As always, Law and Order: SVU manages to make a heartbreaking story ("Closet" S9E16) of one man's loss of his husband, his career, his brain function, and his celebrity into fodder for the Munchmill. We discuss our least favorite Oscar winners, lament the demise of office culture, shine the spotlight on a particularly bad grandpa, and spend entirely too much time discussing a character that is never seen nor directly heard from in the episode. Please rate and review and support other Indie Podcasts!

When questions like “If I die, and there’s a hot tub, can I be made a saint?” get posed, you know things got weird. This installment in Munchstory has Adam and Josh covering “Streetwise” (SVU - S9E11) like a blanket on a mattress--or a high society douchebag, apparently. This episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit has it all. Mae Whitman going from glitz to gutter and back again. STUNTS! Adam Beach. A bum family complete with a pretty messianic, serial killing, cult leader dad who isn’t afraid to go big. True Munchies will enjoy the divergent rides through high society, defunct Swedish automotive companies, the conditions necessary for beatification and the Christianization of the Welsh, defunct NYC music institutions, the nature of paintball, and much, much more.

Law & Order: SVU is often salacious and upsetting and certainly problematic, but rarely does an episode—”Brotherhood” S5E12—reference foreign object anal penetration a whopping 22(!) times. Obviously, for the love of all things good, please be warned that we will be talking A LOT about that triggering subject. Of course we will also be discussing exotic woods, waste water treatment facilities, Lutheran traffic patterns, Josh's COVID scare (he's negative), and Adam's salad days. You're not going to forget this one anytime soon, and you will NEVER look at a wooden handle the same way again.

When proceedings kick off with a pooch gleefully dragging discarded afterbirth down the sidewalk, you know you’re in for something special. “Taboo” (S7E14) delivers on that opening promise, proffering some of the wildest, most disgusting things seen in the Munchie annals. As Adam and Josh frolic through the filth, they talk pseudocyesis, the history of Bellevue, bus fight Twitter, and the epidemic of incest in the U.S. And speaking of incest, wow, does this installment of SVU find a way to make something already SUPER disturbing mindblowingly revolting. This episode is so nuts, you’ll feel the Unit needs to interview you afterwards. Hold onto your butts coz this one is BONKERS.

While we felt like the title of SVU season 8 episode 22 "Screwed" was a little on the nose, it did provide ample ground for the usual Munchie business. We brainstorm a potential series of extreme #Beachhead fanfic, Adam casts his dog's voice actor, and Josh proposes an elaborate conspiracy by the show runners against their own cast members. Enjoy!

Strap in for a wild ride, Munchies. This episode of SVU—”Ritual” (S5E14), featuring Emmy-winner Michael Emerson—starts in a park with an apparent ritual sacrifice and dives head first into the world of child slavery, complete with a Fin undercover op and possible Upper East Side blue-hair slave auctions. Along the way, Adam and Josh practice Santeria, lament the stolen Elgin Marbles, assess what jewelry screams slave owner, and wonder what Adam’s glasses being donned by a gruesome murderer means for him. They also finally chat about the 1980 exploitation chase flick, Night of the Juggler.

Sometimes the Randomizer giveth; sometimes it taketh away. It’s sort of like SVU that way. This week it gave an episode that takes us all on a wild ride from a stairwell in Chelsea to the grim realities of life in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Along the way, jealousy abounds, Benbot enjoy a romantic candlelit dinner, Adam breaks down the past 150 years of strife in the Congo, Amazing Grace and Chuck is deduced to have done some ripping from the headlines, no one wants to believe our victim—Lainie McCallum, played by Diora Baird—and a cut hand yields some unexpected outcomes. The Munchie Boys tackled “Witness” (S11E16), so hold on to your butts.

You know things get weird when Adam cops to snagging discarded prosthetic body parts from beside a dumpster, but that’s the journey that “Parts” (S6E22) takes the Munchie Boys on this week. A wildly discordant episode sends us careening from possible psychopathic killer dismembering his victims to the interesting world of the hasidim to body parts for sale to black market organ transplants, figuring out a way to shoehorn Marlee Matlin and Isiah Whitlock Jr. into the proceedings. Munch feels things. It delivers a bunch of cringe, and by the end, the severed head found in a Topaz with a throat full of seed is but a distant, resoundingly forgotten memory. Come for the insanity, stay for the deep dives on Haredi Judaism and a willed body mess that grew into a full-blown tempest.

Though "Turmoil" (S11E8) was not the best SVU in the series, this slapped together melange of homoerotic fan service, intra-Stabler household drama, impossible travel times, and substandard professional ethics does provide the Munch My Benson boys with plenty of food for thought: Did Dickie Stabler kill Bin Laden? Just how many bodies did Elliot drop this episode? And, of course, is redemption even possible in this economy?

Where to begin? Benson isn’t Stabler’s partner and is working in Computer Crimes. You’ve got the most aggressive sexualizing of a minor yet covered in the annals of Munch My Benson with Connor Paolo returning in one of the most insane episodes of SVU imaginable. There’s a shocking bout of TARU brutality. Kids are making mid-six-figures on their tween twink porn sites. Pedos are catfished. And the cold open's got the Molesto Muppets. This very episode was one of the handful Adam had in mind when the pod was a zygote in our hive-womb, and it DOES. NOT. DISAPPOINT.

Utter insanity abounds. Hold onto your butts, kiddos.

Today's SVU episode ("Hothouse" S10E12) takes some fairly wild turns between drifting bodies, Ukrainian prostitution rings, elite prep schools, and the New Jersey justice system, but somehow Josh and Adam take it even further. We discuss tide charts, the identity of "the rich man's Brian Brown," the concept of Zugzwang, and the fate of Imre Nagy among many, MANY, other things.

What do Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, Knicks' great Allan Houston, and legendary Austin corpse defiler Laura Hall have in common? Well, they are but a small taste of the wild series of digressions the Munchie Boys take as they review "Choice" (S5E7), an episode of SVU that features a host of recognizable actresses from the past. Small business owners and customer service professionals will be especially interested in Josh's excellent advice on how not to talk to your customers.

The Munch My Benson Boys dive into yet another Season 3 ep of Law And Order: Special Victims Unit this week with "Execution" (S3E15), which forces us to confront a few disturbing questions: Can necrophilia be mundane? How did people choose a cable TV package in the early/mid 1990s? How much did Kristaps Porzingis break Knicks fans' hearts? And of course, how did Nic Cage's hair look so dang good in Con Air? Word of caution, this episode is extremely dark, even for SVU standards.

In a true gem of an episode of SVU, The Randomizer spat out “Prodigy” (Season 3, Episode 13), which took Adam and Josh on quite the journey. Michael Pitt playing an apparent future serial killer and doing it spectacularly? Check. Continuing disparagement of van owners that cuts Adam to the bone? Check. Add the brainmelting first appearance of Mike Doyle as Not O’Halloran, staging victims in weird sexual poses so the perp can write about it for his prison masturbating buddies, the hazards of huffing Pam, and problematic content for days, and you’ve got the recipe for a truly special journey through the twisted darkness of the Dickwolf Universe.

Emily Deschanel stars in Season 3 Episode 17 of SVU, Surveillance, which features a web of people who are all dangerously obsessed with the titular Bones star. This leads Josh and Adam down a litany of bizarre and digressive topics including, but not nearly limited to, Julio Cortazar, the best sexual positions for self-filming, David Boreanaz's bank account, and, of course, which instrument in the orchestra is the sexiest. Come along for a wild ride.

It's a postmodern joyride for our hosts this week, as Adam and Josh confront one of the stranger episodes of Law & Order: SVU, "Pretend" episode 21 from season 8. Storylines are layered on top of each other like a fresh spanakopita, and various meta-narratives are exposed: Is casting a 25-year-old who can pass as a teenager to play a 28-year-old who passes for 16 a function of the plot or an indictment of the entire entertainment industry? Can luchador and extreme wrestling mix? Will Adam ever get a quiet moment again? Add in gimp masks, grief nuts moms, and sex offenders rights activists ,and you'll begin to appreciate the level of madness that awaits within.