOND EPISODE of Law & Order: Sex Crimes--er, Special Victims Unit. Adhering to the old TV trope that the second episode is basically a second pass at a pilot, this one hits a lot of the same beats that we saw all the way back in Episode 1. Just like the rest of the first season, the salacious and disgusting is cranked up, the darkness is unavoidable, and the Stabler family is prominently featured, though this one prominently features Elliot and Kathy in their underwear, selling sex marital-style.

Alt-title: Dickie’s Turtle Getting Cannibal Holocausted.

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.